Part ethnography, part archaeology, geography, history, architecture and planning, Thimi: Community and Structure of a Town is an updated and refashioned version of Pant’s 2002 doctoral dissertation, whose stated objective was to provide a developmental account of Thimi in service of the conservation of the settlement’s heritage. 

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Pant argues that while the 2015 earthquake didn’t substantially damage the historical parts of Thimi, the reconstruction that followed has rapidly changed the ‘medieval townscape’. This rebuilding, together with the settlement’s changed status from village development committee to municipality, is resulting in a great transformation. 

The deliberate and ritually-circumscribed planning of ancient Thimi stands in stark contrast to the haphazard and mostly unregulated construction of roads across the nation. When you next find yourself in a traffic jam in Madhyapur Municipality, in that ever-expanding urban strip that links Kathmandu to Bhaktapur with barely a field in between, spare a thought for the intentional town of Thimi and it historic importance to the diverse and creative communities that have lived there for centuries. 

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