Kathmandu

The currency is the Nepalese rupee (NPR, Rs), pegged to the Indian rupee at 1.60 NPR = 1 INR, which in 2026 works out to about 140 NPR per dollar. It's a cash economy, and your pocket stays heavy the whole time: a tea costs Rs 20–50, a neighborhood dal bhat Rs 200–400, ten momos Rs 150–350, a plate at a Thamel tourist restaurant Rs 600–1,200, a large beer Rs 350–600, a simple guesthouse Rs 1,500–3,500 a night, and a mid-range hotel with breakfast Rs 4,000–9,000. Cards work at hotels, agencies and supermarkets, and almost never at a stall, taxi or temple. ATMs usually cap withdrawals at Rs 35,000 per transaction and charge about Rs 500 in local fees, on top of whatever your bank charges. In Thamel, exchange bureaus pay better rates than the airport and give a receipt, needed to convert rupees back on the way out. Tourist restaurants add 13% VAT and a 10% service charge to the bill; when that service charge is printed, no tip is needed. Where it isn't, rounding up is standard. QR payments (eSewa, Khalti, FonePay) dominate local commerce, but require a Nepali bank account and are rarely available to visitors passing through.

Six kilometers that turn into an hour at peak time

Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) is the valley's only international airport and sits about 6 km from Thamel, 20 minutes away off-peak and up to 1 hour in the late afternoon. Visas on arrival are issued at kiosks in the arrivals hall and paid only in dollars, so bring the bills and a photo from home. The prepaid taxi counter charges about Rs 900 to Thamel, with a surcharge of about Rs 100 after 9pm and 25% more if the car has air-conditioning. Outside the parking lot, the apps cost less: there's no Uber in Nepal, but Pathao, InDrive and Yango charge from Rs 100–200 by motorbike and Rs 300–600 by car within the center. Street taxis have meters that almost nobody turns on, so agree on the price before getting in.

Microbuses, Sajha buses and apps

Kathmandu has no metro or urban rail. Public transit is made up of microbuses and private vans, where the conductor shouts the destination out the window, plus electric Safa Tempos on some routes and the blue buses of the public cooperative Sajha Yatayat, which run on the Ring Road, on the Budhanilkantha–Lagankhel–Godawari line and on the Nagdhunga–airport link. Since April 14, 2026 there have also been night lines run with the city government. Fares range from Rs 20 to Rs 50 within the valley, paid in cash to the conductor, and there's no single ticket or integrated card. To find your way, use the name of the stop, like Ratna Park, Kalanki, Koteshwor and Lagankhel, which works better than an address. Inside the old core, walk, because the alleys are too narrow for cars; outside it, sidewalks are scarce and traffic drives on the left. Renting a motorbike costs Rs 1,200–1,800 a day, with a mandatory helmet. Since July 27, 2026, the Nagdhunga–Sisnekhola tunnel, the country's first road tunnel, about 2.7 km long, has removed much of the bottleneck on the western exit toward Pokhara.

Kathmandu's number-one risk is traffic, not crime: left-hand driving, motorbikes riding against the flow, sidewalks taken over, and crossings with no traffic light, in a valley where most accident victims are pedestrians and motorcyclists. Violent crime against foreigners is rare. What does exist is pickpocketing in crowds (Asan, Thamel at night, packed buses, festivals) and predictable scams: a “broken” meter, an improvised guide who charges afterward, a sadhu who offers a blessing and charges for the photo, an unregistered trekking agency that asks for full payment upfront. The monkeys at Swayambhunath and Pashupatinath steal food and open bags, and bite if you react; walk with empty hands. The city sits on an active seismic zone (1934, 2015), and it's worth locating, on the first night, the exit of the building where you're sleeping. In winter, air is the most concrete health issue: in January particulate levels regularly reach unhealthy ranges, and a filtered mask makes a real difference for anyone with asthma. General strikes (bandh) can still stop transport overnight without warning, and since the September 2025 uprising there are periodic political demonstrations in Maitighar and Baneshwor; they're localized and announced, and it's enough to route around them. Women traveling alone describe the city as calm by day; at night, prefer an app to an empty alley, especially outside the Thamel-Durbar Marg axis.

Shoes off; leather stays off too

Take off your shoes at the door of temples, inner courtyards and private homes. At Pashupatinath and several Hindu shrines, leather items (belt, bag, sandals) also have to stay outside.

The jutho rule

Food or drink that has touched your mouth, your plate or your spoon becomes impure for others. Don't offer your bottle or taste from someone else's plate: pour into a glass without touching the rim, and don't put back on the serving dish what's already gone onto your plate.

Right hand for everything

Hand over money, take change, eat and offer with your right hand. The left has a hygienic function and takes no part at the table or in offerings; for extra respect, hand things over with both hands.

Always clockwise

Circle stupas, temples and rows of prayer wheels keeping the monument on your right. It applies at Boudha, at Swayambhu and at any chorten in the middle of the sidewalk, and spin the wheels clockwise too.

Feet low; head always high

Don't point the sole of your foot at a person, an altar or an offering, don't step over someone sitting on the ground, and don't sit on a temple step with your legs stretched inward. The head is the most respected part of the body: don't pat anyone's head, not even a child's.

Cremation is not a spectacle to watch

At the Arya Ghat pyres, in Pashupatinath, the grieving family is a few meters away. Watch from the opposite bank of the Bagmati, without aiming a lens at faces, and decline the “blessing” from sadhus who ask for payment after the photo: agree beforehand or don't photograph.

