Kathmandu,
the old city

Ason Bazaar & Thamel Backstreets

Photo — Ason Bazaar

Ason has been the commercial heart of Kathmandu for over a thousand years. Long before roads, it was the intersection of trade routes connecting Tibet, India, and the Newar kingdoms. Today it remains one of the city's most dense, unfiltered crossroads — a spice market, a fruit bazaar, a shrine junction, and a neighbourhood all at once.

At the centre of the intersection stands the Annapurna Temple, a small but deeply revered shrine dedicated to the goddess of abundance. Every morning, traders begin their day with an offering here before opening their shops. The ritual is quiet, habitual, and deeply photogenic — incense smoke against the angular wooden architecture, marigold petals on worn stone.

The market trades in a staggering range of goods: dried fish, Himalayan spices, grains, religious paraphernalia, and medicinal herbs. The layers of commerce here — wholesale traders, small retailers, street vendors, porters moving sacks — create a visual density that rewards patience and a wide eye.

A short walk north, Thamel's main streets are tourist infrastructure — gear shops, guesthouses, souvenir stalls. But step one block back in any direction and a different city emerges. The backstreets retain a working neighbourhood underneath the tourism overlay — vegetable vendors, motorcycle repair shops, chiya stalls where porters rest between loads, and residential houses where families have lived for generations regardless of who moves in next door.

The contrast is genuinely interesting as a documentary subject: the same lane can hold a hand-painted trekking permit sign and a freshly garlanded deity niche. Early morning is when this is most visible — before the cafés open, the streets belong to supply chains, small temples receiving their first offerings, and men with dokos (bamboo baskets) moving goods through routes that predate the tourist economy entirely.

Indrachowk

Photo — Indrachowk

Indrachowk is named for Indra, the Vedic god of rain and sky, and it is here that Kathmandu's most spectacular festival — Indra Jatra — reaches its emotional peak each autumn. The square is presided over by the Akash Bhairav Temple, whose deity is revealed only during the festival period: a massive blue-faced mask displayed in the upper window, drawing thousands of devotees.

Throughout the year, Indrachowk operates as a major textile and bead market. Rows of shops selling glass beads, pote (the glass bead necklaces worn by married Newar women), wool, and cloth spill onto the street. The trade here is largely conducted among women — buying, comparing, bargaining — and it gives the square a very different energy from the male-dominated commercial spaces nearby.

The architecture at Indrachowk is dense and layered — temples, shrines, and old Newar merchant houses with their carved wooden façades all competing for space in a compact square that has changed little in its bones since the medieval period.

Makhan Tole

Photo — Makhan Tole

Makhan Tole is the wide street that runs between Ason and Basantapur Durbar Square — the ancient royal processional route, once lined with the city's most important merchants. Makhan means butter in Newari, and the street was historically known for its dairy traders. Today it remains one of the most atmospheric streets in the old city, with an unbroken row of narrow Newar shop fronts, each with its own goods and its own worn wooden threshold.

Unlike the tight alleys nearby, Makhan Tole is wide enough for light to flood in. The buildings on either side — many of them three or four storeys of traditional brick, carved windows, and age-blackened wood — frame the sky in a way that is almost cinematic. Pilgrims, vendors, cyclists, and tourists all share the same narrow band of pavement.

Nardevi & Ikha Narayan Area

Photo — Nardevi lanes

A short walk off the main bazaar axis, the lanes around Nardevi and Ikha Narayan belong to a quieter, less-photographed Kathmandu. These are residential neighbourhoods where traditional Newar life continues largely undisturbed. Elderly women sit in doorways sorting lentils. Children come home from school in bright uniforms. Local men gather at the water spouts — the ancient dhunge dhara (stone water conduits) that have served the neighbourhood for centuries.

The Nardevi Temple, dedicated to a fierce tantric form of the goddess Kali, is one of the old city's more powerful religious spaces — less visited, more atmospheric. The streets immediately around it have some of the finest examples of traditional Newar domestic architecture still inhabited and lived-in rather than restored for tourism.

