I recently travelled to east Nepal to Ilam, the country’s tea growing district. Ilam shares its border with India and Darjeeling,  another albeit, less beautiful setting for tea. I am not sure if you can buy Illam tea in the West, but it certainly is delicious.  The photograph here, a little hazy with the pre-monsoon […]

In Nepal there is such thing as a ‘wedding season’  where there is an abundance of weddings, at least more than usual. Here is one that I was invited too, and as you can see it’s a fun affair.  Most ceremonies (particularly for Hindu marriages) are a three day event.  The first day, the bride […]

Up here on holiday in the Himalaya some of us went on a half day hike to see the Annapurna range of the Himalaya. Here’s a shot I’d taken. Incidentally, the first paperback novel ever published was ‘The Lost Horizon’ a fictional novel about a British team who crash landed somewhere up there and discovered […]

Here’s our group on our Autumn 2014 holiday to Nepal. Twenty four people from all walks of life and all ages, all thrown together on the adventure.  We’ve been on rickshaws and elephants, jeeps, dug-out canoes, bicycles and light aircraft around Everest on this trip thus far.  And we’ve all gelled together as one big […]

Dinner the other evening was in the Pagoda room overlooking the city. Here, are some of the group in mid discussion getting to know each other. Travellers have flown in from California, as well as Australia and Sweden this year. The dining room, with Tibetan paintwork dating back from the centuries created a wonderful atmosphere […]

Out here on our current holiday to Nepal, some of our group are getting very excited. We’re all enjoying it here!  The local rickshaw drivers have been working hard to get us around in the warm sunshine. There’s 24 of us in this group, of all ages and backgrounds and the country is bringing us […]

Nepal’s version of Christmas is just coming to an end now, the year here is 2071 and it’s the festival of Dashain.  Like Christmas it’s a great time of feasting and the coming together of families, it lasts over a week.  There are quite a lot of animal sacrifices over the period, as well as […]

When it comes to healthy food perhaps Nepalese cuisine has some of the answers. The national dish ‘Dhal Bhat’ can be quite healthy.  The main ingredients are Dhal; a lentil curry and Bhat; meaning rice. It’s the lentils that provide the good news. There are a wide variety in Nepal and like many pulses these […]

Vaishya Dev is known in tourist books as the God of toothaches here in Nepal and is represented in Kathmandu. Here it is in an alleyway, in essence a large collection of metal washes nailed to each other at the base of what was once a sacred tree. Hindu mythology, its culture, combined with Buddhism […]

With just two places remaining for our holiday to Nepal this October, we’re celebrating by giving £50 to anyone from our 301 Facebook followers who recommends the trip to someone who books.  We’d like to think that you’ll use the money to enjoy a meal for two at any local Nepalese restaurant; perhaps some delicious ‘Nepalese momos’ to start, ‘Royal Dhal […]