Afternoon ridge-top stroll. Evening ‘Welcome Cocktail’ and Dinner. What better place to start than to first take the steep road that climbs to the eastern rim of The Kathmandu Valley, to Nagarkot famous for its stunning sun-set views of the knife-edged Himalayan peaks - including distant Everest.
As with the natural ‘ying and yang’ of all things, the glacial torrents of the High Himal are both the life blood of Nepal and too the source of dread; of tempests, landslides and floods. So where else would the gods abide? The traditional brick and timber Fort Hotel astride the ridge at 2,000m is an excellent, cosy and friendly refuge easing you gently into a classic journey of discovery. (D)

Comprehensive day tour, including Changu Narayang Temple and the UNESCO World Heritage listed city of Bhaktapur. The first rays of a new day turn the grey tones of early dawn in the High Himalaya to a blaze of pink, an entire East-to-West panorama, typically above an ethereal sea of cloud, with the folds of the hills rolling ever upwards to the summits and away and beyond towards Tibet.

After breakfast we descend to one of UNESCO’s least known conservation projects, the exquisite temple at Changu Narayang atop its promontory overlooking the upper Bagmati River as it flows through the paddy to then become the holy river of cremation at Pashupatinath.

There can be no better introduction to the temple architecture of the Hinduism of the Himalaya, for Changu Narayan is a master-piece. Dating as do parts of it, including many stone deities, from the 4th and 5th Centuries, it is beautifully awesome. Vishnu, in his incarnation as Narayan, is the resident god-form. Tantric influences from Tibet are depicted in the gloriously carved roof struts and the embossed doors with their custodial lions help explain its fame throughout the trans-Himalaya.

As if held in a time-warp, the little city of Bhaktapur amazes everyone. You have entered a time of feudal ways, a place of medieval street-scenes, with a uniquely magical ambiance that confidently pays no tythes at all to modernity. There are some who say that travel is part about going places, part about doing things there and part about ‘just being there’. Well Bhaktapur is definitely - though not only - simply about just being there. (Indeed a lot of visitors don’t even know that it is there, for the wrong but ready assumption is that all the wonders of the legendary Kathmandu Valley are in Kathmandu City itself).

In fact Bhaktapur is one of three main historic cities in The Valley, not unlike separate city-states in ancient Greece and Asia Minor, and with all three to be visited on our odyssey.

So it is a place where the eye is instructed upwards to pagoda roof-tops, where the neck turns to peer down ancient alleyways and where one’s own inaction is the perfect counter- point to all the activity around. All one’s five senses are employed and then a sixth Sense of idle exploration!

The definitive building is the 30m high Nyatapola Temple of five pagoda roof-lines towering above the market square. And yet this is merely a centre- point, the iconic landmark, while palaces and temples and shrines, a hundred-and-one of them – nay a thousand-and-one of them – are in constant use, enticing or warding off deities and demons with offerings; offerings which are typically floral and food or percussion or horn music and always and everywhere the incessant clanging and tinkling of big and little bells. (From four in the morning so don’t say you haven’t been warned!) (B)

Midst the extraordinary wonder of it all is the daily toil of a bygone age interfacing with the intricate social complexity of a community which has honed its ways over the same centuries in which the craftsmen have unhurriedly practiced their trades – potters, brass and gold workers, woodcarvers, mask-makers and masons all. However not all the workmanship is religious, the windows and doorways of fine houses of once prosperous traders bare witness to a vibrant exotic past as in Kipling’s line: ’and the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Kathmandu’.

Morning visit to Patan’s Durbar Square and Museum plus Tibetan carpet weaving centre, followed by lunch in Patan Square, before continuing to Nuwakot And so to Patan. Although these days it is part of the sprawl of the Kathmandu conurbation, it has a history of its own not least as the centre of Sanskrit learning and thus its oft used Sanskrit name of Lalitpur (City of Beauty). Like Bhaktapur, Patan warrants exploration on foot though here all is easily encompassed within the Durbar Square.

