Extended Kathmandu Valley Tour

You will be met in the arrivals hall at Tribhuvan International Airport and driven to your hotel, usually 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic. Nepal issues visas on arrival: fill in the form at the electronic kiosks before the payment desk, and bring a passport photograph and cash in a major currency to speed it up.

Once you have settled in, your guide will come to the hotel for a full briefing: the day by day plan, the gear check, what the weather is doing, and any questions you have been saving up. This is also when we collect passport details for permits if we do not already have them.

Kathmandu sits at about 1,400 m so there is no altitude concern tonight. If you arrive early enough, the walk from Thamel down to the Durbar Square area is a good first hour in the city.

Altitude: 1,350 m  |  Overnight: 3-5 Stars  |  Meals: Breakfast

Explore the historic Kathmandu Durbar Square, visit the sacred Pashupatinath Temple, and marvel at the Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple) and Bouddhanath Stupa. Overnight at a hotel in Kathmandu.

Kathmandu Durbar Square is the old royal complex of the Malla kings and later the Shah dynasty, a dense cluster of pagoda temples, courtyards and palace wings built between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The Kumari Ghar here houses Nepal's living goddess, a young girl selected from the Newar Shakya community who appears at her carved window most afternoons. Much of the square was damaged in the 2015 earthquake and the restoration work, done with traditional joinery and reused timber, is itself worth watching.

Pashupatinath is the most important Hindu temple in Nepal and one of the great Shiva shrines of the subcontinent, a UNESCO site on the banks of the Bagmati. Non-Hindus cannot enter the main temple but the far bank gives an open view across the ghats, where open-air cremations take place through the day. It is confronting the first time and it is also completely ordinary here, a public part of life rather than something hidden. Sadhus in ochre sit along the terraces, and the evening aarti draws a crowd.

Swayambhunath sits on a hill west of the city, reached by 365 stone steps through a forest full of rhesus macaques, which is where the nickname Monkey Temple comes from. The stupa is one of the oldest religious sites in the valley, with the Buddha's eyes painted on all four sides of the harmika and a spire of thirteen gilded rings. The terrace gives the best single view over Kathmandu, and it is at its best in the early morning when the kora is busy with local worshippers.

Boudhanath is one of the largest stupas in the world and the centre of Tibetan Buddhist life in Nepal, particularly since 1959 when refugees settled around it. The white dome is 36 m across, ringed by prayer wheels, and surrounded by more than fifty gompas belonging to different lineages. Walk the kora clockwise at dusk with the local crowd and the monks coming out of evening puja: it is the single most atmospheric hour in Kathmandu.

Altitude: 1,350 m  |  Overnight: 3-5 Stars  |  Meals: Breakfast

Start your day with a breathtaking mountain flight over the Himalayas, including views of Mount Everest. In the afternoon, visit the ancient city of Patan, and the traditional villages of Khokana and Bungamati. Overnight at a hotel in Kathmandu.

Patan, or Lalitpur, has the finest concentration of Newar architecture in Nepal. The Durbar Square holds the Krishna Mandir, carved from stone in 1637 in a distinctly north Indian shikhara style, the Golden Temple with its gilded facade and resident tortoises, and the Patan Museum, which is widely considered the best museum in the country and is housed in a restored palace wing. The surrounding lanes are still full of working metalworkers and thangka painters.

Khokana and Bungamati are traditional Newar farming villages south of Patan that still press mustard oil the old way and carve for the Rato Machhindranath temple. They are about twenty minutes from Patan and they show valley life outside the restored monument zones.

The mountain flight is an hour-long fixed-wing flight along the Himalayan chain, leaving Kathmandu early before the cloud builds. Every passenger gets a window seat and each is called forward to the cockpit in turn. The route runs east past Langtang, Gauri Shankar and Cho Oyu to Everest, close enough to pick out the Khumbu icefall.