Four distant points in one day

Scheduling four far-apart sights on the same day without counting traffic. 8 km within the valley take anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes depending on the time, and rush hour runs from 9am to 11am and from 4:30pm to 7:30pm.

No cash dollars for the visa

Arriving without cash dollars for the visa on arrival (US$30 to 125, depending on days). The card machines in the hall fail constantly, and the ATM fills up right when the flights land.

Thinking the Durbar squares are free plazas

Thinking the Durbar squares are public, free plazas. The foreigner's ticket is charged at the street entrance and runs between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,800 per square, valid for one day, and in Kathmandu and Bhaktapur you can extend the pass for the length of your visa, free, by bringing a photo to the square's office the same day.

Tap water and salad

Drinking tap water, ice from a stall, or salad washed in untreated water. Use bottled, filtered or boiled water, and bring a reusable bottle, since there are refill stations at most Thamel guesthouses.

The trekking guide who approaches you on the street

Paying a “guide” who approaches you on the street upfront for trekking or a tour, or accepting a tika and red thread without asking the price. Book through a registered agency and confirm whether the trekking permit (TIMS and the park fee) is included.

नमस्ते (namaste)

Hello and goodbye, with palms together at chest height; for more respect, “namaskar”

धन्यवाद (dhanyabaad)

Thank you: used much less than in English; a nod usually does

कति हो? (kati ho?)

How much does it cost? The question that opens any purchase outside a store with a price tag

मीठो छ (mitho chha)

It's delicious: said to the cook or the lady of the house after the first bite

पुग्यो (pugyo)

Enough, that's plenty: the phrase that stops the fourth round of dal bhat

फेरि भेटौंला (pheri bhetaunla)

See you again: the common farewell, since “goodbye” isn't really said

The closed basin and its water outlet

The valley is an oval basin of about 665 km² at an altitude of 1,300–1,400 m, ringed by four ranges that top 2,000 m (Shivapuri to the north, Phulchoki to the south, Nagarjun to the west and Chandragiri to the southwest), with a single natural outlet for water, the Chobhar gorge, through which the Bagmati drains south. That closed basin explains two things about daily life: the dry winter traps pollution under a thermal inversion layer, and the lakebed sediment amplifies seismic waves, which is why the 1934 and 2015 earthquakes were so destructive here and less so on the slopes.

The urban grid has three layers

The urban fabric has three overlapping layers: the medieval Newar core, a maze of brick alleys organized around internal courtyards (bahal and chowk) facing squares with stone wells and pagoda temples; the Rana and post-1951 belt, with straight avenues like New Road and Durbar Marg; and the post-1990 periphery, made of four-to-six-story concrete houses, built over former rice paddies and linked by roads with no sidewalk.

A ring turns into an internal axis

The 27 km Ring Road circles the whole and today is an internal axis; it is not an edge. The city has grown flush against Lalitpur to the south, with no visible break except the Bagmati river.

The material culture is Newar

The city's material culture is Newar before it is Nepali. The Newar community, which speaks Nepal Bhasa and is Hindu and Buddhist at once with no apparent contradiction, produced the carved wooden windows, the tiered pagoda roofs, the lost-wax bronze casting of Patan and thangka painting, techniques still practiced commercially today, above all in the workshops of Patan and Boudha. The calendar is run by hereditary community associations, the guthi, which maintain temples and fund festivals; the Kumari, a girl chosen as a living goddess, is the most visible expression of this system. Almost every active temple has access rules worth knowing: many Hindu shrines admit only Hindus, while Buddhist courtyards and stupas are open to all.

Hip-hop, folk rock, film and festivals

The city produces popular culture at its own pace. Nepali-language hip-hop, born in Kathmandu in the 2000s, was so central that rapper Balendra Shah became mayor in 2022 and prime minister in 2026; folk-rock bands like Nepathya fill stadiums; and the live music scene concentrates in the bars of Thamel and Jhamsikhel. Nepali commercial cinema reinvented itself starting with “Loot” (2012), shot on the city's streets, and the festival circuit is solid: Jazzmandu has run since 2002 in October or November, the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival since 2000 in December, and the Nepal Literature Festival brings together authors writing in Nepali and English. Diaspora English-language literature (Samrat Upadhyay, Manjushree Thapa) describes exactly the middle class that occupies these spaces.

Cricket has overtaken soccer

In sport, cricket has overtaken soccer in audience since the Nepali national team entered international tournaments: the Mulpani and Tribhuvan University stadiums fill on match day and the city follows along on big screens in bars. Soccer holds on at Dasharath Stadium, in Tripureshwor, renovated after 2015. Nightlife ends early by Asian standards: bars in Thamel and Jhamsikhel generally close between midnight and 1am, and the same goes for restaurants, which tend to serve their last order around 10pm.

“Kathmandu” by Thomas Bell (2014)

Reportage and history in one volume: the author lived fifteen years in the city and links the unplanned urban sprawl to the collapse of the guthi system, the Maoist war, and the international aid economy. It's the single best book on why the city looks the way it does.

“Arresting God in Kathmandu” by Samrat Upadhyay (2001)

Middle-class short stories from the 1990s, set inside apartments rather than the squares: arranged marriage, tight money, desire and temple in the same block. It shows the city the monuments hide.

“Loot” by Nischal Basnet (2012)

The film that reinvented Nepali commercial cinema: a heist told in Kathmandu slang, shot on real locations like Kalanki, the Ring Road and the bars of Thamel. It spawned a 2017 sequel and a whole generation of directors.