Nepal pictures, history, people, facts

Kathmandu has been "off limits" to most foreigners for many years since then, and it was only in 1951 that tourists were permitted to visit Nepal. Set in the small Kathmandu Valley and surrounded by high mountains, Kathmandu is a medieval metropolis with superb artistic and architectural traditions that have miraculously survived the centuries. In the early 1850s, the English traveler, Francis Egerton, visited Nepal and described the city of Kathmandu as he saw it then: "A picturesque and quaint looking temple and a cluster of wide-eaved houses, profusely adorned with carved woodwork, form a pretty foreground. In the plain below is a broad river, on the opposite bank of which stands the town, with its numberless Chinese-looking temples, the brass work with which they are ornamented glittering in the sun."