Four days in Kathmandu: a working medieval city with motorbikes in it

Three nights in the valley: the old durbar square and the living goddess, the hill stupa at sunset, a day in Patan, and the river and the Tibetan quarter on the way out.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Kathmandu
Places
10 across 4 days
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Kathmandu is loud, dusty, crowded and about a thousand years old, and the temples in it are not exhibits. People ring the bells on the way to work, leave rice and vermilion on the stone gods at the crossroads, and light butter lamps at dusk in courtyards that tourists walk through without noticing.

The valley held three kingdoms once, Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, each with its own palace square, and they competed by building. That is why a place this size has so much carved wood and gilded bronze in it, and why the squares are worth the entry tickets they now charge.

Three nights gives you the old city, an afternoon at the stupa on the hill, a full day across the river in Patan, and the two great religious sites on the eastern side on the morning you fly out.

Highlights

  • A living goddess who appears, when she feels like it, at a carved upper window
  • A hilltop stupa with painted eyes watching the valley in four directions
  • Butter lamps and a slow clockwise crowd circling an enormous white dome
  • Palace squares rebuilt board by board after the earthquake, with the joints still pale

Where to stay

Kathmandu, three nights

The city grew rich on the trade route between India and Tibet, and the Malla kings who ran it until the eighteenth century spent the proceeds on temples, palaces and public water spouts. Then a Gorkha king took the whole valley in 1768, made Kathmandu the capital of a new Nepal, and the kingdom stayed shut to outsiders for most of the next two centuries.

It opened in the 1950s, filled with hippies in the 1970s, lost its monarchy in 2008 and the worst of its heritage in 2015. What remains is not a preserved old town: it is a real, difficult, crowded city that happens to have medieval carving on the building where the vegetables are sold.

Day by day

Day 1 in Kathmandu

A walled garden, and the eyes on the hill at sunset

Most flights land in the middle of the day and the first afternoon is best spent gently, particularly if you have come from sea level. The walled garden at the edge of Thamel is the one place in central Kathmandu where the noise stops.

Then take a taxi west and climb to the stupa on the hill for the last of the light, with the whole valley below and the monkeys getting into everything.

Come down before it is fully dark; the steps are steep and unlit.

  1. 15:30

    Garden of Dreams

    Other

    A neoclassical garden built in the 1920s by a Rana general who had seen too much of Edwardian Europe, restored with Austrian help after decades of neglect. Pavilions named for the six seasons, fountains, a lawn full of people reading, and a cafe. The entry fee is what keeps it calm.

  2. 17:00

    Swayambhunath

    Religious

    The hilltop stupa the guidebooks call the monkey temple, reached by three hundred and sixty five steep steps from the east or a road round the back. Painted eyes look out from the tower in four directions with the Nepali numeral for one where a nose would be. Prayer wheels the whole way round, pilgrims walking clockwise, and the best view of the valley there is. Some of the shrines around it were rebuilt after 2015.

  3. 19:30

    Dinner in Thamel

    Eat

    Momos to start, always, and then dal bhat if you want to eat the way the country does: rice, lentil soup, a vegetable curry and a pickle, refilled until you stop them. Thamel also does very good Tibetan and surprisingly good pizza.

With more time: Freak Street, south of Durbar Square, is where the overland hippies stayed in the 1970s when Kathmandu was the end of the road. It is an ordinary lane of cheap guesthouses now, and worth ten minutes for the history rather than the sights.

Day 2 in Kathmandu

Durbar Square, the living goddess and the old lanes

Walk down from Thamel through the bazaar streets rather than taking a taxi. It is twenty minutes, and the shift from tourist shops to brass sellers, bead sellers and vegetable stalls is the best introduction the city gives.

The square is not one square but three linked open spaces, packed with temples of every shape, several of them raised on stepped plinths people sit and talk on. Buy the ticket at the booth and have it stamped for the rest of your stay.

The goddess appears at her window when she chooses, usually late morning or late afternoon, and there is no schedule. Wait ten minutes in the courtyard and see.

