Nepal is the trip people add to India and then remember more vividly than they expected.
It happens the same way every time. A guest finishes their Golden Triangle tour or their Rajasthan road trip and says, almost casually, “We were thinking of popping over to Nepal for a week.” And we say yes, absolutely, we can drive you there. And seven days later they come back with a look on their face that’s hard to describe — quieter, maybe. Fuller. Like they’ve seen something that shifted their understanding of what a country can be.
Nepal is not India. The moment you cross the border, the energy changes. The hustle softens. The mountains appear. The temples smell of incense and burning butter lamps instead of traffic. And the Himalayas — if you’re lucky enough to see them on a clear morning — are the kind of thing that makes you understand why people believed gods lived up there.
Seven days gives you Kathmandu’s temples, Chitwan’s jungle, and Pokhara’s lakeside calm. Here’s how we do it.
Before We Start: Getting to Nepal
You have two options, and both work well with a private driver.
Option 1: Fly into Kathmandu. Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) has direct flights from Delhi (1 hour 40 minutes). Your driver in Nepal meets you at arrivals. Simple.
Option 2: Drive from India. If you’re already touring North India with us, your Indian driver takes you to the Sonauli-Belahiya border crossing (near Gorakhpur in UP). You walk across the border on foot — it takes about 30-45 minutes with paperwork — and a Nepali driver meets you on the other side. From the border to Chitwan is about 4 hours, so you can start the itinerary from Day 3 (Chitwan) instead of Day 1 (Kathmandu), and rearrange accordingly.
The border crossing sounds intimidating. It isn’t. It’s a small-town checkpoint, not an airport. You fill out a form, get your passport stamped, pay the Nepal visa fee (USD $30 for 15 days, $50 for 30 days — bring US dollars in cash, exact change helps), and walk through. We coordinate both drivers so there’s no gap — your Indian driver waits until your Nepali driver has you, and both have each other’s phone numbers.
Visa: Most nationalities get Nepal visa on arrival at the airport or border. Indians don’t need a visa at all. Check your visa requirements before you leave — the process is straightforward but you want to have everything ready.
Day 1: Arrive in Kathmandu
Driving: Airport pickup only What you do: Thamel walk, first temple visit, acclimatise
Kathmandu sits at 1,400 metres elevation — not high enough to cause altitude issues, but enough that you notice the air is thinner and cooler than Delhi. Take it easy on Day 1.
Your driver takes you from the airport to your hotel in Thamel — the tourist district. Thamel is a knot of narrow streets packed with gear shops, bookstores, bakeries, and rooftop restaurants. It’s chaotic in a friendly way, not an overwhelming way. After India’s intensity, Kathmandu feels like someone turned the volume down by two notches.
If you arrive before lunch, eat momos. Nepali momos — steamed dumplings stuffed with buffalo meat or vegetables, served with a fiery tomato chutney — are the national obsession. Every restaurant serves them. Some are better than others. Your driver or your hotel will point you to the right place.
Afternoon: walk to Kathmandu Durbar Square — the old royal palace complex in the heart of the city. The 2015 earthquake damaged some structures, and the reconstruction is still ongoing. What remains is still extraordinary: carved wooden temples, stone courtyards, and the Kumari Ghar — the residence of the Kumari, a living goddess (a young girl chosen by priests who is worshipped as the incarnation of the goddess Taleju). If you’re there at the right time, she might appear at her window. Briefly. You’re not allowed to photograph her.
Evening: rooftop dinner in Thamel with a cold Everest beer. Look at the sky and try to spot the mountains — on clear evenings, the Himalayan range is faintly visible from Kathmandu’s northern edges, though the city’s dust and haze often obscure it. Pokhara will fix that.
Day 2: Kathmandu — Temples, Stupas, and a Burning River
Driving: Short drives between sites (~45 minutes total) What you’ll see: Pashupatinath Temple, Boudhanath Stupa, Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple)
This is Kathmandu’s spiritual core, and it’s one of the most memorable days of any trip we run.
