After the chaos of Kathmandu, Pokhara is a sigh of relief. Nepal's second city lies along the shores of Phewa Lake, calm and green, at a lower altitude and with better weather, with the Annapurna massif and the sharp peak of Machapuchare outlined in the background on clear days. It's the country's great hub for rest and adventure: the gateway to the most famous treks in the Himalaya, Nepal's paragliding capital and a place where you simply feel like staying and doing nothing but watch the mountains reflected in the water.
The tourist heart is Lakeside, the long strip by the lake packed with hotels, cafés, restaurants, trekking shops and agencies, where expeditions to the Annapurna are organised. But Pokhara is much more than its waterfront: a rowing-boat trip to the island temple of Tal Barahi, the climb to the white World Peace Stupa, sunrise over the Annapurna from Sarangkot hill, a paragliding flight over the lake, the waterfalls and caves of Devi's Fall, and the surrounding lakes and hills make up a destination that combines nature, adventure and relaxation like few others.
This guide helps you make the most of Pokhara: what to see and do, how much the boat, paragliding and admissions cost, how to use it as a base for the great Annapurna treks (and which permits you need), how to get there from Kathmandu and why it's worth setting aside a few extra days. Whether you come to walk in the Himalaya, fly over the lake or simply rest with the mountains as a backdrop, Pokhara is one of those stops every traveller remembers fondly.
For centuries Pokhara was an important trading post on the caravan routes between India and Tibet: salt, wool and goods crossing the Himalaya passed through its valley, and its population is a mix of peoples (Gurung, Magar, Thakali, Newar, Bahun) that reflects that crossroads. The Gurung and Magar of these hills are also the cradle of many of the legendary Gurkha soldiers. Until the mid-20th century, Pokhara was an isolated farming valley with barely any roads; its transformation came with the construction of the routes that linked it to Kathmandu and India in the sixties and seventies, and above all with the rise of trekking in the Himalaya, which turned it into the great base of the Annapurna region. From a quiet town of traders and farmers to today's adventure capital, its story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Nepal of lakes and high mountains: Pokhara at the foot of the Annapurnas, the Kali Gandaki gorge and, to the north, the old Buddhist kingdom of Lo in Mustang.
Read the history of Annapurna region and Pokhara (lakes and trekking) →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it became Nepal's adventure capital, Pokhara was a valley of lakes, rice paddies and caravans. Set in a temperate basin at the foot of the Annapurna massif, at just 820 metres above sea level, the area has a mild climate and fertile land, watered by the Seti River and dotted with lakes such as Phewa, Begnas and Rupa. That privileged setting made it, since ancient times, a place to settle and a place to pass through.
The key to its history is trade. Pokhara lay on one of the caravan routes linking the plains of India with the Tibetan plateau across the Himalaya, following the valley of the Kali Gandaki River, one of the few corridors that cut through the range. For centuries a steady flow of goods moved up and down this way: salt from Tibet, wool, grain, spices, household goods. The Thakali merchants of the upper Kali Gandaki valley, in particular, became famous as the traders and innkeepers of this route.
That role as a crossroads explains the mix of peoples that defines Pokhara: Gurung and Magar from the hills, Thakali from the north, Newar traders who came from the Kathmandu Valley, Bahun and Chhetri, and Tibetan communities. Each brought their own culture, religion and trades, and that diversity is still a hallmark of the city. Pokhara was born, in essence, from the meeting of mountains and plains, from the coming and going along the Himalayan trails.
The hills around Pokhara are the land of the Gurung and the Magar, two of the region's indigenous peoples, of Tibeto-Burman roots, farmers and herders of the Annapurna slopes. Their culture, their stone villages perched on the mountainsides and their traditions are an essential part of the region's human landscape, and many of the Annapurna treks pass right through their villages.
These peoples of Nepal's central mountains are also the cradle of one of the most famous military traditions in the world: that of the Gurkha soldiers. From the early 19th century, after the war between Nepal and the British East India Company, the British, impressed by the courage of the Nepali warriors, began recruiting soldiers from these hills for their army. Generations of Gurung and Magar from the Pokhara region joined the Gurkha regiments, which fought in both world wars and in countless conflicts, and which still serve today in the British and Indian armies.
