Kathmandu

Geologists say the Kathmandu Valley was a lake, drained long ago, and local legend credits the bodhisattva Manjushri with cutting a gorge to let the water out. What the archaeology shows is a fertile valley with early settlements and, by the first millennium CE, a kingdom under the Licchavi dynasty, whose inscriptions and stone carvings survive around the older temples. Pashupatinath and the stupas at Swayambhu and Boudha have roots in this early period. By the 13th century the Malla dynasty ruled the valley and, after a family split in the 15th century, it divided into three rival city-kingdoms: Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur.

The Mallas competed in building. Each king added temples, palace courts and pillars in his own square, and the competition produced most of the monuments that visitors see today, from the Krishna Mandir at Patan, built in 1637, to the multi-storeyed temples of Kathmandu's Durbar Square. The valley also sat on the main trade road between India and Tibet, and the taxes and skills that trade brought funded the art. In 1768 Prithvi Narayan Shah, king of Gorkha, took the valley after a long siege, and made Kathmandu the capital of a unified Nepal. The country avoided colonisation but lost territory after a war with the East India Company, which ended in the treaty of 1816.

From 1846 to 1951 the Rana family held power as hereditary prime ministers, building neoclassical palaces and keeping the country closed to most outsiders. The 1950s brought a return of royal power and the first trekkers, and Everest was climbed in 1953. A civil war ended in 2006, the monarchy was abolished in 2008, and Nepal became a federal republic. Kathmandu is now a capital of several million people, a growing city that has swallowed the villages around it. A visitor sees the layers in one walk: a Licchavi carving, a Malla temple, a Rana palace and a modern shopping mall.

The Newars are the valley's original urban people, with their own language, Newar, and a culture that blends Hindu and Buddhist practice in a way found nowhere else. A Newar family may worship both Shiva and the Buddha, and a festival may be observed in a Buddhist monastery courtyard and a Hindu temple on the same day. Newar society was organised into castes and guilds, and the craftsmen among them, brick-makers, woodcarvers, metalworkers, painters and stone carvers, built the temples and squares of the valley. A Newar artist, Araniko, travelled to Tibet and then China in the 13th century, where he designed a stupa in Beijing that still stands.

The typical Newar house is built of narrow brick, with carved wooden windows that project over the street and a tiled roof; the streets they line are tight and shaded, with courtyards behind. Guthi, a system of community trusts, has long funded and run rituals, festivals and upkeep, and many temples and rest houses (sattal) depend on it. Newari craft is still alive in workshops in Patan, where metalworkers cast statues by the lost-wax method and painters produce thangka scrolls, and a visitor who walks into a lane behind Patan Durbar Square can watch a piece being made.

Language and food carry the same identity. Newar cooking has a separate vocabulary of dishes, feasts and festival foods, from beaten rice with spiced meat to rice-flour crepes and sweet yogurt from Bhaktapur. Festivals are the clearest window: Indra Jatra in Kathmandu, in which the Kumari, the living goddess, is drawn through the streets in a chariot, and Bisket Jatra in Bhaktapur, with its tug of war between neighbourhoods, are both Newar in origin. To understand the valley, go to a Newar festival, a Newar restaurant or a Newar workshop, and listen to the language spoken there.

Two building types dominate the valley: the pagoda-style temple and the stupa. The pagoda temple rises in stacked tiers of tiled roofs on struts carved with gods and animals, often on a stepped brick plinth. The stupa is a solid white dome topped by a square tower with painted eyes and a spire of gilded rings. The Kathmandu name itself comes from the Kasthamandap, the wooden pavilion by the old trade road, whose name means the wooden shelter. It was among the monuments that collapsed in 2015, and rebuilding has been under way since.

The valley sits on an active seismic zone and has been hit before. The earthquake of 1934 destroyed many buildings, and the rebuilding gave the city some of its Rana-era neoclassical facades. The earthquake of 25 April 2015, with a magnitude of 7.8, killed thousands of people across Nepal, brought down the Dharahara tower in the city centre, and damaged temples in all three squares. Boudhanath's spire cracked and was repaired within a few years; Patan's Krishna Mandir survived with less damage; Kathmandu's Durbar Square lost several temples, some of which have been rebuilt with traditional methods and new steel supports, while others still stand propped or empty. Repair is slow, expensive and the subject of arguments about which materials and methods to use.

For a visitor this means scaffolding and fenced areas alongside restored monuments, and a lively debate about how much to rebuild and how. The best way to read the valley's architecture is to compare the three squares: Kathmandu for scale and the palace, Patan for proportion and stone, Bhaktapur for brick and quiet. Look up at the struts carved with deities, down at the worn steps where locals sit, and around at the houses with carved windows. And expect the view to change: some buildings you saw on a page online may be different when you arrive.

