Dhulikhel and Namo Buddha — 2 Days

Frequent buses and microbuses run from Kathmandu to Dhulikhel, where the Araniko and B.P. highways meet on the eastern rim of the valley.

The bus drops you on the highway, and the town you came for is behind it. Walk west and south of the bus park and it changes completely: brick houses with carved windows, a sequence of small squares, and temples in constant use, among them Narayansthan, Bhagwati and Harisiddhi. It is smaller and less curated than Bhaktapur, and correspondingly quieter. Half an hour covers it; two hours is better.

Sleep here rather than in Kathmandu, and book a north-facing room: the whole point of the town is the view. If you want the town's sunrise, the stone stairway south-east of town, usually quoted at around a thousand steps, climbs to the Kali shrine in 45 minutes to an hour, and the panorama runs from Langtang to Gaurishankar.

Today is the walk: about 18 km and six hours, easy grades, no permit. It runs south out of Dhulikhel through terraced farmland and Tamang villages, and it is one-way. It ends in Panauti, not back where you started, which is why the bus home leaves from there.

The high point of the walk is Namo Buddha, one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Nepal. Legend places here the Jataka story of Prince Mahasattva, who gave his body to a starving tigress and her cubs, and a stupa marks the spot. Above it, the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery is a large, active community of several hundred monks. The afternoon prayers are at 3pm, and the morning ones at 5:30am are too early for a walker from Dhulikhel.

The trail comes down off the ridge into Panauti, at the confluence of the Punyamati and Roshi. If you have the energy, see the thirteenth-century Indreshwar Mahadev, which stands at the confluence itself, before the bus. It closes at 6pm.

For a quieter third day, the path from Namo Buddha can instead continue down into the Balthali valley, which has ridge lodges and deliberately nothing to see.