Basantapur Durbar Square & Hanuman Dhoka

Photo — Basantapur Durbar Square

Basantapur Durbar Square is the old royal palace complex of the Malla kings, who ruled Kathmandu from the 12th to the 18th century. The square contains over fifty temples and monuments, including the towering Taleju Temple, accessible to non-Hindus only during the Dashain festival. The entire complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though it is simultaneously and emphatically a living neighbourhood — not a cordoned museum.

The Hanuman Dhoka — the old royal palace, named for the guardian deity Hanuman at its gate — contains a series of inner courtyards that most visitors never reach. The Nasal Chowk, the main ceremonial courtyard, still hosts important state rituals. The Mul Chowk, deeper inside, is one of the finest examples of Malla-era palatial architecture in Nepal: carved struts, a gilded gate, the inner sanctum of Taleju. The 2015 earthquake damaged several structures significantly; the rebuilding and restoration work happening alongside daily life is itself a profound documentary subject.

The square's public areas are continuously alive — sadhus, vendors, students, devotees, pigeons, and tourists all occupying the same space with entirely different intentions.

Kumari Ghar

Photo — Kumari Ghar courtyard

On the southern edge of Durbar Square stands the Kumari Ghar — the residence of the Royal Kumari, a young prepubescent girl selected through an ancient Newar tradition to embody the goddess Taleju in living form. She is worshipped as a living deity by both Hindus and Buddhists, venerated by the President of Nepal each year during Indra Jatra, and consulted by heads of state. When she reaches puberty, she is retired and a new Kumari is selected through an elaborate process involving astrological readings, physical examination, and ritual tests.

The building itself — a three-storey brick palace built in 1757 by King Jaya Prakash Malla — is one of the finest examples of Newar craftsmanship in the valley, with extraordinarily detailed carved wooden windows and lattice screens. Visitors may enter the courtyard and sometimes, if fortunate, glimpse the Kumari briefly appearing at her window. Photography of the Kumari is strictly and absolutely forbidden.

Alleyways around Basantapur

Photo — Basantapur alleyways

Behind and around the Durbar Square lies a dense web of lanes that most visitors never enter. These alleys — some barely wide enough for two people to pass — are where Kathmandu's Newar identity is most tangible and most private. Entire extended families share courtyard houses, bahals (Buddhist monastery courtyards), and neighbourhood squares called toles. The pace of life here is neither for tourists nor for cameras in any commercial sense — it is simply the way people live.

The alleys connect a series of small courtyards, each with its own neighbourhood deity, its own water spout, its own character. Some open unexpectedly into ancient Buddhist bahals with whitewashed walls and lotus ponds. Others dead-end into domestic interiors — a cooking fire, laundry, a grandmother spinning wool. Getting lost is not just permitted here; it is the method.

Kirtipur

Photo — Kirtipur

Kirtipur sits on a fortified hilltop southwest of Kathmandu city, and its geography is inseparable from its history. This was the last Newar kingdom to resist conquest by Prithvi Narayan Shah in the 18th century — a resistance so fierce and prolonged that after finally taking the city, Shah ordered the noses and lips of the male inhabitants cut off as punishment. The story lives in the identity of the town and in the faces of its elders.

Today Kirtipur is one of the most intact Newar settlements in the valley. The old town, concentrated on the hilltop, has narrow lanes, ancient temples — including the Uma Maheshwar Temple and the Chilancho Vihara, the oldest stupa in the valley — and a pace of life that feels distinctly removed from the chaos of Kathmandu below. Weaving is a traditional Kirtipur craft; hand looms can be heard and seen in several houses along the main lanes.

From the hilltop, on a clear morning, the Himalayan range stretches across the horizon — Langtang, Ganesh Himal, Manaslu, and further west — providing a powerful backdrop for portraits and environmental photographs.