Nepal & Bhutan, Five Ways

Nepal and Bhutan sit side by side in the Himalaya, and both are commonly combined with an India trip — but they're genuinely different countries with different characters, and the five routes above reflect every reasonable way to see one, the other, or all three destinations together. Nepal runs 8 days through Kathmandu, Pokhara and Chitwan; Bhutan runs a similar 8 days through Thimphu, Punakha and Paro; Nepal & Bhutan combined covers both without an India leg; and India & Nepal and India, Nepal & Bhutan add one or both onto a Golden Triangle-style India itinerary.

Nepal's Kathmandu packs an extraordinary density of UNESCO-listed temple squares and Buddhist and Hindu religious sites into one compact valley — a genuinely walkable old city rather than sprawling modern capital. Pokhara, a few hours west, trades temples for mountains: a lakeside town with arguably the most accessible close-up Himalayan views in the country, the Annapurna range rising directly behind it. Chitwan, in Nepal's lowland Terai region, is different again — a jungle safari by jeep and canoe, with a real chance of spotting one-horned rhinos and, more rarely, a Bengal tiger, a genuinely different landscape from the mountain scenery most people associate with Nepal.

Bhutan operates on a different model entirely from the rest of this list — the country requires all foreign visitors to book through a licensed local tour operator as part of its sustainable tourism policy, which we handle as a standard part of any Bhutan itinerary rather than something you need to arrange separately. Paro is most visitors' first stop, home to the country's only international airport and the trailhead for the hike up to Paro Taktsang, the cliffside Tiger's Nest monastery that anchors nearly every Bhutan itinerary. Thimphu, the capital, is a genuine curiosity in its own right — the world's only national capital with no traffic lights, built under strict architectural codes that require even modern buildings to follow traditional Bhutanese design.

Combining countries is common enough that we treat it as a standard option rather than an unusual request. India and Nepal connect well by air from Delhi, making the Golden Triangle a natural pairing with Kathmandu and Pokhara. Bringing in Bhutan as well extends the trip further but follows the same logic — each country adds roughly a week, and the three-country route is genuinely the most ambitious fixed itinerary we run, worth booking further ahead than a single-country trip given the number of flights and, for Bhutan specifically, the licensed-operator arrangements involved.

Tell us which of these countries interests you, whether you'd rather see them standalone or combined with India, and how much time you have, and we'll build the exact itinerary around it rather than asking you to fit an existing one.