Day by Day
Days 1 to 2 Kathmandu The Ancient Valley
Arrive at Tribhuvan International Airport and transfer to the boutique hotel with a warm welcome and the first orientation of the Kathmandu Valley. The city at 1,350 metres sits in a bowl surrounded by forested hills, the valley floor filled with the medieval cities, sacred sites, and residential neighbourhoods that have accumulated here over two millennia of continuous settlement. The briefing that first evening covers the nine-day itinerary in full: the route from the valley to Chitwan and Pokhara and back, the activities at each destination, the accommodation, and the practical details of the journey.
Swayambhunath on the morning of Day 1 is reached by climbing the 365 steps of the eastern staircase, the approach lined with prayer wheels and stone carvings worn smooth from centuries of contact. The stupa at the summit, with its painted eyes and the layers of Buddhist symbolism in its architecture, has been in this position above the valley since before the medieval cities were built below it. The site is called the Self-Existent because the tradition holds that the lotus from which it grew emerged from the valley lake spontaneously, without human agency. Patan Durbar Square in the afternoon is the finest of the three valley squares for its concentration of temple architecture: the stone courtyards, the gilt rooftops, and the Krishna Mandir, a seventeenth-century temple built entirely in stone in a style more common to southern India than to Nepal, reflecting the breadth of the artistic tradition that the Malla kings of Patan drew on.
Kathmandu Durbar Square on Day 2 includes the Kumari Ghar, the residence of the Kumari, a young girl selected through a rigorous process to serve as the living embodiment of the goddess Taleju until puberty. The tradition of the living goddess is specific to the Newar culture of the Kathmandu Valley and has no direct equivalent elsewhere in the world. The square around the Kumari Ghar contains the Hanuman Dhoka palace complex, the former royal residence of the Shah kings before the move to the Narayanhiti Palace in the nineteenth century, its courtyards and museum providing the most detailed account of Kathmandu’s royal history available in the city. The optional Everest Mountain Flight, if taken on this morning, departs from the domestic terminal at sunrise and flies east along the Himalayan chain, the peaks visible through the aircraft windows from Everest at 8,849 metres to Kanchenjunga at 8,586 metres in a single morning arc.
Stay: Luxury Boutique Hotel in Kathmandu
Day 3 Bhaktapur and Dhulikhel Artistic Horizons
Bhaktapur, the easternmost of the three medieval cities, is reached by road from Kathmandu in forty minutes. The city was the capital of the Malla kingdom from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries and its historic core has been preserved with a care that the other two cities have not always matched: the lanes within the old town are free of motor traffic, the facades are maintained, and the Newari craftsmanship in stone and timber is visible at a concentration that makes the city feel genuinely medieval rather than restored. The Golden Gate at the entrance to the Palace of Fifty-Five Windows is one of the most cited individual artworks in Nepal: a gilt repousse doorway whose level of detail in the metalwork has led it to be described as the most beautiful example of its kind in the world. The Peacock Window nearby, a carved stone and timber lattice of peacock feathers worked by artisans across generations, represents the woodcarving tradition at its peak.
Dhulikhel at 1,440 metres is a short drive east from Bhaktapur along the Arniko Highway, the road to the Chinese border that passes over the valley rim into the middle hills. The town itself is a quiet Newari settlement whose main claim on visitors is the view from its eastern ridge: the Himalayan chain from Ganesh Himal in the west to the Numbur group in the east, visible as a continuous wall of snow above the lower ridgelines when the air is clear. In the late afternoon and at sunset, the light on the peaks changes through the full range from gold to orange to pink to grey, and the view from the hilltop resorts above the town is one of the finest Himalayan panoramas available without leaving the road network. The evening here is quieter than Kathmandu and the pace appropriate for a last night before the journey south.
Stay: Panoramic Hillside Resort in Dhulikhel
Days 4 to 5 Chitwan National Park Into the Wild
The drive south from Dhulikhel to Chitwan drops through the Terai in a sequence of ecological zones that covers more than 1,000 metres of altitude in two hours: the middle hills, the Siwalik foothills, and then the flat subtropical lowland of the Rapti valley where the national park begins. Chitwan is Nepal’s first national park, established in 1973 and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. The park protects 932 square kilometres of sal forest, riverine grassland, and wetland that is the primary habitat of the greater one-horned rhinoceros in Nepal, with a population that has recovered from fewer than 100 individuals in the 1960s to over 700 today. The recovery is one of the most successful large-mammal conservation stories in Asia and the park staff who led it are still working here.
