Sociologist and journalist based in Kathmandu. MA Sociology, BA Journalism and Mass Communication. Eight years teaching sociology at Campion College Nepal. Editorial Director at The Goreto.
Trekking
Nepal made solo trekking illegal in 2025. The Poon Hill trail was already one of the safest routes in the Annapurna region. That is not why the law changed. The ban came after a series of incidents: solo trekkers going missing in remote areas, search-and-rescue operations stretching into weeks, families
Places
The valley narrows so completely between Hiunchuli and Machhapuchhre that you stop seeing sky. Then the walls pull back, and you are inside. That threshold at the MBC narrows is a cirque the Gurung have held sacred for generations, a mountain bowl 40km north of Pokhara that most visitors look
Places
The boats at Begnas come out before the tourists do. By the time most visitors arrive from Lakeside, 45 minutes by local bus, or half that by taxi, the fishing boats are already back at shore, the morning catch already on its way to the markets in Pokhara. What you
Places
You hear the falls before you see them. Walking through the cave passages, the sound builds, low at first, then a roar filling the limestone, and then you reach the metal viewing platform and look up through a gap in the rock. The falls come through the stone above you,
Everest
She was still alive. That was what Cathy O'Dowd understood the moment she saw the figure in the purple jacket. She had assumed it was a body. Then the figure moved.
Places
The waterfall has three names. Each one arrived by a different route. The oldest is Patale Chhango. In Nepali, patale means the underworld. Patala, the realm beneath the earth in Hindu cosmology, where the waters go when they leave the living world. Chhango means waterfall. The name is not poetic.
Places
Nichidatsu Fujii was sixty years old when the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. He was a Buddhist monk of the Nipponzan Myohoji order. He had spent decades walking, and chanting as he walked: Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, the title of the Lotus Sutra. What he decided after August 1945
Places
The thermal that lifts you off Sarangkot is generated by Phewa Lake. The Annapurna wall does the rest. A tandem paragliding flight in Pokhara costs approximately NPR 8,500 (around $65 USD), lasts 30 to 45 minutes, and launches from Sarangkot ridge at 1,600m before landing at Lakeside by
Places
The jeep leaves Lakeside at 4:30am. There is no good reason to be awake at this hour unless you believe the sky will do something worth seeing. Some mornings it does. The Annapurna range catches the first light at a frequency that photographs cannot hold, and then the clouds
travel-planning
About two hours into the journey, somewhere between Kurintar and Mugling, the Trishuli River appears below the road. It is turquoise in November, running fast between steep walls of green. The bus slows for a hairpin. Nobody on board is looking at the road. There are three ways to make
Trekking
It went pitch dark. The powder cloud blocked all light. Colin Haley, a climber on the trail near Langtang Valley on 25 April 2015, felt the wind blast lift him off the ground and throw him through the air. When he landed, the steel fence posts around him had been
travel-planning
In July, Devi's Falls runs at full volume. The water fills the gorge completely, loud enough to feel through the railing. No guidebook recommends July. There are almost no foreign tourists at the falls. The hills above Pokhara are the kind of green that only happens after 500mm