Pashupatinath first. This is the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal, built on the banks of the Bagmati River. Non-Hindus cannot enter the main temple, but you can walk the grounds and — this is the part people don’t expect — watch the cremation ghats.
Open-air cremation is a fact of Hindu life. At Pashupatinath, funeral pyres burn continuously on stone platforms along the river. Families carry their dead to the ghats, perform the rituals, and light the fire. Across the river, sadhus (holy men) with matted hair and painted faces sit in meditation or conversation. The smoke drifts over everything.
It is not morbid. It is not a spectacle. It is simply what death looks like when a culture refuses to hide it. Many of our guests say Pashupatinath is the thing they think about most when they get home. Not because it was beautiful (though the temple complex is stunning) but because it was true. Life, death, prayer, ash, water, fire — all of it happening simultaneously, without ceremony beyond the ceremony itself.
Be respectful. Don’t photograph grieving families up close. But don’t look away either. This is why you came to Nepal — to see something real.
Boudhanath Stupa is next, and it’s the emotional opposite of Pashupatinath. This is one of the largest Buddhist stupas in the world — a massive white dome topped with the painted eyes of the Buddha, surrounded by a ring of monasteries, prayer wheel shops, and rooftop cafés. Tibetan monks in maroon robes circumambulate the stupa clockwise, spinning prayer wheels as they go. The atmosphere is calm, rotational, meditative. Walk three laps with the flow. Spin the wheels. It’s impossible not to slow down here.
The rooftop restaurants around Boudhanath have views directly onto the stupa. Lunch here. Watch the shadow of the spire move across the white dome as the sun crosses.
Late afternoon: Swayambhunath — the Monkey Temple. It’s on a hill overlooking the entire Kathmandu Valley, reached by climbing 365 steep stone steps (your driver drops you at the base). The monkeys are real — they’re macaques, and they’ll steal your sunglasses if you’re not paying attention. The view from the top is the reward: the entire valley, the city sprawling in every direction, and on a clear day, the white peaks of the Himalayas lining the northern horizon like teeth.
Day 3: Kathmandu → Chitwan National Park — Into the Jungle
Driving: 175 km / ~5 hours (the road is mountainous and winding, so it takes longer than you’d expect) What you do:Drive through the hills, arrive at your jungle lodge
The drive from Kathmandu to Chitwan drops you from 1,400 metres to about 150 metres above sea level. The landscape changes radically — terraced rice paddies on steep hillsides, rivers cutting through deep valleys, tiny villages clinging to ridgelines. This is the Nepal you see in National Geographic. Your driver takes the winding mountain road at a pace that lets you actually see it.
One thing to know: Nepali highways are not Indian highways. They’re narrower, steeper, and slower. Your driver is experienced on these roads — that’s specifically why we use Nepali drivers in Nepal, not Indian drivers unfamiliar with the terrain. He knows the hairpin turns, the blind corners, and the spots where trucks park without warning. Relax. Look out the window. The scenery deserves your attention.
Arrive in Chitwan by early afternoon. Your lodge is at the edge of the national park — most are along the Rapti River, and some have views directly into the jungle. Check in, rest, and do an evening nature walk or a sunset canoe ride on the Rapti. The river is calm, the birdlife is extraordinary, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see a one-horned rhinoceros coming to the water’s edge to drink.
Dinner at the lodge. If they offer a Tharu cultural performance (traditional dances by the local Tharu community), go. It’s local, it’s genuine, and the stick dance is more athletic than most things you’ll see on a stage.
Day 4: Chitwan — Jungle Safari
Driving: None (lodge handles park transfers) What you’ll see: One-horned rhinos, maybe a Bengal tiger, crocodiles, deer, 500+ bird species
This is a full wildlife day, and Chitwan delivers in a way that surprises people who associate Nepal only with mountains.
