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.
Kathmandu
Kathmandu has always had tea houses. What it didn't have until recently was a cafe culture built around craft coffee, working hours, and a generation that has been to Melbourne and brought something back.
Culture
Nepal does not observe a quiet month. From Dashain in October to Bisket Jatra in April, the festival calendar is one of the most loaded in Asia. A month-by-month guide to what is actually happening and where.
Food & Drink
Momo arrived in Kathmandu with Tibetan refugees in the 1950s and never left. It is now the city's defining food, sold on every corner and made differently in every neighbourhood.
Trekking
Between February and April, Nepal's hillsides turn red and pink across 30 species of rhododendron. The altitude range is 2,000 to 4,000 metres and the blooms move upward as the season progresses.
Travel
Janakpur faces south toward the Indian border, not north toward Kathmandu. A palace-temple built in 1911, a Mithila culture that crosses the border freely, and a city the capital has spent decades overlooking.
Lifestyle
Kathmandu has quietly built a craft beer scene. Six independent breweries, seasonal releases, and a taproom culture that barely existed five years ago - here is where it stands now.
Culture
Bisket Jatra pulls Bhaktapur apart and puts it back together every Nepali New Year. Two chariots, two teams, a tug of war through the old city streets, and one very specific pole.
Travel
Sagarmatha National Park is not just the trail to Everest Base Camp. The buffer zones and quieter valleys above the main route are where the park actually lives.
Food & Drink
Nepali cooking is not obscure. Most of the staples are lentils, rice, ginger, garlic, and spices you already own. Seven recipes - dal bhat to sel roti - with the context behind what you're making.
Kathmandu
Thamel is where most visitors to Kathmandu arrive and from where most of them are glad to leave. What the neighbourhood actually is underneath the gear shops, the rooftop bars, and the noise.
Food & Drink
Newari food is not fusion. It is a closed system - feast-bound, fermented, unchanged by five centuries of everything Nepal's valley has absorbed from outside.
Kathmandu
Pashupatinath charges non-Hindus a thousand rupees to stand on one bank and watch the cremations from behind a fence. What happens on the other side of that arrangement is more complicated.