  1. 10:00

    Kumari Palace

    Visit

    The house of the Kumari, a young girl selected from a particular Newar caste and worshipped as a living goddess until she reaches puberty. The courtyard has the finest carved windows and struts in the city and is free to enter; photographing the courtyard is fine, photographing her is absolutely not. She appears at an upper window for a minute or two at a time.

  2. 11:00

    Kasthamandap

    Religious

    The pavilion that gave the city its name: kastha, wood, and mandap, pavilion. It collapsed completely in 2015, and the excavation underneath found the building was far older than anyone had assumed. It has been rebuilt in timber to the old plan and is open again, with the pale new joinery easy to pick out against the salvaged beams.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch off the square

    Eat

    The lanes east of the square have Newari places doing choila, bara and samay baji, which are a world away from the dal bhat in Thamel. Point at what other people are eating.

  4. 14:00

    Maju Deval

    Visit

    The tall temple on a nine-stepped plinth that everyone sat on, took photographs from and used as a meeting point, and which fell in 2015. It has been rebuilt, and the steps are once again the best place in Kathmandu to sit for an hour and watch a square work.

With more time: North of the square the lanes lead through Asan and Indra Chowk, the old market crossroads, where spices, brass and bridal beads are sold in the same block. There is no ticket and no route; just walk, and turn towards whichever noise sounds interesting.

Day 3 in Kathmandu

Patan, and the best museum in Nepal

Across the river to the second of the valley's royal cities, twenty minutes by taxi and a different pace altogether: the same density of temples, half the traffic, and a courtyard workshop tradition in bronze and silver that is still working.

Patan's durbar square came through 2015 better than Kathmandu's, and the museum in the old palace is the single best explanation of Nepali religious art anywhere in the country.

Give it the whole day. The lanes south of the square, towards Mahabuddha, are where the metalworkers are.

  1. 10:00

    Patan Museum

    Culture

    In the restored royal palace on the square, and worth the trip on its own: a small, beautifully lit collection of bronzes and gilt copper, with labels that actually explain what a Bodhisattva is, how the lost wax casting was done and what each hand position means. Two hours, and a courtyard cafe at the back.

  2. 12:30

    Krishna Mandir

    Religious

    A stone temple of 1637 in the Indian shikhara style, three tiers of pillared galleries carved with scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, standing among the pagodas as a deliberate foreign object. It came through the earthquake almost untouched.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch on the square

    Eat

    Rooftop terraces around the square look straight down on the temples and charge for the privilege, which on this occasion is worth paying. The Newari places in the lanes behind are better and cheaper.

  4. 15:00

    Golden Temple

    Religious

    Hiranya Varna Mahavihar, a Buddhist monastery courtyard a few minutes north of the square, gilded from the roof down and completely covered in decoration: repousse metalwork, silver doors, prayer wheels, tortoises walking about the courtyard as temple guardians. Shoes and leather off at the door.

With more time: The Mahabuddha temple, in the lanes ten minutes southeast, is a brick spire faced with terracotta tiles that carry a thousand small Buddha images, and it is tucked so far into a courtyard that most visitors miss it entirely.

Day 4 in Kathmandu

The burning ghats and the Tibetan stupa, on the way to the airport

Both of the valley's great religious sites are on the eastern side, which is the airport side, so the last morning works better than it sounds. Leave the bags at the hotel or in the car.

Pashupatinath first, early, when the river terraces are busy with pilgrims and sadhus and the day's cremations are beginning. It is a Hindu site of the first rank and non-Hindus watch from the far bank, which is the better view in any case.

Then Boudha, fifteen minutes north, for a slow lap and a coffee on a rooftop above the dome.

  1. 08:00

    Pashupatinath Temple

    Religious

    Nepal's holiest Hindu temple, dedicated to Shiva as lord of the animals, on the Bagmati river. Only Hindus may enter the main courtyard; everyone else walks the terraces on the opposite bank, where the cremation ghats are, and where sadhus in ochre and ash will pose for a fee. Sober, public and not a spectacle to photograph freely.

  2. 10:15

    Boudha Stupa

    Other

    One of the largest stupas in the world, at the middle of the Tibetan quarter, ringed by monasteries and by cafes on upper floors that look straight at the eyes on the tower. Join the kora, the clockwise circuit, at any hour and there will be hundreds of people on it. The spire cracked in 2015 and was rebuilt within eighteen months, paid for by the Buddhist community rather than the state.