Sanskrit really helps explain Patan while Patan informs on this archaic Aryan language which was both the medium of ancient Hindu Vedas (texts) and of the propagation of Buddhist teachings in the 3rd Century BC arriving from the Ganges along the lines of communication of the emperor Ashoka. Four Ashok columns still stand at the corners of the square.

The influences are then from every age since, perhaps culminating in the 12th to 16th Century era of the Mallas and their extraordinarily creative Newar civilization. Everywhere centred around the square are noble structures both royal and religious which highlight the Hindu pantheon, mainly of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva. Here too is an excellent museum of truly international standard with some superb artefacts from both Buddhist and Hindu traditions leaving you in no doubt as to the glories of the past and well-informed as to the span of civilisations that have flourished and competed here in the Himalayas.

Ours is now a mountainous drive north out of The Valley towards the central Himalayan region of the Langtang Himal. We climb to 2,000m and, beyond the valley rim, we enter a different world – the world of breathtaking views and of the sights and sounds of rural Nepal . . .described by someone as ‘from soaring summits to day-old chicks’.

Without doubt Nepal’s more recent heritage – or at least the birth of Nepal’s modern age - is encapsulated here in a tiny mountain fastness as undiscovered as the proverbial jewel. This is the fort, the palace, the temple at Nuwakot and it is where the unifier of Nepal, Prithvi Narayan Shah, in 1769 established his Gorkha army to bear down on the Kathmandu Valley and, one-by-one, to pick off the small principalities that constantly squabbled there.

Nuwakot’s saddle-back position provides impressive defensives in three directions sweeping down to river valleys far below while its imposing towers, seen from any approach, are menace enough to deter any malicious force.

Just beyond, on the south-facing hillside, backed by the 7,000m Langtang Himal, is The Famous Farm. This is surely everyman’s pastoral idyll and restorative ‘fix’. (BD)

Nuwakot Historic Fort and Palace. Late morning departure to Trisuli Centre and ‘Big Fig’ for lunch, before arriving in Bandipur, for dinner and an initial introduction to the locality. After visiting the fortifications, the six story palace and the temple to Shiva with its gilt roof and crumbling columns, we take the back-way that follows the Trisuli river down-stream towards the lowlands and on into the middle hills; to ‘the warm heart of Nepal’. Here we join Nepal’s one arterial highway and reach The Trisuli Centre, which is in fact a cluster of cottages that once huddled despondently between road and river. For some three years now it has been developed to address the challenge of demonstrating that road-side villages all over Nepal by definition, need not be ugly and uncared for and lacking in all inspiration or opportunity. The challenge has been to introduce a sea-change in prospects benefiting the village, to set an example to others and to state that ugliness is no symbol of success, but quite the reverse. Here too is ‘The Big Fig’, a huge spreading Banyan tree of great aerial roots and also there is an avoidable experience of crossing a typically long and hairy Nepali trail bridge. And so up to wonderful Bandipur with its eagle’s nest location, its provincial architecture, its lazy walks through idyllic farms and its serried ranks of green hills descending down through orange groves to the plains and to the Ganges. And its people pleased to see you perhaps on account of a rediscovered pride in their past and in a new-found sense of their unique history. (BLD)

Morning walking tour of Bandipur and free time.
Mid-afternoon departure for Begnas Lake Resort.Bandipur owes its historic credentials to trade, a chapter in its history that tells of the traditional cast of enterprising middle-men, the Newars, who came here from Bhaktapur in the 1700s to create a thriving entrepot where trans-Himalayan trails meet. Here were traded the produce of colonial India and free Tibet, (mainly light Benares silks north with heavy brocaded silk south).

The warehouses were filled too with cottons and salt and rice and tobacco, and later with simple manufactured goods like lanterns, mirrors and matches, and torches and the ubiquitous Eveready battery. All of course was carried by small armies of porters by time-honoured method in ‘dokos’, the traditional all-purpose cone-shaped baskets.

