Dawn is magic hour in Nepal, when Hindus and Buddhists perform puja, or worship. But this particular dawn in April is special. On my second day in Patan, I am on a mission to see the chariot festival of the rain god, Rato Machindranath, at Patan Durbar Square. I follow women in a rainbow of saris and men wearing the Dhaka topi, the pointed national cap, alongside denim-clad teenagers and throngs of children, one marking my forehead with the first of many tikas as the top of the chariot comes into view.

Capped with a 20-metre spire dressed in tree branches, garlands and flags and tethered temporarily by rope to surrounding buildings, the chariot has four enormous wooden wheels painted with eye motifs. Someone in the crowd tells me it is built from scratch every year by a sect of the Newar community, the historical inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, to please the rain god and ensure good harvests before the monsoon. “What’s amazing,” he says, “is that it’s constructed without a single nail.” I don’t doubt him. It looks like a half-cut tree about to fall.