Bandipur

The drive between Kathmandu and Pokhara takes seven to nine hours and is, for most of its length, a hot road along a river with lorries on it. Bandipur is the reason to break it, and it turns the worst day of a Nepal itinerary into one of the better ones.

It is a Newar hill town on a ridge at 1,030 metres, about eight kilometres and thirty minutes above the highway. The main street is paved, pedestrianised, lined with shuttered three-storey trading houses, and has a view of the Himalaya at the end of it.

Why it looks like this

Bandipur was a prosperous trading town on the route between India and Tibet, settled by Newar merchants from Bhaktapur in the eighteenth century. The money built the houses: carved windows, plastered facades, slate roofs.

Then the Prithvi Highway was built along the valley floor in the 1960s and 70s and the trade went with it. The town emptied and stopped changing, which is precisely why the architecture survived while richer places rebuilt in concrete. What you are walking through is a town that was preserved by being left behind.

Restoration since the 1990s has brought several of the buildings back as small hotels, and the main street has been kept car-free.

What to do

Walk the bazaar in the evening, when the shutters are open and the town is out on the street. It takes twenty minutes end to end and you will do it several times.

Thani Mai is the temple on the hill above the town, about thirty to forty minutes up steps and path. It is the sunrise walk: the Annapurnas, Manaslu, Ganesh Himal and Langtang across the north, and often a sea of cloud sitting in the Marsyangdi valley below you while you stand above it. This is the best thing here and it is free.

Siddha Gufa is one of the largest caves in Nepal (several hundred metres deep, with a chamber high enough to be genuinely impressive), about an hour and a half’s walk from the town through forest. Take a torch and expect bats. It is not a developed show cave, and the descent inside is rough underfoot.

Ramkot, a Magar village about two hours’ walk west along the ridge, is a straightforward day walk through farmland with round thatched houses at the end of it.

Where to stay and eat

Several of the old trading houses on and around the main street have been restored as hotels, with rooms opening onto the street or the valley. They are more characterful and more expensive than the standard guesthouses on the edge of town, and worth it for one night.

Food is Nepali, with more variety than a town this size normally has because of the traffic passing through.

Do not treat this as a lunch stop. The town at midday is a pretty street; the town at sunset and dawn is the reason to come, and both require staying.

Practical things

• Getting off the bus. Tourist buses on the Kathmandu to Pokhara route will drop you at Dumre if you ask when you board. From there, shared jeeps go up the hill continuously during the day and cost very little.
• Bandipur is 8km of steep switchbacks above the highway. In heavy monsoon rain the road up occasionally closes.
• Cash. There is an ATM but it is not always working. Bring what you need from Kathmandu or Pokhara.
• It gets cold after dark from November onwards and the old buildings hold that cold.