So Bandipur grew and fine houses rose as statements to prosperity in the red brick and timber-framed style of their forefathers and mentors back in Bhaktapur. Then the British quitting India, the closure of Tibet, the new roads now using the valleys below sounded a death knell and Bandipur withered, to only recently revive to welcome the inquisitive traveller.

Bandipur’s hostelry best known and most closely associated with its revival is The Old Inn. It is located in the heart of the old bazaar and it oozes a sense of a busy past, its four stories of atmospheric living quarters using old beams and plaster work to great effect. And there are bonuses aplenty; one such is the delicious food grown locally, another, from The Old Inn’s terrace, is the northerly view towards the snows of the Himalaya from whence, once upon a time, came the cornucopia of exotics from Tibet.

We depart mid-afternoon towards Pokhara, then turn North towards the mountains and to the lake at Begnas. We are paddled across its still waters to the lovely Begnas Lake Resort which has fine views of the Annapurna range notably Machhupuchare, the famous Fishtail Mountain. This is a perfect place to understand and appreciate the reputation that the Annapurnas have for their beauty, their tranquillity and the even tenor of their ways. Here are the clusters of cottages, the closely integrated farms, terraced fields and busy workers, the womenfolk in bright colours, and above are the sunny meadows and uplands with the bastion of the snow-clad giants as a backdrop. (BLD)

Morning at leisure. Various lake and mountain-view strolls. Afternoon departure for Pokhara. (BL) This morning select your own level of (in)activity! There are delightful walks with stunning vistas but there are also some equally great views from the hotel’s verandas. After lunch we have the short drive to Pokhara, to the celebrated Fishtail Lodge on the island in Phewa Lake with those panoramas that the guidebooks and postcards rightly find irresistible.

Popular tourist haunts are inclined to have restaurants with ambiance and Pokhara is one of these – a nice selection, and time and space tonight to dine however you choose.

Individual Choice 1: A day trip for close-ups of the mountains (and an optional small trek even closer), with picnic lunch.
Individual Choice 2: Full day at leisure at Fishtail Lodge and along Pokhara’s lakeside with its numerous ‘handicraft emporia’. (B)

Fly Pokhara to Kathmandu. Walking tour of Kathmandu’s old bazaars, Hanuman Dhoka and Durbar Square.The High Himal are just outside the port windows of our small aircraft as we fly to a city too laid-back to bother being best; it’s just Kathmandu, a spicy masala of its mixed reputations. The gems of its heritage now contrast with its all too typical Asian big city melee and manic traffic. So walk or take rickshaws. The labyrinth of backstreets and alleys leading from one bazaar or chowk to another and another are pure theatre, with just a nod to shambolic technology - the mobile phone excepted of course which is often held to the most improbable ear - and with photographers amongst us challenged by every image and by every imaginable obstacle.

We thus emerge into the pulsating Durbar Square – if indeed so many-sided and so colourful a circus can be called a square – and to Hanuman Dokha, the royal palace for 200 years. (B)

Day Tour of Boudhanath, Pashupatinath, Swaymbhunath, Evening 'Farewell Dinner'.
Optional early morning Everest Mountain Flight. Perhaps we’ve saved the best ‘til last. Here they are – the famous landmarks . . . The extra-ordinary presence or ‘karma’ of the ‘Great Stupa’ at Boudhanath, the place of pilgrimage for all Tibetans who first arrived here over the high Himalayan passes. . . . The holy site of Hindu’s Lord Pashupati (Lord Shiva), drawing pilgrims and sadhus and yogis from near and far. It is Nepal’s most revered Hindu shrine and, not least, a location of choice for sacred cremations. . . .and, on a commanding hill, Swaymbhunath, significant to both religions, where Buddha is identified as an incarnation of Vishnu, where monkeys slide down brass banisters and where prayer wheels generate continuous petitions.

We gather for a farewell dinner. What impressions have been formed, what discoveries have been made? Travel is as much about questions as it is about answers. (BD)