Religion in Kathmandu is visible on every corner: small shrines set into walls, marigold garlands, butter lamps, incense and the sound of bells. Most people in the valley are Hindu or Buddhist, and many are both. Pashupatinath, on the Bagmati river, is the most important Shiva temple in Nepal and draws pilgrims from India and beyond. The main temple is closed to non-Hindus, but the riverside ghats where the dead are cremated can be seen from the far bank. Swayambhunath, on a hill west of the city, is a stupa that Newar Buddhists and Tibetan pilgrims both use.

Boudhanath is the centre of Tibetan Buddhism in Nepal. After 1959, when many Tibetans fled the Chinese takeover, they settled around the great stupa, built monasteries and opened shops and guesthouses. Every morning and evening pilgrims walk clockwise around the stupa, spinning prayer wheels and murmuring mantras, and on festivals like Losar, the Tibetan New Year in February or March, the plaza fills with lamps and prayer flags. The stupa is around 36 metres high, one of the largest of its type in the world, and its painted eyes look in the four directions.

The festival calendar follows the lunar cycle and its dates move each year. Holi in March brings coloured powder and water, Maha Shivaratri in February or March fills Pashupatinath with pilgrims and sadhus, Buddha Jayanti in May draws crowds to the stupas, Indra Jatra in September brings the Kumari's chariot through Durbar Square, and Dashain and Tihar in autumn are the biggest holidays of the year, when families travel and shops close. A visitor who lands in the middle of one will find crowds and closures, and also the best chance to see the city at its most alive. Check the year's dates before you book, and give festival days extra time.

The everyday meal in Nepal is dal bhat: rice with lentil soup, a vegetable curry, a pickle and often a meat dish, served on a large plate with refills. It is the food that carries people through a day of work or a trek, and many Nepalis eat it twice a day. Around it sits a wider table shaped by the country's geography. The Newars of the valley eat rice-flour crepes, beaten rice with spiced buffalo meat, fermented and pickled sides and a sweet yogurt called juju dhau that is made in clay pots in Bhaktapur. The hill communities bring millet, corn and buckwheat, while the Tibetan and Sherpa communities add noodle soups and butter tea.

Momo, the dumpling, has a mixed history. Most food historians place its origin in Tibet or in the Newar trading community, and it spread through Nepal and across the Himalaya. In Kathmandu it is a citywide snack, steamed or fried, with a tomato and sesame dip. Tea is the other daily habit: milky, sweet and spiced with cardamom, sold from tea stalls and drunk at every visit. Drinks include a millet beer called tongba, drunk from a wooden mug refilled with hot water, and stronger rice spirits, aila and raksi, served in ceremonies and small bars.

Food follows the festival year too. A feast at Dashain features goat meat and rice, at Tihar there are sweets and garlands, and Newar festivals have their own dishes, offered to the gods and then eaten by the family. For a visitor the practical rule is to eat by the hour: tea and sel roti in the morning, dal bhat at lunch, momo in the afternoon, and a longer meal at night. Choose busy places with hot food, drink bottled or filtered water, and let a local friend or a food walk teach you the vocabulary. The cost of a full meal is small, and the range is wide.

Nepal stayed closed to most foreigners until the 1950s. When it opened, Kathmandu became a stop on the overland trail, and in the 1960s a small street near Durbar Square, known as Freak Street, became famous with young travellers who came for cheap rooms and the temples. The 1953 ascent of Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay turned the country into a destination for climbers, and in the following decades trekking routes to Annapurna, Langtang and Everest grew into a national industry. Thamel, north of the old city, grew from a few guesthouses into a district of gear shops, agencies and cafés built around the trek.

Today Kathmandu is the gateway for most visitors, and its main work is logistics. People arrive at Tribhuvan Airport, spend a few days in the valley, and set out for the mountains by bus or by small plane. The valley itself is a rewarding destination, but it is easy to treat it as a waiting room. A short valley stay gives you the context for what you see on the trail: the Tibetan prayer flags at Boudha, the Hindu ceremonies at Pashupatinath, the Newar temples in the squares, and the food that fuels the trek. It also gives your body time to adjust and your paperwork time to be checked.

The modern city has its own pressures: traffic, dust, an overstretched water supply and a fast-growing population. The air is at its worst in the dry months, and many long-term residents wear masks. Visitors should plan for it: carry a mask, pick clearer mornings for long walks, and give yourself rest between sights. For those who trek, use a registered agency, check the current permit rules, buy insurance that covers evacuation, and leave a buffer day at the end for weather. The reward of all that planning is a place where the mountains, the temples and the food are all within a few hours of each other.