The elephant-back safari on Day 4 enters the grassland and sal forest terrain in the morning, when the wildlife is most active. The height of the elephant allows a vantage over the tall grass that is not possible on foot, and the approach to rhinos at close range is something the elephant’s presence facilitates in a way that a vehicle cannot replicate. The professional naturalists who lead the safari provide identification and ecological context for everything encountered: the birds, the deer species, the signs of tiger presence, and the rhinos themselves. The canoe journey on the Rapti River the following morning is a different experience: the dugout moves in silence past the sandbar crocodiles and the gharials in the deeper channels, the river birding excellent at this hour, the forest on both banks reflected in the still water before the morning wind arrives.
The evenings at the jungle lodge include presentations by the naturalist team on the ecology of the park, the conservation history, and the wildlife most likely to be encountered. The lodge itself sits at the park boundary with the forest visible from the rooms and the sounds of the jungle present at night. The full-board arrangement at Chitwan, with all meals provided at the lodge, reflects the reality that the park is not a place where independent restaurant dining makes sense.
Stay: Premium Jungle Lodge in Chitwan
Days 6 to 7 Pokhara and Sarangkot Lakeside Romance
The drive west from Chitwan to Pokhara follows the Prithvi Highway along the base of the Himalayan foothills, the mountains visible above on the left for much of the journey. Pokhara at 800 metres is the second city of Nepal and its most visited tourist destination, a position it holds because the combination it offers, an attractive lake city in a warm subtropical climate directly below a major Himalayan massif, is not replicated anywhere else in Nepal or the region. The Annapurna range rises above the northern shore of Phewa Lake in a wall that on clear days is visible from the city streets, and Machhapuchhre, the sacred and unclimbed peak whose double summit gives it the local name Fishtail, occupies the centre of the view in a position of dramatic proximity.
The predawn drive to Sarangkot on the morning of Day 7 starts before 5am, the road climbing the hillside above Pokhara in darkness to arrive at the viewpoint at 1,592 metres before the first light. The sunrise from Sarangkot is the most visited mountain viewpoint in Nepal: the full Annapurna range from Dhaulagiri in the west through Annapurna I, Annapurna South, Hiunchuli, Machhapuchhre, and the Annapurna II and IV group to Lamjung Himal in the east, lit from below while the surrounding hills are still dark. The quality of the light in the minutes around sunrise, the colour moving across the faces of the peaks as the sun clears the eastern ridge, is different from what a midday view of the same mountains offers. The boat ride on Phewa Lake after breakfast, with the reflection of the peaks on the water in the still morning air, provides a different encounter with the same view from a lower angle. The Barahi Temple on its small island in the lake is reached by rowing boat and offers both a place of active Hindu worship and a position in the middle of the lake with the mountains on all sides.
Stay: Luxury Lakeside Hotel in Pokhara
Days 8 to 9 Kathmandu Boudhanath, Pashupatinath, and Farewell
The return to Kathmandu is by road or a short flight that passes the Manaslu and Ganesh Himal groups on the eastern approach, the mountains visible from the aircraft in the clear morning air. The final days in Kathmandu are devoted to the two sacred sites that the first days did not include. Boudhanath, one of the largest stupas in the world, was built in the eighth century at a crossroads on the old trade route between Nepal and Tibet and has been in continuous use since. The Tibetan Buddhist community that has made the neighbourhood around the stupa its centre since 1959 has built monasteries on all four sides of the dome, and the ritual of circumambulation, conducted by monks, nuns, and lay practitioners from early morning until late evening, gives the site a quality of continuous spiritual activity that the purely architectural account of it does not convey.
Pashupatinath on the Bagmati river is the most sacred Hindu site in Nepal and one of the most important Shiva temples in the world. The main temple complex is accessible only to Hindus, but the surrounding ghats, the courtyards, the sadhus who receive visitors in the open areas, and the cremation fires on the river bank are all visible from the eastern bank and observable with the unhurried attention they deserve. The site is not staged for tourism: the cremations, the rituals, the sadhus, and the pilgrims are all there because this is a living place of worship, not because visitors have been arranged to see them. The farewell dinner that evening at a traditional Newari restaurant, with the full menu of a cuisine that is specific to the Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley and the folk dancing that accompanies it, is the appropriate close to a journey that began in the medieval streets of the same valley nine days earlier.
Stay: Luxury Boutique Hotel in Kathmandu
