$250 Super Secluded Hotel Nepal🇳🇵

Harry and his dad fly from Kathmandu to Pokhara — 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
• Country: Nepal
• Tips: Insist on paying