Heading back a few centuries

So yesterday when we were going up to the temple, we had to walk through a bunch of little villages that were all right next to each other but they seemed really far apart. Everyone walks here (unless they drive those damn 2-wheel death mobiles some call Vespas) so things that seem ridiculously close are in essence, quite far away. For example, I am staying in Naya Naikap which is technically not Kathmandu. But it's about as far away from Kathmandu as Wash Park is from LoDo. You just can't walk there, you have to take the bus. And heading up to this temple, we walked through so many towns that were all right next to eachother... maybe 100 feet apart, yet they were completely separated. It's like driving to Steamboat and driving through all those little mountain towns... but you are walking.
And as we were walking we came across so many people going about there daily business, and I was thinking that I feel like I stepped back into Medieval times. People were showering right in the street, using buckets of water that they just dunked their head in. I saw a young man loading stones into a bag that rested on an older man's head (it made my back hurt just watching) and then the old man walked a few feet and rested the stones at the foot of a building that was "under construction." Made from the stones pulled straight out of the ground a few feet away.
Another thing I always notice is at night, once it goes completely dark, how few lights there are in the city. You see the stream of headlights off in the chaotic distance, but everything in between is dark. Judging simply from the lights glowing in windows late at night, you would expect this area to be as sparsely populated as Alma, Colorado.
Right behind our house is an old building made from old bricks and mortar. I was watching it yesterday, looking at its inhabitants going about their daily life on the roof of the building. Min came up and told me that this building was the home of the native people of this town. There was a whole village within those rooms, each family having only one or two rooms and the rest of their lives conducted on the roof. They shower there, grow their chickens their, organize wheat there. Everything they need, within the space of a few feet. Seems far more applaudable than the self-sustaining environment of Freshman Dorms, eh?