Kathmandu Valley: beyond the City

Arrival in Kathmandu and transfer to the hotel. Today is deliberately simple: get through the airport, drop your bags and start getting your bearings before heading into the hills tomorrow.
There’s no scheduled sightseeing, so the rest of the day is yours. Kathmandu can wait a few hours. Your legs will have less patience tomorrow.

Several bases and meaningful transfers are part of seeing the destination properly.
4 bases · Kathmandu, Chisapani, Nagarkot and Bhaktapur

Several hours on your feet and consecutive active days; good fitness makes the difference. There’s no high altitude, but you’ll need a good basic level of fitness — especially if you’re carrying your own backpack.

Restricted transport or porterage means the stated bag size is an operational requirement.
During the trek, you carry your own backpack. Porter service can be arranged at an additional cost if you’d rather walk lighter.

Kathmandu in & out · Airport transfers are included on arrival and departure. Departure-day timing depends on your flight.
Meet your tour leader and the group at the first hotel.

After breakfast, we drive for around one hour to Sundarijal, where the road ends for us and the walking begins.
The trail climbs alongside the Bagmati River, passing stone steps, forest, waterfalls and a small dam before entering Shivapuri National Park. From here, we continue towards Chisapani, leaving Kathmandu's urban landscape behind for forest and settlements along the trail.
This is the first proper trekking day, and it sets expectations quickly: we're nowhere near extreme altitude, but expect around six hours on foot and sustained uphill sections. Nepal doesn't need 5,000 metres to make your legs work.
Tonight we stay in a simple guesthouse in Chisapani.

Breakfast, backpack on, and back to the trail.
Today we continue through Shivapuri National Park towards Nagarkot, walking through forest and stopping around Jule along the way. The original itinerary highlights rhododendron forest on this section before the route eventually reaches the hilltop town of Nagarkot. It's another substantial walking day — around six hours depending on the group's pace — but the reward changes as we approach Nagarkot: on clear days, the Himalayan range becomes part of the horizon.
We sleep here tonight, ready for the possibility of sunrise over the mountains tomorrow morning. Possibility is the important word: the Himalayas still haven't signed a visibility contract.

We get up before dawn for the chance to watch the sun rise over the Himalayan range. After breakfast, it's time for the final section on foot.
The trek from Nagarkot to Changu Narayan takes around two and a half hours and is mostly downhill. This stretch shifts the focus from mountain scenery to everyday life in the Kathmandu Valley, passing villages, farms and rural landscapes along the way.
The walk ends at Changu Narayan, an ancient pilgrimage site, where we visit the temple complex before continuing by vehicle to Bhaktapur.
After three days on the trail, tonight we're back in a hotel. Your knees may appreciate the change of scenery.

No backpack today.
We spend the day exploring Bhaktapur, the historic Newari city whose old centre is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Kathmandu Valley.
Rather than treating it as a quick stop on the way back to Kathmandu, we have time for its different squares and traditional architecture: Durbar Square, Taumadhi Square, Pottery Square and Dattatreya Square all form part of the historic city described in the itinerary. Later in the afternoon, we drive back to Kathmandu and check into our hotel.

After several days moving together, Kathmandu is yours.
There are no scheduled activities for 2 days. Explore the city at your own pace, choose what interests you, stop when something catches your attention or simply slow things down after the trek.
We deliberately leave those days open rather than filling them because Kathmandu doesn't particularly benefit from being treated as a checklist. By now you've had time to understand the city a little better, which is precisely why we don't decide in advance what you should do with it.

Breakfast and free time depending on your flight schedule.
Your airport transfer is arranged according to your departure time, and that's where the journey ends: three days largely on foot, Bhaktapur, and enough unscripted Kathmandu to make the city feel like part of the trip rather than somewhere we simply flew into.