Luxury Nepal Honeymoon Tour

You land at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu (1,400 m), where our representative meets you outside the arrivals hall with marigold garlands and a private car to your hotel.

At the hotel your room has been dressed with flowers and there is a cake waiting. Your guide calls in briefly to say hello and confirm the time of the mountain flight in the morning, and then leaves you to the evening.

The evening is left free on purpose. After a long flight and, usually, a long wedding, the best first night in Nepal is a quiet dinner and an early bed. Overnight in Kathmandu.

An early start, and the only one in Kathmandu. A short drive takes you to the domestic terminal for the Everest mountain flight: an hour in a small aircraft flying east along the Himalaya, with a window seat each, past Langtang, Gauri Shankar and Cho Oyu to Everest (8,849 m) itself. You are back at the hotel for breakfast.

After a rest, late morning is at Patan Durbar Square with your guide — the stone Krishna Mandir, the gilded Golden Temple and the palace museum, whose courtyard café is the best lunch table in the valley.

The afternoon is free for the hotel's pool or spa. If you would rather be out, the Garden of Dreams, a restored 1920s garden of pavilions and lily ponds, is a quiet hour. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A morning flight of twenty-five minutes takes you west to Pokhara (822 m). Sit on the right-hand side: Ganesh Himal, Manaslu and the Annapurnas pass the window one after another.

Your resort has the Annapurna range in front of it, and the middle of the day is for arriving properly — the terrace, the pool, a long lunch. Nothing is scheduled until the light softens.

Late in the afternoon a private boat takes the two of you out on Phewa Lake, to the island temple of Tal Barahi and along the forested far shore, as the sun sets behind the western hills and the mountains turn pink above the town. Overnight in Pokhara.

A drive in the dark to Sarangkot (1,592 m), for the sunrise that Pokhara is known for. The first light touches Dhaulagiri far to the west and moves east along Annapurna South to the fishtail peak of Machhapuchhre, with the lake under mist below. You are back at the resort for a late breakfast.

The middle of the day is given to a sixty-minute couple's spa treatment, and to as little else as possible.

Before sunset you go up to the World Peace Pagoda on the ridge across the lake for the Annapurnas in the evening light. Dinner is a private candle-lit table for two, set apart from the restaurant. Overnight in Pokhara.

Nothing is arranged today unless you ask for it, which is the point of the extra night. The resort, the lake and the mountains are enough for most couples.

For those who want an outing, the car and your guide are available all day. Begnas Lake, forty minutes east, is smaller and far quieter than Phewa and good for a boat and a picnic; Pokhara's old bazaar and the International Mountain Museum are closer to hand.

This is also the day for the Annapurna Base Camp helicopter, if you have added it: a morning flight into the sanctuary and a landing at 4,130 m beneath Annapurna I, back in time for lunch. Tandem paragliding from Sarangkot can be booked for the morning as well. Overnight in Pokhara.

After breakfast the car heads south out of the hills, four to five hours in a luxury vehicle with a stop on the way. The road drops through the Mahabharat range onto the flat, warm plain of the Terai, where the air, the trees and the houses are all different.

You reach the lodge beside Chitwan National Park (150 m) in time for a late lunch, and your naturalist walks you through the next day over tea.

Toward evening you go down to the bank of the Rapti river to watch the sun set over the grassland on the far side, often with deer or a rhino at the water's edge, and return to the lodge for dinner. Overnight at the jungle lodge.

The morning begins on the water. A dugout canoe carries the two of you and your naturalist down the Rapti in the early mist, past gharial and mugger crocodiles on the sandbanks and kingfishers and storks in the shallows. It is slow, silent and one of the loveliest hours of the tour.

The middle of the day is hot and the animals rest, so you do too — the garden, the pool, a long lunch.

The afternoon jeep safari is private: your own vehicle and naturalist, deep into the park through sal forest and tall grass, stopping for as long as you like. Greater one-horned rhinoceros are seen on most drives, with spotted deer, wild boar, langur and peacock. Tiger live here too but are rarely seen. Overnight at the jungle lodge.

A last breakfast in the garden, then a short drive to Bharatpur airport for the twenty-minute flight to Kathmandu (1,400 m), which turns a day on the highway into a morning.

After checking in and a rest, the late afternoon is in Bhaktapur, the best preserved of the valley's medieval cities and free of traffic inside its walls. You arrive as the light turns warm on the brick: the 55-window palace, the five-tiered Nyatapola pagoda and Potters' Square, with a clay pot of juju dhau, the sweet curd the city is known for.

The evening is a farewell dinner at a traditional Nepali restaurant, a meal of many small courses served with folk music and dance. Overnight in Kathmandu.

The morning is free. Boudhanath is fifteen minutes from the airport and makes a gentle last visit — a walk round the great white stupa and coffee on a rooftop above it.

We collect you from your hotel three hours before your flight and drive you to Tribhuvan International Airport, where our representative sees you through to the check-in counters.

If your flight leaves late in the day we can hold the room or store your bags, so the last hours are spent in the city rather than in the terminal — just let your guide know the evening before.