Morning: jeep safari into the core zone of Chitwan National Park. The park is one of the best-preserved habitats in Asia — dense sal forest, tall grasslands, and a river system that supports an astonishing concentration of wildlife. The one-horned rhinoceros is the star — Chitwan has over 700 of them, and your chances of seeing one (or five) are extremely high. Rhinos are huge, armour-plated, surprisingly fast, and completely unconcerned by jeeps.
Bengal tigers live here too. Sightings are rarer — tigers are solitary, elusive, and magnificently good at not being seen. But paw prints on the trail, a sudden alarm call from a deer herd, the guide pointing silently at crushed grass where something large lay down recently — the presence of tigers is everywhere, even when you don’t see one. Some people find that more exciting than the sighting itself.
Crocodiles on the riverbanks. Wild elephants in the distance. Kingfishers, eagles, hornbills, bee-eaters — Chitwan has over 540 bird species, and even if you’ve never cared about birds before, a morning in the jungle will make you care.
Afternoon: canoe ride on the Rapti River. Wooden canoes carved from single tree trunks. Your guide paddles silently along the shore while mugger crocodiles sun themselves on the banks and gharials (the narrow-snouted, fish-eating crocodiles that are critically endangered and genuinely weird-looking) slip into the water without a sound.
Return to your lodge. Dinner. Sleep to the sound of the jungle — cicadas, distant barking deer, and occasionally, something larger moving through the undergrowth just beyond the fence.
Day 5: Chitwan → Pokhara — Mountains Are Coming
Driving: 175 km / ~5 hours What you do: Cross the middle hills, arrive at Phewa Lake
The drive from Chitwan to Pokhara is another mountain road, climbing back up from the lowland jungle into the hills. It’s spectacular in a completely different way from the Kathmandu road — more open, more river-valley, more sweeping views as you gain elevation.
And then, at some point during the drive — it might be 30 minutes from Pokhara, or it might be an hour — you come around a bend and the Annapurna range appears.
There’s no warning. No gradual reveal. One moment you’re looking at green hills, and the next moment the sky behind them is full of white peaks so high and so close that they don’t look real. Machhapuchhre (Fishtail Mountain) is the one you’ll recognise — a perfect, almost pyramidal peak that dominates Pokhara’s skyline. The Annapurna massif stretches behind it, 7,000 and 8,000-metre peaks covered in permanent snow.
Your driver will pull over without being asked. Everyone stops here. Everyone stares. Some people cry. The mountains have that effect.
Arrive in Pokhara by late afternoon. Your hotel is on Lakeside — the strip along the shore of Phewa Lake that’s Pokhara’s tourist centre. It’s quieter and cleaner than Thamel in Kathmandu. Cafés, bookshops, adventure-tour operators, and boats bobbing at the water’s edge.
Evening: walk along the lakeside. Eat at one of the restaurants with lake-facing terraces. Go to bed early. You’re waking up before dawn.
Day 6: Pokhara — Sunrise and the Lake
Driving: Pre-dawn drive to Sarangkot (~30 min), then back to lakeside What you’ll see: Himalayan sunrise, Phewa Lake, Devi’s Fall, Gupteshwor Cave, World Peace Pagoda
4:30 AM. Your driver takes you up the winding road to Sarangkot, a viewpoint above Pokhara.
What happens next depends on the weather. If the sky is clear — and October through March gives you the best odds — you’ll watch the sun rise behind the Annapurna range. The peaks go from black silhouettes to grey to gold to blinding white in the space of about twenty minutes. Machhapuchhre, Annapurna South, Annapurna I, Dhaulagiri in the distance — all of them lit up in sequence as the sun hits them one by one. The valley below is still dark. The mountains above are on fire. It’s the most beautiful thing in Nepal, and Nepal has a lot of beautiful things.
If it’s cloudy, you wait. Sometimes the clouds part. Sometimes they don’t. Your driver has a thermos of tea. Sarangkot is not a wasted trip even without the view — the village itself, the terraced farms, the silence of the hills are enough.
Back in Pokhara by 9 AM.
