Panauti and Namobuddha

Ninety minutes from Kathmandu there is a medieval Newar town where almost no tourists stop, and three hours’ walk uphill from it there is one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the Himalaya. You can do both in two days, staying in a family home at one end and a monastery guesthouse at the other, and the walk between them goes through farmland rather than up anything.

This is the trip to take if you have four days in Nepal and do not want to spend two of them in a vehicle.

Panauti

Panauti sits at the confluence of two rivers, the Roshi and the Punyamata, and, according to local belief, a third that runs underground. That junction is why the town is here and why it has been a pilgrimage site for a thousand years.

The Indreshwar Mahadev temple is the reason to come. The current structure dates from the fifteenth century and parts of the original are thought to be from 1294, which makes it one of the oldest surviving pagoda temples in Nepal. The roof struts are carved with figures that repay standing still and looking up for a while. Entry to the town is free; there is a small museum charge.

Triveni Ghat, where the rivers meet, is where cremations happen and where the Makar Mela festival is held every twelve years. It is a working religious site, not a viewpoint.

The rest of the town is the point: brick lanes, carved windows, courtyards with a shrine in the middle and washing strung across them, and an almost complete absence of souvenir shops. It takes about two hours to walk properly.

Staying in a homestay

The homestay programme in Panauti is run by the women of the households, and about twenty families take guests. You get a private room in a family home, not a hotel room, and worth being clear-eyed about: expect a simple bed, a shared or basic bathroom, intermittent hot water, and the family’s own food.

What you get in exchange is the thing you cannot book at a hotel. Meals are eaten with the household. There is usually a cooking class in the evening, yomari, the sweet steamed dumpling made at Yomari Punhi in December, and chatamari, the rice crêpe. In the planting and harvest seasons you can go out into the rice with them, which is hard work and reliably the story people tell afterwards.

A portion of what you pay goes into a shared community fund rather than to the individual household.

Explain your expectations before you book, not after you arrive. The gap between “simple” and what a first-time visitor pictures is where these stays go wrong. If you need reliable hot water or a private bathroom, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is available.

The walk to Namobuddha

Three hours uphill through villages and terraced fields, or roughly five to six hours as the full loop with Dhulikhel. There is no altitude problem (Panauti is at 1,340m, Namobuddha at 1,750m, Dhulikhel at 1,550m) and no technical ground. It is a walk, in trainers, past people working.

You can also drive to Namobuddha in about forty minutes. Do not, if you can walk it. The farmland between the two is most of what the trip is.

Namobuddha

The site is built on the story of a prince who gave his own body to feed a starving tigress and her cubs. The Namo Buddha of the name is what his companions said on finding what he had done. The stupa marks the spot.

Above it is Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery, a large working monastery with a resident community of monks. Visitors can walk the grounds, and puja is usually audible from outside even when the hall is closed. There is guesthouse accommodation attached, which is the reason to stay the night: the day visitors leave by late afternoon and the ridge goes very quiet.

Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered. Walk clockwise round the stupa. Do not photograph monks at prayer without asking, and accept no as an answer.

What it costs and what to bring

Nothing here has an entry fee. The costs are the bus, the homestay and the monastery guesthouse, all of which are modest by Nepali standards and very modest by European ones.

Bring cash: there is an ATM in Banepa and effectively nothing usable in Panauti itself. Bring a torch; the lanes are not lit and power cuts happen. Bring something warm for the evening between October and March, because 1,750m at night in winter is colder than the daytime suggests.

Why this instead of Nagarkot

Panauti and Namobuddha do not need the weather to be kind. The walk between them holds up in cloud as easily as in sun, and if the mountains show themselves along the ridge, that is a gift rather than the plan.