Walking around Panauti

During our visit to Nepal in April 2019 we were keen to meet and spend time with local people. So when we came across the Community Homestay initiative in Panauti – a small rural town a two-hour bus ride east of Kathmandu – this sounded like an ideal opportunity to stay with a family. Our Community Homestay hosts were Biju and her two daughters Aayusha and Nirusha, who made us most welcome.

In the late afternoon Aayusha showed us some of the village monuments – Panauti is a historic town with some beautiful temples. She then took us up a nearby hill to look at the Buddhist temple and we decided to follow this path the following day.

So the following morning we set off on the path running north through the nearby hills towards Dhulikel. We retraced our steps up the Buddhist temple and enjoyed the views over the town and the valley where the fields were green with the potato crop.

The track wended its way through the hamlets scattered across the hillsides. It was the Nepali new year holiday and children regularly came up to us and asked for chocolate! Rain was forecast for the afternoon, and the clouds started to build up over the nearby mountains.

We claimed higher onto the ridge and the fields started to give way to woodlands.

We eventually made it to the Shree Sharada Devi Temple, the highest point of the path, where a local man put flower petals in our hair and took us to a viewpoint from where we could see Dhulikel, Banepa, Panauti and Namobuddha.

We then retraced our steps back to Panauti just before the rain. In the late afternoon Nirusha took us to a local café where they had found a guitar, and asked me to sing a few songs. When we returned home, Nirusha dressed Isabelle in a Nepali sari. We ended the day with a fabulous Newari dinner with 9 different dishes and a glass of home-made rice wine.