4 Days in Kathmandu and Nepal
Four days is where this itinerary stops being purely a Kathmandu trip and starts being a Nepal trip, which is the point. Anyone still trying to wedge all three Durbar Squares into four days is planning the wrong trip; this version gets you legal, gets you a mountain sunrise, and gets you to the actual Annapurna gateway before you fly home.
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Visa, Nagarkot transfer |
| 2 | Nagarkot sunrise, return |
| 3 | Everest scenic flight, on to Pokhara |
| 4 | Pokhara, Sarangkot, departure |
Book these before you go:
- A Nagarkot hilltop room on Agoda ; mountain-view rooms sell out fast on a clear forecast.
- Your Pokhara lakeside stay on Agoda , since rooms with a Phewa Lake view go first.
Day 1: land, sort the paperwork, sort the trek. Visa-on-arrival runs $30 for 15 days, $50 for 30, $125 for 90, cash only in practice since the counter’s card readers are unreliable; filling in the online arrival form ahead of landing shaves real time off the queue. Skip the parking-lot touts and take the prepaid taxi counter or a Pathao/InDrive booking into Thamel. If there’s any chance of trekking beyond this trip, use the afternoon to lock in a TAAN-registered agency with a genuine local office, ideally contacted before you landed rather than picked off a Thamel storefront. That distinction matters more than it used to: a Kathmandu court opened hearings in April 2026 against 32 people, agency owners and helicopter operators among them, over a fake-rescue insurance fraud scheme worth more than $19.69 million in fraudulent evacuation billing. By late afternoon, head up to Nagarkot, roughly ninety minutes by road, for the night.
Day 2: sunrise, then back down. Catch the Himalaya sunrise from Nagarkot at 2,175m, best odds October-November or March-April, then a slow return to Kathmandu with real buffer for traffic. Spend the evening confirming tomorrow morning’s Everest scenic flight, since these depart 6:30 to 8am and get bumped for weather often enough to warrant an early night rather than a late one in Thamel.
Day 3: Everest by air, then Pokhara. Buddha Air, Yeti Airlines, and Guna Air each run an early scenic flight past the Himalayan skyline including Everest, roughly $165 to $300 depending on carrier and season, with every seat rotated to a window on both sides. Build in slack, since weather cancellations happen often enough to matter. If it flies, you’re back at your hotel mid-morning; from there, catch an afternoon flight (about 25 minutes) or a 6 to 7 hour overland drive to Pokhara, the actual staging town for the Annapurna Circuit, Base Camp, and Poon Hill routes, not Kathmandu. Settle in lakeside by evening.
Day 4: Pokhara, then the trip closes. Spend the morning by Phewa Lake or ride up to Sarangkot for the paragliding launch and valley views, both genuinely worth doing even if you’re not trekking a single step of Annapurna this trip. If your international flight departs out of Kathmandu rather than Pokhara, this is the day to build in the return leg, flight or drive, since Pokhara’s own international connections remain limited. Head out with buffer for delays either way.
Getting around and practical notes. There’s no metro anywhere in this country’s cities, so factor in real transfer time everywhere. Taxis dodge the meter regardless of the law, agree a fare first or use an app that locks one in. Tap water isn’t safe, stick to bottled or filtered. If you’d rather use four days on the valley itself, Durbar Squares and Newari food, that’s a separate trip entirely . For a second full day in Pokhara instead of a same-day turnaround, the 5-day itinerary is the better fit; if the flight and Pokhara detour are too much for your window, the 3-day version stays closer to Kathmandu.