Kathmandu Honeymoon Package

You are met on arrival at Tribhuvan and driven to a restored Newar house in the old city or a garden hotel away from the traffic - we will have gone through the options with you beforehand, because in Kathmandu the difference between hotels is much larger than the star ratings suggest. Flowers and a cake are in the room. Nothing is scheduled for the first day: most people arrive tired and the valley is better on the second morning than the first. An evening drink on the terrace or a short walk through Thamel is enough. Your guide meets you to plan the next two days around what you actually want.

Patan on a quiet morning, which is when it is at its best - the Durbar Square, Krishna Mandir carved entirely from stone, the palace courtyards behind, and an unhurried hour in the Patan Museum, which is the best in Nepal and makes everything else in the valley legible. Lunch in a courtyard restaurant in the lanes behind the square, where the metalworkers and thangka painters still work. In the late afternoon we go up to Swayambhunath, climbing the stone stairway to the stupa on its hill as the light goes and the valley spreads out below with the city lights coming on. Dinner somewhere worth the trip.

Bhaktapur in the early evening, after the day trips from Kathmandu have gone and the squares belong to the town again - the Fifty-Five Window Palace, the Golden Gate, Nyatapola standing five storeys over Taumadhi Square, and the back lanes where the pottery and the weaving still happen. It is the least museum-like of the three cities and the one that rewards wandering. Boudhanath is timed for dusk, which is the hour it should be seen: the butter lamps go on, the kora fills with people walking the circuit, and the chanting starts from several monasteries at once. Everything today is arranged around light and crowds rather than around a schedule.

The morning is free - breakfast without a plan, the Garden of Dreams, a last hour in Thamel, or a workshop visit if you want one. The airport transfer is arranged for whenever your flight requires it, with a day room at the hotel if the departure is late. A night at Nagarkot on the valley rim for the Himalayan sunrise adds very easily at either end of this itinerary and is the most common extension people take.