Exploring Old Pokhara, A City in the Foothills of the Himalayas

It is hard to get a real sense of what Pokhara is like until you actually go there yourself.

It's probably because almost all tourists stay in the touristy part of Pokhara called Lakeside. It’s a convenient and even charming part of town, but all the buildings here are new - hotels, restaurants, bars - that's good for nightlife, but boring from the point of photography.

Pokhara on Google.Maps

Photos of the recently-built streets of Lakeside are pretty much all you'll see online, even you are searching for "pokhara street photography"... So, I felt there was nothing in Pokhara except for Lakeside and just buildings between 10 and 30 years old, boring for a photographer.

Why 10-30 years? Pokhara wasn't a big place until they built the first road to it in 1968. Then, it started growing slowly raising money on the international tourism which boomed in the 1990s and beyond.

Check out the streets on Google Maps? I did it, but its street views and panoramas don’t capture the atmosphere at all... Old Pokhara is centered around the Old Pokhara Bazaar, and on Google Maps, those streets look dull.

I even thought I shouldn’t go to this Old Bazaar area... But when I got there, it turned out that Old Pokhara is actually a charming place. Sharing.

There are no old quaters in Pokhara, but a series of old buildings blended with newer houses.

However, the general look of this part of the city is beautiful, with many details

and vibes of a quiet, remote mountainous town.

The oldest buildings are plain brick houses decorated with exquisite traditional wooden carvings - windows, balconies, doors, etc.

The carvings of the same style as those in Kathmandu.

And this tiny but charming building is Bhimsen Mandir, an 18th-century Hindu temple. I told that Pokhara is very new but I meant it's new from the point of majority of buildings. The place itself, the Pokhara valley, has served as a center of trade and craft for centuries.

Keep walking further along Ganeshman Sinha Maarga Street to see another little Hindu temple:

These are gates to Bhairav Temple. It's new but, of course, reflects the local traditions of art and religion.

Even if buildings aren't that old, they look nice. These ones could be built in the 1980s or 1990s.

The 1980s and 1990s feel like history nowadays, actually. Look at the ground floor and the awning - vintage!

In old Pokhara, you can also witness how poorer buildings of the past looked:

Many houses that disappeared could look this way - too plain to consider them architectural heritage.

But ones that survived the changes over the decades look very interesting, as exhibits of a museum of the city's past.

Not a palace but much richer than the previous ones. And look at the ground floor - a simple cafe for locals - no gentrification at all.

Another historical building - no souvenir shops, no cafes, just a store selling grain and chips. So good.

Another thing that Pokhara could avoid is the urban cancer of the 21st century - those fucking private cars... Look how neat, how clean the city looks when it is not infested with cars parked all along streets making the city look like a sick animal densely covered with ticks.

By the way, this area is quite well equipped with infrastructure.

For example, modern convenience stores - from this point of view, old Pakhara isn't worse than Pokhara's touristy district, Lakeside.

Small shops are present too, of course.

And did you notice another thing that really distinguishes Pokhara from many other Asian (especially Indian) cities?

Quite clean streets!

It's 15:30, not early morning right after street cleaners do their work... It's called culture!

The photos were taken with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on April 11, 2026, in Pokhara, Nepal