Kathmandu

Settlement in the Kathmandu Valley is ancient, and the Licchavi kings who ruled from about the 5th century left stone inscriptions, water spouts and temples that still stand. The city itself takes its name from Kasthamandap, a wooden pavilion beside Durbar Square said to have been built from the timber of a single tree; it collapsed in the 2015 earthquake and has since been rebuilt. Its position mattered: Kathmandu sat on the trade route between the Gangetic plain and Tibet, and the customs and carrying trade paid for its temples.

Under the Malla dynasty the valley split into three rival kingdoms, Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, whose kings spent the 17th and 18th centuries competing in architecture. Most of what fills Kathmandu's Durbar Square — the palace of Hanuman Dhoka, the Taleju temple, the house of the Kumari — dates from that contest. In 1768 Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha took the city during the Indra Jatra festival, and Kathmandu became the capital of a unified Nepal.

From 1846 the Rana family ruled as hereditary prime ministers, keeping the kings as figureheads and the country largely closed; they built white neo-classical palaces around the old city. The Ranas fell in 1951, the country opened, and the population grew quickly as migrants arrived from the hills. Kathmandu was the stage for the people's movements of 1990 and 2006, the 2001 palace massacre and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008. The earthquake of April 2015 killed thousands in the valley and brought down temples and towers, including the Dharahara; rebuilding has reshaped much of the historic centre.

Kathmandu is the historic city of the Newars, and their culture still sets its shape: courtyard houses around a shrine, carved wooden windows, guilds of metal-casters and woodcarvers, and the guthi trusts that maintain temples and fund festivals. Nepal Bhasa is spoken alongside Nepali, and Newar ritual is woven into the street plan, with stone spouts, chaitya shrines and processional routes running through the oldest quarters.

Hinduism and Buddhism are practised side by side and often by the same families. Deities are shared, the Kumari is worshipped by both communities, and the calendar is crowded enough that it is unusual to spend a week in the city without meeting a procession. Indra Jatra fills Durbar Square with masked dancers, Gai Jatra turns mourning into satire, and Dashain and Tihar empty the offices for days.

Since 1951 the city has also become the meeting point for the whole country. Tamang, Sherpa, Tharu, Madhesi and Tibetan communities all have neighbourhoods and restaurants here; Boudha is the centre of Tibetan exile life in Nepal, with its monasteries and thangka schools. A young urban culture has grown alongside the old one, with Nepali rock and hip hop, film, bookshops, literary festivals and a large art scene, much of it working in the space between traditional craft and contemporary practice. Manners remain formal: elders are greeted first, feet are kept away from people and shrines, and the left hand is not used to give or receive.

About 850,000 people live in Kathmandu proper, and the valley as a whole holds several million across the merged cities of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. Growth has been fast and largely unplanned: rice fields on the valley floor have become concrete housing within a generation, and the city now runs up the surrounding slopes. Water supply, waste and the Bagmati river's pollution are long-running problems, as is the winter haze produced by traffic, brick kilns and dust.

The economy is built on government and its agencies, banking, NGOs and development organisations, tourism and the trekking trade, plus carpet and handicraft workshops and a growing technology and outsourcing sector. Remittances from Nepalis working in the Gulf, Malaysia, India and elsewhere support many households and much of the building work. Office hours start early, and the working week runs Sunday to Friday.

Days begin before dawn with temple visits, bell ringing and milk tea; by mid-morning traffic is solid on the ring road and the main arteries. Middle-class families live in new blocks in areas such as Baneshwor, Chabahil and the ring-road suburbs, while the old city's courtyard houses hold long-settled Newar families and a great many small shops. Political demonstrations and strikes are part of the city's routine, and the protests of September 2025, which damaged government buildings and forced the prime minister to resign, were felt across the city.

Momos are the city's universal food: dumplings of minced buffalo, chicken or vegetables, steamed or fried and dipped in a spiced tomato and sesame achar, eaten at office lunch breaks and late at night. The everyday meal is daal bhaat — rice, lentil soup, seasonal vegetable curry, greens and pickle, with meat on some days — served on a steel plate and refilled without charge.

The valley's own cuisine is Newar, and it is eaten in small dining rooms in the old city and at family feasts. It is built around baji, beaten rice, with choila, buffalo meat grilled over straw and dressed with mustard oil and chilli; wo, fried lentil patties; sanya khuna, a fish aspic; bhutan and other spiced offal; and roasted black soybeans. Kwati, a soup of nine sprouted beans, is eaten at the festival of Janai Purnima, and yomari, rice-flour dumplings filled with molasses and sesame, belong to midwinter. Aila, a home-distilled spirit, and thwon, rice beer, accompany them.

Tibetan food is easy to find, especially around Boudha, where thukpa noodle soup, thenthuk and butter tea are standard, and Indian, Chinese and Korean restaurants are common. Bakeries and cafés multiplied with tourism, and Nepali coffee from the hills has a following. Street food runs to sel roti, a sweet rice-flour ring fried in oil, chatpate and panipuri from carts, and the sweet shops of Asan sell milk-based sweets, especially at festival time. Juju dhau, the sweet clay-pot yoghurt of Bhaktapur, is sold in the city too.