Kathmandu Valley Hindu and Buddhist Temple Tour

The three great religious sites of the valley in a single day, and the point is as much the difference between them as the sites themselves. Pashupatinath comes first, on the Bagmati - the most important temple to Shiva in Nepal and one of the most important in the Hindu world, where cremations take place openly on the ghats as they have for centuries. Non-Hindus cannot enter the main gilded pagoda but see the ashrams, the shrines, the row of stone lingams, the terraces above the river and the forest full of macaques, which is where most of what you have come to see happens. Then Boudhanath, rising in tiers from a vast mandala base on the old trade road to Tibet, one of the largest stupas in the world and the centre of Tibetan Buddhist life in Nepal since 1959, circled all day clockwise by monks, pilgrims and residents. Finally Swayambhunath on its hill above the western valley, older than either, reached by more than three hundred stone steps and claimed by Hindus and Buddhists alike - which is the whole story of religion in this valley in a single building. A guide matters more here than anywhere else in Nepal, and the day is built around one who will explain what is happening rather than narrate it.