Thamel district

The city quarter of Thamel is the true tourist center of Katmandu. On meager 2 square kilometers you will not find as much different offers and businesses as nowhere else in the world: from hotels, tourist agencies, bookstores, souvenir shops, record shops with music and movies, self-serving stores, bakeries, restaurants with Nepal, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, American, Mexican and European dishes; money exchanges, massage parlors, hairdressers, specialized stores with their famous Nepali knives, couriers, and all of everything a human being would ever need, and of course all of what you wouldn’t need.

Just a few meters of space allow you to gear-up for a fully-fledged mountain hike or the descend to the top of Everest, in the summer you can even go gliding or rafting on their steep and wild Himalayan rivers. In this wild and colorful bunch you also find stores with fabric, kitchen tools, dentists, drug stores, butcher shops and real but also not so real jewelry stores. On these small market places, in all of this chaos, they even sell vegetables and flowers. And to make their offers even better, they even sell fruit and bicycles, on their already fully crowded and narrow streets. In the sheer mass of daily visitors you can also find traveling salesmen, specialized with musical instruments, tiger grease and hashish, just that the latter are more discrete about their products than the others. And to make the chaotic mass of people complete, many motorbikes, car and rickshaw drivers are also a part of the never-ending stream of crowds.

Although the sheer mass of people is immense, the offered goods and the fact that the roads are being constantly rebuild, electricians are also eagerly repairing their electrical wiring and the garbage men, when they are not on strike, busily take the garbage piles out of the city, the mass of people does not feel hectic at all. The sense of co-existing, improvisation and the deep thought of fondness to each other and the friendly visitors, mixed with a blend of every Babylonian language possible, every form of religion, race, individual wishes and group goals, make this place even more special, because you can step away from the chaos at every given point and just enjoy the view and impressions on a balcony and drink a coffee or have a meal along with all of it.

In the middle of Thamel, just enough far away from the market place and the noise, lies the Thorong Peak Guest House hotel, which has been in business for many years and has served and still serves as the Slovene start point of every embark to the mountains, and at the same time offers itself as a safe harbor for rest after the journeys are over. The employees also know some Slovene words, which makes the place feel like home even more. They also have very good and cheap cuisine, if there are no mix-ups or complications with the order, which can happen. But even this is part of the general positive feeling, which lasts from the beginning of the trip to Nepal and that you dearly need for your adventures that lie in front. You cannot start any journey better, and even end it as good, as in Thamel.