  3. 13:00

    To Tribhuvan airport

    Travel

    Boudha to the terminal is about twenty minutes when the ring road is behaving. Departure formalities are slow and the domestic terminal is chaotic, so allow three hours for an international flight and two for a mountain one.

With more time: With a later flight, the monasteries around Boudha open their courtyards to visitors, and sitting in on the afternoon chanting at one of the larger ones is free, welcome and completely unlike anything else in the valley.

Before you go

Where to stay

Thamel is the traveller's quarter: trekking shops, bakeries, live music and touts, with the old city twenty minutes away on foot. It is convenient and it is not quiet.

For calm, the streets around Lazimpat and Naxal to the north are ten minutes away by taxi and much easier to sleep in. Staying out at Boudha is a different trip altogether, monastic and slow, and lovely if the old city is not your priority.

Getting around

Taxis are everywhere and almost never use the meter, so agree the fare first or use a ride app, which most residents now do and which settles the price for you. Short hops across the centre cost a few hundred rupees.

Walk the old city. The lanes are the point, they are too narrow for cars anyway, and getting lost between Thamel and Durbar Square is the most enjoyable half hour of a first visit. Download an offline map; street names are largely theoretical.

The air is bad in the dry months, particularly at rush hour on the ring road. Half the city wears a mask on a motorbike and you may want one too.

The 2015 earthquake

The earthquake of April 2015 killed about nine thousand people in Nepal and brought down a good part of what stood in the valley's three durbar squares. Older guidebooks and a lot of photographs online show buildings that were not there for years afterwards.

Most of the big ones are back. Reconstruction has used traditional joinery and old timber where it survived, so the new work is visible if you look at the colour of the wood, and several temples reopened only in the last few years. It is worth knowing what you are looking at, and worth not asking people about it as a conversation starter.

Tickets, money and the clock

Each durbar square charges foreigners an entrance fee, in the region of a thousand rupees, and Patan and Bhaktapur charge separately from Kathmandu. Keep the ticket; at Kathmandu it can be extended to cover several days at the site office.

Nepal runs on cash outside hotels. ATMs are common, dispense in modest amounts and charge a fee per withdrawal. And the country sits on its own time zone, forty five minutes ahead of India, which catches out every arriving flight.

Temple manners

Shoes off before entering a temple building, leather belts and bags left outside some Hindu shrines, and clockwise is the direction to walk around any stupa or shrine. Do not touch offerings, and do not step over anyone's food or feet.

Non-Hindus are not admitted to the main courtyard at Pashupatinath, which is normal and not a slight, and there is plenty to see from the terraces across the river. Cremations happen in the open there; watch from a distance, and put the camera away.

Kathmandu takes a day to stop feeling like an assault and then becomes very hard to leave. Walk more than you taxi, look up at the roof struts, and take the entry tickets as the price of the carving still being there.

From here the roads go west to Pokhara and the Annapurnas, south to the jungle at Chitwan, and up to the rim of the valley for the view the city itself does not have.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three nights enough for Kathmandu?
It covers the old city, Patan and the two great religious sites without rushing. Add a night if you want Bhaktapur, which is the best preserved of the three royal cities and deserves a full day rather than an afternoon.
How bad is the pollution?
In the dry winter months it is genuinely bad, especially on the ring road and at rush hour, and there is a haze that hides the mountains. Monsoon and the weeks after it are much clearer. A mask helps, and so does staying off the main roads.
Can I see the Himalaya from Kathmandu?
Not really. The valley is ringed by hills that block the view, and the haze does the rest. For mountains, go up to Nagarkot on the rim for a dawn view, or take one of the hour-long scenic flights that fly the Everest range and back.
Is it safe to walk around at night?
Yes, with the usual care. Thamel is busy until late, the lanes empty out early, and the real hazards are the traffic, the open drains and the lack of street lighting. Take a torch or use your phone.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it into the planner and move, cut or add anything; the days, times and places all stay editable.