Altitude: 1,350 m  |  Overnight: 3-5 Stars  |  Meals: Breakfast

Visit the artisan town of Thimi, explore the medieval city of Bhaktapur, and visit the Changu Narayan Temple. Continue to Nagarkot for stunning sunset views over the Himalayas. Overnight at a hotel in Nagarkot.

Bhaktapur is the best preserved of the three medieval cities in the valley and the one where the old town still functions as a town rather than a monument. Brick lanes open into Durbar Square, Taumadhi Square with the five-tiered Nyatapola temple, and Dattatreya Square with the Peacock Window. Pottery Square is genuinely a working pottery, not a display. Give it a full half day rather than an hour, and try the juju dhau, the local king curd served in a clay bowl.

Changu Narayan is the oldest temple in the valley, with a stone inscription dated to 464 CE, and the surrounding stonework includes some of the finest early Licchavi sculpture in Nepal. It sits on a ridge above Bhaktapur and gets a fraction of the visitors of the Durbar Squares, which is part of its appeal.

Nagarkot is a ridge village at about 2,175 m on the eastern rim of the valley, an hour and a half from Kathmandu, and it is where people go for the Himalayan sunrise. On a clear morning the view runs from Dhaulagiri in the west through Ganesh Himal, Langtang and Gauri Shankar to Everest on the far eastern horizon. The clearest months are October to March; in summer you may see nothing at all.

Thimi is the valley's pottery and mask-making town, between Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, where papier mache dance masks are still made for the festival season and clay is worked in open courtyards.

Altitude: 2,175 m  |  Overnight: Hotel  |  Meals: Breakfast

Tour the sacred Dakshinkali Temple, the scenic Chobhar Gorge, the pilgrimage site of Pharping, and the historic town of Kirtipur. Overnight at a hotel in Kathmandu.

Kirtipur is a hill town on the southwest edge of the valley, the last Newar settlement to fall to the Gorkhali conquest in 1767 and still visibly proud of it. The Bagh Bhairab temple carries weapons captured in that siege. It is a working town of narrow brick lanes with very little tourism.

Pharping is a major Vajrayana pilgrimage site, with the Asura cave where Padmasambhava is said to have attained realisation, a self-arisen Tara image emerging from the rock face, and a cluster of active monasteries. The Dakshinkali temple below it is one of the valley's important Kali shrines and is busiest on Saturdays and Tuesdays.

Chobhar gorge is where, in the founding legend of the valley, Manjushri cut the hills open with his sword to drain the lake that filled Kathmandu. Geologically the valley really was a lake, which is why its soil is so fertile. The Adinath Lokeshwar temple above the gorge is studded with metal pots and pans left as offerings by newly married couples.

Altitude: 1,350 m  |  Overnight: 3-5 Stars  |  Meals: Breakfast

Visit the reclining Vishnu statue at Budhanilkantha and hike in the serene Shivapuri National Park. Overnight at a hotel in Kathmandu.

Budhanilkantha holds a five-metre stone Vishnu reclining on a bed of serpents in a water tank, carved from a single block of black basalt in the seventh century and floated into the valley. It is one of the most striking single objects in Nepal and remains an active shrine.

Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park rises straight out of the northern edge of the city and gives the closest real hill walking to Kathmandu. Forest trails through oak and rhododendron lead up towards Shivapuri peak at 2,732 m, past the Nagi Gompa nunnery, with valley views on one side and the Himalaya on the other on a clear day.

Altitude: 2,732 m  |  Overnight: 3-5 Stars  |  Meals: Breakfast

Transfer to the airport about three hours before your international flight. If you have a late departure we will hold a day room or arrange a final few hours in the city rather than leave you sitting in the terminal.

If you would rather not go home yet, this is the easy point to extend: a few days in Pokhara, a wildlife stay in Chitwan or Bardiya, a short Bhutan add-on, or a rest week somewhere quiet. Tell us before you travel and we will build it in at cost rather than as a late upgrade.

Altitude: 1,350 m  |  Meals: Breakfast