National specialities:
• Dal Bhat (lentils and rice).
• Tarkan (spiced vegetables).
• Gurr (a Sherpa dish of raw potatoes, pounded with spices, then grilled like pancakes on a hot, flat stone ground and mixed with milk, tea or water).
• Rotis (flat pancake-like bread made from wheat or rice flour).

National drinks:
• Chiya (tea brewed with milk, sugar and spices; in the mountains it is salted with yak butter).
• Arak (potato alcohol).
• Raksi (wheat or rice spirit).
• Chang (beer made from fermented barley, maize, rye or millet).

Tipping: Only usual in tourist hotels and restaurants. 10% is sufficient.

Kathmandu has cinemas featuring mainly Indian films. For Western films, see the programmes of the European and US cultural centres. Nightlife is limited to tourist areas, where there are late-night bars and clubs. A few temples and restaurants offer entertainment and some tourist hotels stage Nepalese folk dances and musical shows. There are casinos at some 5-star hotels in Kathmandu.

Popular buys include locally-made clothes such as lopsided topis (caps), knitted mittens and socks, Tibetan dresses, woven shawls, Tibetan multicoloured jackets and men’s diagonally fastened shirts; and pashmina (fine goat’s-wool blankets), khukri (the national knife), saranghi (a small, four-stringed viola played with a horse-hair bow), Tibetan tea bowls, papier mâché dance masks, Buddhist statuettes and filigree ornaments, bamboo flutes and other folk objects.

Shopping hours: Sun-Fri 1000-2000 (shops are usually closed on Saturday).