Gandaki

Pokhara is roughly two hundred kilometres from Kathmandu and the road journey routinely takes most of a day — the route follows river valleys, climbs and drops continuously, and carries heavy freight on a single lane each way. Tourist buses run the route on a morning departure and are the sensible default; the alternative is a short flight that turns the whole thing into under half an hour and is one of the better-value time purchases available in Nepal. There is no railway. If you are combining Pokhara with the lowland parks, the road south is considerably faster than the road east, which is worth knowing when ordering an itinerary.

The lakeside strip is where nearly all visitors stay, and it is a genuinely pleasant place to spend days either side of a trek — guesthouses and hotels along the water, restaurants and gear shops behind them, and boats for hire on the lake itself. It is quieter and warmer than Kathmandu's tourist quarter and considerably more relaxed. The town proper, away from the water, is an ordinary working Nepali city with markets and none of the tourism apparatus, worth a morning if you want the contrast. For a longer stay, the quieter northern end of the lakeside is calmer than the busy middle without giving up the setting.

The province is where Nepal's most-walked routes begin, and the mechanics are worth understanding before you arrive. Road building has pushed vehicle access steadily further up the valleys on both sides of the Annapurna massif, which means the point where you start walking has moved over the years and continues to — several classic itineraries now begin with a jeep leg that did not exist a decade ago. Some walkers regard that as a loss and take alternative trails built to keep the route off the road; others use it to skip the least interesting days. Either way, confirm current road heads and routing when you book rather than relying on an older description, because this is the detail that changes most often here.

North of the main Himalayan range the province enters the rain shadow, and the landscape changes completely: an arid, wind-scoured high valley of ochre cliffs, eroded pinnacles and whitewashed villages, culturally and architecturally Tibetan, along a river gorge that runs between two eight-thousand-metre massifs. The lower part is reached by road and by a short flight into the valley, and can be visited without special arrangements. The upper part is a restricted area requiring a permit at a much higher tier and a licensed guide, which is precisely why it has stayed as it is. If you have seen the standard Nepal and want somewhere that feels like a different country, this is the answer within the same province.

On a ridge above the Kathmandu-Pokhara road sits a preserved Newari hill town with a traffic-free main street of shuttered timber-fronted buildings, a view down to the river on one side and up to the Himalaya on the other. It was a prosperous trading town on an old route between India and Tibet, was bypassed when the modern road went in below, and consequently kept its architecture instead of losing it. It makes an excellent overnight break on a journey that is otherwise a long day in a bus, and it is the single best answer to a traveller who wants the valley's traditional architecture without the valley's traffic.

The autumn and spring trekking windows govern everything here, and Pokhara is at its best in the same months — clear mornings with the mountains visible from the lakeside, which is far from guaranteed at other times. Through the monsoon the peaks are frequently hidden for days and the lake view that draws people can simply not be there, though the hills are green and the town is cheap and pleasant. Winter is mild at Pokhara's altitude and cold higher up, with some passes closed. Mustang, sitting in the rain shadow, is the exception that makes the province useful in monsoon: it stays dry when everywhere else is not.