Copy My Trip: A homestay tour of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

11.06.2024 - 17:15 / lonelyplanet.com

Jun 11, 2024 • 9 min read

Lonely Planet writer Joe Bindloss recently traveled around Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, staying in community-run homestays. Here, he shares some tips and insights for anyone looking to plan a similar trip. 

For most of the travelers who descend into the hill-ringed airport in Kathmandu, Nepal is all about trekking, ideally on the breathless trails snaking around Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) and the Annapurna and Manaslu mountain ranges. But while the mountains are undeniably majestic, above the snowline, there isn’t much more than rocks and ice. Nepal’s cultural heartland lies in the Middle Hills, the green band of highlands dividing the Himalayas from the Terai plains, and it was this area that I wanted to explore in more detail.

The three former city-states that dominate the Kathmandu Valley – Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur – are firmly on the traveler map thanks to their towering temples and palace-crowned medieval squares, but I wanted to see more of the valley, and find out how people lived away from the clicking cameras.

Staying at community-run homestays dotted around the valley was a window onto a different Nepal, away from the trekking trail bustle. In place of mountain passes and trekking chitchat, I got to sit in on community dances, tag along on temple trips, chip in at mealtimes, and get my hands dirty trying traditional crafts – all the time learning more about Nepal through its people. Here’s what I discovered.

Hopscotching around the valley from Kathmandu to Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nagarkot, Namobuddha, Panuati and Kirtipur, I stopped overnight at a series of family-run homestays, arranged through the Community Homestay Network in Kathmandu – a pioneering organization that aims to redistribute income from tourism to rural communities. Control of the project lies in the hands of local women, many of whom achieved financial autonomy for the first time when they joined the homestay network. 

In the ridgetop village of Nagarkot, I was hosted for several nights by Sarada Bastola and her son Anup, staying in a simply decorated but comfortable bedroom in their family shophouse, built to replace the family’s mudbrick farmhouse, which was destroyed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake. It was a bit like staying with friends of friends – we shared a bathroom and homecooked meals (mostly of vegetables grown in the village) were taken together in the family kitchen or out on the rooftop.

I spent one night in more conventional accommodation so I could be close to the hilltop Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery at Namobuddha, stopping over in a slate-roofed, Nepali-style cottage at the charming Namobuddha Resort. My room looked out over a lush tropical garden teeming with barbets, woodpeckers, drongos,