Nepal: Medieval Squares and Majestic Mountains

Eleven nights in a loop from Kathmandu, guided, 900 kilometres across Nepal on a Royal Enfield Himalayan 450.

Kathmandu opens it, where three medieval city-states left behind three separate squares of temples and palaces within a few miles of each other, all of them world heritage listed and several rebuilt since the 2015 earthquake.

Bandipur follows, a hilltop trading town on the old India to Tibet route with the Himalaya laid out behind it, then Pokhara on its lake under the Annapurna range, which is the closest most people get to an eight-thousand-metre peak without walking. Tansen comes next, then Lumbini on the plains, the birthplace of the Buddha and a pilgrimage site for two and a half thousand years, and Chitwan National Park, where the jungle holds rhino, tiger and elephant, though nothing can be promised on any given day. Nuwakot closes the loop with its eighteenth-century palace.

Accommodation in single or double rooms, the airport transfers, the Royal Enfield Himalayan 450, all the meals, two professional guides, first aid, a chase vehicle with a driver, mechanic, tools and spares, all the fees and permits and the drinking water are all included; the Nepal visa, flights, medical insurance, gratuities, alcohol and any damage to the motorcycle are not, and a five-hundred-dollar bike deposit is required. The full day-by-day itinerary sits behind an enquiry form on the operator’s site. October to April is the season, since the monsoon between June and September makes the hill roads unpredictable. Twelve days is enough to cross Nepal from the mountains to the plains and back, and the range the route covers is unusual for the distance: medieval cities, an eight-thousand-metre skyline, a Buddhist pilgrimage site and lowland jungle inside nine hundred kilometres.