Nepal Cultural Tour

You land at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu (1,400 m), where our representative meets you outside the arrivals hall with a name board and drives you to your hotel in Thamel.

Your guide joins you in the evening to set out the eight days — the valley's craft quarters, a food walk, the Newar town of Bandipur and two nights with a Gurung family.

The rest of the day is yours to rest off the flight or wander the alleys of Thamel. Overnight in Kathmandu.

Swayambhunath in the morning, then Kathmandu Durbar Square with the Malla palace, the Kumari Ghar and the reconstruction work around Kasthamandap.

The afternoon is free to rest, because the evening is the good part.

At dusk a Newar food walk through the lanes around Ason and Indra Chowk — eight or nine stops at family stalls with no English menu: chatamari, bara, choila, buffalo momo, samay baji, lakhamari and a taste of chhyang.

Your guide orders in Newari, which reliably produces a better plate than pointing. You will not need dinner. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A full day in Patan, which is where the valley's craft tradition is most alive.

The morning is Durbar Square and the Patan Museum — the best hour anywhere for learning to read Nepali iconography, which changes how you see everything afterwards.

The afternoon goes behind the square into the bahals: the Golden Temple with its rota of boy monks, and then the metalworking quarter where lost-wax bronze casting is done the way it has been for a thousand years. You watch a piece being poured, and the workshop explains the commission it is for.

A thangka studio follows, where painters grind mineral pigment and work to iconometric grids that have not changed in centuries.

Overnight in Kathmandu.

South out of the city to Bungamati, a working Newar village built around the shikhara temple of Rato Machhendranath, the rain god whose chariot festival is the longest in the valley. The woodcarving workshops here supply temple restorations across Nepal.

A twenty-minute walk between paddy fields reaches Khokana, laid out along a single wide street and known for mustard oil, still pressed in heavy wooden mills you can hear from the road.

Both villages were flattened in 2015 and rebuilt by their own residents in traditional brick and timber, which your guide will walk you through.

The day ends at Boudhanath at dusk for the kora, and in the monastery workshops behind it. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A morning in Bhaktapur, car-free inside its walls: the 55-window palace, the Golden Gate, the Nyatapola, and the potters' square where clay is thrown on hand wheels and dried in the open. Sit down at a wheel if the potter offers.

Changunarayan on the ridge above, the oldest standing temple in Nepal, with fifth-century stone sculpture in its courtyard.

The afternoon drives west on the Prithvi Highway and climbs to Bandipur (1,030 m) — a Newar trading town from the old Kathmandu–Tibet route, stranded when the highway bypassed it and since restored by its residents. The main street is car-free and the shopfronts are original.

Sunset from the Tundikhel viewpoint at the edge of the ridge. Overnight at Bandipur.

A morning in Bandipur before the day-trippers arrive — the bazaar, the Bindebasini temple, and the Silkworm farm the town ran when it was a trading centre.

The drive turns north at Dumre through Besisahar and climbs a rough hill road onto the Lamjung ridge.

Ghalegaun (2,100 m) arrives with the whole Annapurna range across the valley. This is the village that started community homestay tourism in Nepal, and it still runs on a rota of some forty households with a community fund.

Your host family shows you the house; the afternoon is the village and its Gurung museum. After dinner in the kitchen the village usually dances — Ghatu and Krishna Charitra, performed for themselves as much as for you.

Overnight in a homestay at Ghalegaun.

Up before the sun for the viewpoint above the village. The light works east to west along Manaslu (8,163 m), Himalchuli, Lamjung Himal, Annapurna II and Machhapuchhre, with the Marsyangdi valley in shadow below.

The day belongs to the village: the terraces, the water mill, the school, and whatever the farming calendar has people doing. If you want to help with the millet or the buffalo, ask through your guide and you will be put to work.

The afternoon walk goes along the ridge to Ghanpokhara, a smaller and older Gurung village with the same view, and back through rhododendron forest.

A second evening in your host family's kitchen, which is where the trip's best conversations happen. Overnight in a homestay at Ghalegaun.

Farewells with your host family after breakfast — after two nights in someone's kitchen these take a while.

The vehicle drops off the ridge to Besisahar and joins the Prithvi Highway at Dumre for the drive east, around six hours with a lunch stop.

You reach Kathmandu (1,400 m) in the late afternoon.

The evening is free, and Thamel and the Ason bazaar are the place for anything you saw being made this week and want to take home. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A last free morning. The craft shops around Patan Durbar Square sell directly from the workshops you visited, which is a better way to buy than the tourist strip.

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 and add a last few hours of shopping in Thamel — just let the guide know the evening before.