---
type: Video
title: "$250 Super Secluded Hotel Nepal🇳🇵"
description: Harry flies to Pokhara on the route where a plane crashed a month earlier and checks into the Fish Tail Lodge — a lake island reached by hand-pulled ferry, once a princess's property, whose profits fund healthcare for Nepalese children.
tags: [nepal, pokhara, hotels, phewa-lake, flying, kayaking, royal-history]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhpNYthiYCk
video_id: fhpNYthiYCk
upload_date: 2023-04-01
duration: 4314
---

# $250 Super Secluded Hotel Nepal🇳🇵

Harry and his dad fly from [Kathmandu](/places/kathmandu.md) to
[Pokhara](/places/pokhara.md) — 25 minutes against an eight-hour coach, on the
route where an aircraft went down about a month before, which he is openly
nervous about and jokes about for most of the first quarter — and check into
the Fish Tail Lodge, which turns out to sit on a peninsula in Phewa Lake
reached by a hand-pulled ferry.

The hotel is the video, and the parts that stick aren't the room. Its circular
buildings copy the traditional round houses of the Nepali hills, which were
built round because a curved wall survives an earthquake better and which
nobody builds any more because the skill and the time have gone. The property
belonged to a Nepalese princess before it was a hotel. The gardener has worked
the grounds for over forty years and the receptionist has been there
thirty-three. And the profits, after staff and costs, fund free healthcare for
underprivileged Nepalese children — which Harry says he has never encountered
in a hotel before.

## Key moments

- [00:37] To the airport with his dad and Abdesh, a Kathmandu driver.
- [01:18] The flight: same route as a crash roughly a month earlier. He says
  he's had two or three hundred flights and this is the first he's been nervous
  for.
- [01:49] Abdesh asks for nothing again — he has refused payment on several
  rides already, and Harry pays him regardless.
- [02:26] Car horns are illegal in Kathmandu, which lasts about ten seconds
  before one goes off.
- [05:09] The most useful thing anyone says all video: Nepal divides into three
  strips — the Himalaya, the hills, and the plains — and the people of each look
  different, with plains Nepalis often taken for Indian. Abdesh is from the
  south and says it costs him with Nepali women.
- [06:43] It's a 72-seater rather than the small aircraft he expected.
- [08:49] Two hours' delay, and momos in the lounge.
- [11:34] Cotton wool handed out for the ears.
- [14:28] Pokhara's new airport, which he's told is Chinese-built, and very
  modern.
- [15:36] A taxi to the lodge for 800.
- [18:27] First impressions of Pokhara against Kathmandu: smooth roads, wider
  streets, less pollution, more space. But no nature yet, which is what he came
  for.
- [19:29] The lodge, and the discovery that reaching it means crossing water.
- [20:50] A ferry pulled across by hand on a rope, also used for supplies.
- [23:02] It's raining — the first rain in seven months, and the staff are
  delighted.
- [30:22] A five-course Nepali dinner.
- [31:19] Buckwheat bread, which he compares to a sweet loaf, and a spicy meaty
  soup he says would make sense in the mountains.
- [33:30] Goat with mushroom and beaten rice, Newari style. He is still not sold
  on beaten rice.
- [37:39] The thali, which he rates the best of the three he has eaten in the
  country.
- [42:46] Rice pudding with cashews and orange.
- [43:56] The circular buildings, which mirror traditional Nepali hill houses.
- [44:27] Kayaking out onto the lake.
- [47:57] The temple island normally costs 1,000 rupees to reach by boat. The
  kayak also cost 1,000, and he suspects nobody expected him to paddle that far.
- [48:30] The Hindu temple on the island, and an arrival by kayak he describes
  as the unofficial route.
- [51:28] The island holds the temple and a small market and nothing else — no
  food, no drink.
- [53:40] A cold pool nobody else will get into.
- [56:31] Sauna and steam room, in freestanding units he says he'd buy for a
  house.
- [60:57] Moved overnight into the room King Charles stayed in in 1980. Jimmy
  Carter and Sanjeeva Reddy have used it too.
- [63:05] The gardener has kept the grounds for over forty years.
- [63:35] The receptionist has worked there thirty-three, through the pandemic
  when it emptied.
- [64:13] The property belonged to Princess Jayanti, described as a cousin of
  King Birendra, whose reign ended in the royal massacre.
- [65:00] Where the money goes: after staff and expenses, the profits fund free
  healthcare for underprivileged Nepalese children.
- [65:55] The guests used to be European and American; since the pandemic they
  are mostly Indian.
- [66:28] Why the buildings are round — a curved wall holds up better in an
  earthquake. They stopped being built because the walling takes longer and
  because the people who could do it are gone.
- [68:09] Most guests are trekkers, staying either side of the circuit.
- [70:58] A parting gift, wrapped in several boxes.

## Extracted pages

- Place: [Pokhara](/places/pokhara.md)
- Country: [Nepal](/countries/nepal.md)
- Tips: [Insist on paying](/tips/insist-on-paying.md)