Trek Guide
Bandipur is a car-free Newar hill town between Kathmandu and Pokhara. What to see, how to get up from Dumre, and whether it is worth a night.
By Sunita Pandey · Sep 19, 2026
Bandipur is a Newar trading town on a ridge above the Kathmandu—Pokhara highway, 143 km from Kathmandu and 80 km short of Pokhara, and it is the best reason to break that drive. Its main bazaar is stone-paved and closed to traffic, its old brick houses still…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Because it is the one place on that road where the Nepal of a century ago is still standing in one piece. Newar merchants from Bhaktapur settled here in the 19th century, when the ridge sat on a trade route between India and Tibet, and they built the tall…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
The bazaar, the view, the cave, and a walk into the hills, in roughly that order of effort. Almost everything is on foot, and the table puts each one against the time it really takes. The view is the thing most visitors remember. From Tundikhel, the old…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
It is Nepal's largest known cave, and it feels far less visited than the town above it. Siddha Gufa is 437 metres deep and 50 metres high, full of stalactites, stalagmites and bats, with a small shrine to Shiva inside. It sits about 300 metres above the…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Take any Kathmandu—Pokhara bus to Dumre, then a local bus or taxi up the hill, about half an hour. Dumre sits on the Prithvi Highway where the Bandipur road climbs off it. From Kathmandu that is the longer half of the Pokhara journey; from Pokhara, it is the…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
One night, in the bazaar. The town has around ninety hotels and restaurants, from restored Newar houses to simple guesthouses, and a handful of community homestays in and around the bazaar, with room for about 5,000 guests in all, so outside the Dashain and…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
October and November for the clearest mountains, February to April for warm days and flowers. In the monsoon, June to September, the town is green and quiet but the Himalaya usually stays behind cloud, and the view is half of why you came. Winter mornings can…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Bus, flight, car or local bus, door to door. What to do when you get to the lake. Where a night in Bandipur fits into a first trip. The festival behind Phulpati and the week the whole country goes home. Sources: The Kathmandu Post, "Bandipur, a hill station…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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