The rest of the day is gentle. Phewa Lake is the centre of everything. Rent a rowboat (or have the boatman do the work) and paddle to the Tal Barahi Temple — a small Hindu temple on an island in the middle of the lake. The reflections of the mountains in the still water are absurd. They look fake. They’re not.
After lunch: Devi’s Fall — a waterfall that disappears into an underground tunnel and emerges in Gupteshwor Cavebelow. It’s kitschy in a Nepali way (there’s a Shiva statue inside the cave that’s lit with coloured lights), but the geological formation is genuinely interesting and kids love it.
Late afternoon: if you have energy, hike up (or have your driver take you to) the World Peace Pagoda — a white Buddhist stupa on a hill on the south side of the lake. The view from here — Phewa Lake below, the Annapurna range behind — is the panoramic version of everything you’ve seen from lakeside. It takes about 45 minutes to hike up from the lakeside, or your driver can take you to a shorter trail.
Dinner at lakeside. Last night in Pokhara. Sit outside. Look at the mountains one more time.
Day 7: Pokhara → Kathmandu (or onward)
Driving: 200 km / ~6 hours by road (or 25-minute flight) What you do: Return to Kathmandu for departure, or extend your trip
You have two options for the return.
Fly: Pokhara to Kathmandu is a 25-minute flight with mountain views the entire way. Book in advance — these seats sell out. Your driver in Kathmandu meets you at the other end.
Drive: The road takes about six hours. It’s the same mountain-highway experience you’ve had on other days — winding, scenic, slower than the distance suggests. Your driver knows the lunch stops. You arrive in Kathmandu by late afternoon, in time for a final wander through Thamel, a last plate of momos, and your evening flight home.
If you’re crossing back into India by road, your driver takes you to the border. Your Indian driver meets you on the other side. We coordinate the handoff so there’s no waiting, no confusion, no gap.
What Nepal Costs
Nepal is significantly cheaper than India for hotels, food, and activities. Your private driver and car for 7 days covers all driving, all fuel, and all road permits. Hotels in Nepal range from $30-50/night for comfortable mid-range to $150+/night for luxury lodges.
National park entry: Chitwan National Park entry is about $20 for foreign tourists. Jungle activities (safari, canoe, guided walks) are typically included in your lodge package.
Monument entry: Kathmandu Durbar Square, Pashupatinath, Boudhanath, and Swayambhunath each charge $5-10 for foreign visitors. Total for all temples: around $30-40.
Nepal visa: $30 for 15 days, $50 for 30 days. Payable at the border or airport in USD cash.
Get in touch for the full package pricing. We’ll quote the driver, help with hotels, and coordinate the India-Nepal border crossing if you’re combining both countries.
When to Go
October and November are the best months — clear skies, cool temperatures, and mountain views almost guaranteed. This is also trekking season, so Pokhara and Kathmandu are lively.
February and March are the second window — warming up, rhododendrons blooming in the hills, and clearer skies returning after the winter haze.
December and January are cold (Kathmandu drops to 2-5°C at night), but the skies can be crystal clear. Bring layers.
Monsoon (June–September) brings rain, leeches on trails, and obscured mountain views. Not ideal for this itinerary.
Why Nepal Hits Different
India is loud. India is maximum. India fills every sense until you think you can’t hold any more.
Nepal is the exhale.
The temples in Kathmandu have the same Hindu gods as India, but the atmosphere around them is different — slower, more contemplative, less performed. The jungle in Chitwan has the same tigers as Ranthambore, but the approach is quieter — no caravans of jeeps, no crowds at watering holes. The mountains in Pokhara aren’t just scenery — they’re a recalibration. Standing in front of an 8,000-metre peak, every problem you brought with you from home becomes physically smaller. You can feel it happen.
A week in Nepal after a week in India is not more of the same. It’s the counterpoint. And together, the two countries make a trip that covers more emotional range than almost any other journey on Earth.
Send us your dates. India and Nepal in one trip — we’ll build the whole thing.Published by Private Driver India. Nepal is where we send people who loved India and want to see what’s on the other side of the border. Nobody has ever been disappointed.