The Gurkha connection left a deep mark on Pokhara: for decades, the remittances and pensions of retired soldiers were an important source of income, and the city has museums and memorials devoted to this history (such as the Gurkha Museum). It's a part of local identity worth knowing to understand the region: these beautiful, peaceful mountains gave the world some of its most legendary soldiers.
Surprising as it may seem today, until the mid-20th century Pokhara was a deeply isolated valley. There were no roads connecting it to the rest of the country: everything came and went on foot or by pack animal along the caravan trails, or, later in the 20th century, in small planes that landed on dirt airstrips. It was a quiet farming valley, beautiful but remote, which the modern world was slow to reach.
The great transformation began in the 1960s and 1970s with the building of roads. The highway linking Pokhara with Kathmandu (the Prithvi Highway) and the one connecting it with the Indian border and the town of Sunauli opened the valley to trade, to transport and, above all, to travellers. Suddenly, Pokhara stopped being a hard-to-reach place and became a well-connected spot, with a mild climate, lakes, spectacular mountains and an unbeatable location at the foot of the Annapurna.
In those same years the first travellers of the hippie era began to arrive, discovering in Pokhara, on their way east, a peaceful lakeside paradise, and above all the first mountaineers and trekkers drawn by the Himalaya. The combination of accessibility, beauty and closeness to the great mountains sealed the city's fate. Pokhara was about to become what it is today.
Pokhara's modern history is inseparable from that of mountaineering on the Annapurna. In 1950, a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog made the first ascent of Annapurna I (8.091 m), the first mountain over eight thousand metres ever climbed, three years before Everest. That feat put the Annapurna massif (and with it Pokhara, its gateway) on the map of world mountaineering.
From the 1960s and 1970s, with the roads now open, Pokhara became the great base for Himalayan trekking. The trails around the Annapurna, which pass through Gurung and Magar villages and offer some of the most spectacular mountain scenery on the planet, became legendary routes: the Annapurna Circuit, the trek to Annapurna Base Camp, the sunrise at Poon Hill. In 1986 the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACAP) was created, the largest protected area in Nepal, to manage tourism and protect the environment. Lakeside, the shore of Phewa Lake, filled up with hotels, agencies and gear shops, and Pokhara came to live largely off mountain tourism.
Another important chapter was the arrival of Tibetan refugees. After the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the Dalai Lama's exile in 1959, thousands of Tibetans crossed the Himalaya, and some settled in camps around Pokhara, where Tibetan communities still live today with their monasteries, traditions and crafts. Their presence added another layer to the city's already rich cultural diversity.
21st-century Pokhara is Nepal's second city and its undisputed capital of adventure tourism. Every season, thousands of trekkers from all over the world use it as a base for walking in the Annapurna; the sky over Phewa Lake fills with colourful paragliders taking off from Sarangkot; and in Lakeside, the long tourist waterfront, backpackers, mountaineers, families and all kinds of travellers mingle among cafés, agencies and shops. The city offers a bit of everything: rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping and zip lines, on top of the trekking and paragliding that made it famous.
Modernisation has carried on. In 2023 a new international airport opened in Pokhara, with the aim of receiving direct flights from abroad and establishing the city as the country's tourist gateway, though its development has been surrounded by debate. The city is growing, filling up with hotels and facing the challenges of any booming destination: pressure on the environment, the health of Phewa Lake and the need to balance development with conservation.
And yet Pokhara keeps its essential charm: that of a mild-climate valley stretched out beside a lake, with one of the most impressive walls of mountains in the world rising in the background. Whether you come to walk for weeks in the Himalaya, to fly over the lake or simply to rest while watching the sunset light up Machapuchare, Pokhara is still what it has been since the first caravans crossed its valley: a meeting place at the foot of the mountains, where adventure begins and ends with the peaks reflected in the water.
