Kathmandu & Central Nepal

The Kathmandu Valley was once a lake, according to legend drained by the bodhisattva Manjushri with a stroke of his sword, and geologists agree that a lake did fill it in prehistoric times. The Licchavi kings ruled here from about the 5th to the 9th centuries, leaving inscriptions and the temple of Changu Narayan. Under the Malla dynasty the valley split into three rival kingdoms — Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur — whose kings competed in building palaces and temples, and much of what stands on the Durbar Squares dates from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1768–69 Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha conquered all three, and Kathmandu became the capital of the unified kingdom.

The plains to the south have a separate past. Janakpur is identified with the capital of the ancient kingdom of Videha, ruled in the Ramayana by King Janaka, father of Sita, and the region belongs to Mithila, a cultural area that stretches into Indian Bihar. Chitwan's forests were long left to malaria and to the Tharu people, and were used by the Rana rulers as a royal hunting reserve; after malaria was eradicated in the 1950s and 1960s, settlers from the hills cleared much of the valley.

In modern times Kathmandu has been the stage for every national upheaval, from the 1990 and 2006 people's movements to the 2015 earthquake, which destroyed temples in all three Durbar Squares and flattened Langtang village under an avalanche. The Madhesh has its own politics: Madhesi movements in 2007 and 2015 demanded fair representation for the plains, and the 2015 protests blocked the Birgunj border crossing for months.

Two very different cultures meet in this region. The Kathmandu Valley is the homeland of the Newars, whose language, Nepal Bhasa, whose Buddhist and Hindu priestly castes and whose guilds of woodcarvers, metal-casters and potters built the valley's cities. Newar life is organised around the guthi, a community trust that maintains temples and runs festivals, and the calendar is crowded: Indra Jatra in Kathmandu, when the Kumari is pulled through the streets in a chariot; Bisket Jatra, the solar new year festival in Bhaktapur; and the long chariot procession of Rato Machhindranath in Patan. Mask dances, dhimay drumming and bhajan singing at dawn are all still part of neighbourhood life.

In the hills around the valley, Tamang villages dominate, with Buddhist gompas, prayer flags and thangka painting, while Langtang's people share language and customs with Tibet.

The Madhesh belongs to the Gangetic plain. Maithili is spoken around Janakpur and Bhojpuri around Birgunj, and Hindu festivals follow the Indian pattern, including Chhath — offerings to the setting and rising sun on riverbanks. Maithil women paint Mithila art, bright figures and patterns traditionally drawn on house walls, now also sold on paper and canvas. In Chitwan, the Tharu keep their stick dance and painted mud-walled houses.

The Kathmandu Valley holds several million people in Kathmandu, Lalitpur (Patan), Bhaktapur and the suburbs that now join them. Kathmandu itself has about 850,000, and the valley's growth has swallowed rice fields in a generation. Government, banking, NGOs, tourism, trekking agencies and the carpet and handicraft trades provide the work; mornings start early with temple visits and milk tea, traffic builds into long jams by nine, and dust and brick-kiln smoke hang over the valley in winter. Rebuilding after 2015 and the pressure on water supply are constant subjects.

Outside the valley, Bharatpur in Chitwan has grown into one of the country's larger cities, with about 370,000 people, on the back of the East–West Highway, farming and tourism at Sauraha. Hetauda is the capital of Bagmati Province. In the hills, the Tamang villages of Sindhupalchok, Rasuwa and Nuwakot depend on farming and remittances.

The Madhesh is flat, densely farmed and closely linked with India. Birgunj, with about 270,000 people, is Nepal's main customs gateway, where lorries queue for the crossing to Raxaul; Janakpur, the provincial capital, is a pilgrimage town of ponds and temples. Rice, sugarcane and seasonal migration to India and the Gulf shape family life.

The valley is the home of Newar cooking, which goes far beyond momos. A Newar meal is built around beaten rice (baji), with buffalo choila spiced and grilled over straw, wo (lentil patties) and roasted black soybeans. Kwati is a soup of nine sprouted beans, and yomari, rice-flour dumplings filled with molasses and sesame, belong to the midwinter Yomari Punhi. Bhaktapur is famous for juju dhau, "king of curds", a sweet yoghurt set in clay pots.

In the hills and on the Langtang trail, food turns Tibetan, with thukpa, tsampa, butter tea and a local cheese. Chitwan's Tharu kitchen offers ghonghi, river snails in a spiced broth, dhikri, steamed rice-flour dumplings, and fish from the Rapti and Narayani.

The Madhesh eats as the plains of Bihar do: rice and lentils, roti, curry cooked in mustard oil, litti chokha — baked wheat balls stuffed with roasted gram flour, with a mash of aubergine, tomato and potato — and milk sweets from Janakpur's shops. Mangoes and litchis are the summer fruits of the plains.

Kathmandu's Durbar Square at Hanuman Dhoka, the Swayambhunath stupa on its hill, the great white dome of Boudhanath and the riverside cremation ghats of Pashupatinath fill the first days. Patan, across the Bagmati, has the most harmonious of the three royal squares, the Golden Temple and the Patan Museum. Bhaktapur, to the east, has four squares of its own, the Nyatapola and the potters' quarter, and on a ridge beyond it stands Changu Narayan, one of the valley's oldest temples.

On the eastern rim, Nagarkot, at about 2,100 metres, is the classic sunrise viewpoint over the Himalaya, with Dhulikhel and the Buddhist site of Namobuddha nearby. North of the valley, the Langtang trek climbs from Syabrubesi through forest and the rebuilt Langtang village to Kyanjin Gompa, with side trips to Kyanjin Ri and, on a separate route, the holy lakes of Gosaikunda. The Shivapuri hills above Kathmandu give shorter walks.

In the south, Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is explored from Sauraha by jeep, on foot with guides and in dugout canoes on the Rapti, with rhinos, deer and birdlife commonly seen and tigers rarely. Parsa National Park adjoins it to the east.

Janakpur's Janaki Mandir and its sacred ponds draw pilgrims from India and Nepal, especially at Vivaha Panchami, which celebrates the marriage of Rama and Sita. Birgunj is mainly a border city, but it is the start of the road to Chitwan and Kathmandu for travellers arriving overland from India.