We spent a lot of our time in Pokhara in Laughing Buddha, enjoying at least two meals a day there, every day. It was not just the prices that kept us coming back; the family that own the restaurant are charming, the food tasted amazing, the portions were huge, and the place had real atmosphere when it was candle lit during the nightly power-cuts.

Highlights of the menu include n enormous spinach and mushroom lasagne, with bread and salad, Swiss Rosti (amazing cheesey/potatoey gooey deliciousness), and the simple breakfast, all costing less than 90 pence. For a real treat, try the grilled fish (a whopping 1.10 pounds!).

Laughing Buddha can be found on the North end of Lakeside, near Sweet Memories and Newari Kitchen. Not to be missed.

10/10

Pokhara is bursting with guest houses, and we looked around a few before settling in Pushpa, as much out of fatigue as anything else – the price and standard of rooms seems to be similar across the board. Rooms cost from 300 to 700 rupees with western en-suites with good hot water showers. More expensive rooms have TVs and nicer furnishing, but as always we opted for cheapest and least cheerful. There isn’t much of a garden to speak of, but rooms are clean and in slightly better condition than some of the other places we looked at, and the location is good (just down a sidestreet south of centre point).

We met some American ladies that had been coming here for the past 10 years and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. We’d have given it more points, but unfortunately the owners tried to short change us twice when we were checking out. Poor show. 6/10

In a desperate attempt to catch up, I have uploaded all of our photos from Nepal to the gallery. Enjoy!

Sherpa appeared to be newly built when we arrived, in fact there were still plasters and builders all over the place. We got a 4 bed room on the top floor that was clean and bright and still smelled like fresh paint. Toilets were mostly squatties, although there was one western loo waiting to be connected to the water supply. Hot water is supposedly solar heated but the glaring sunshine when we arrived was seemingly not enough to supply a hot shower. The staff were a bit unhelpful and seemed to spend a lot of time debating every question we asked without actually answering them.

The best thing about Sherpa Lodge was the attached restaurant. Western food was surprisingly good quality and was exceptionally cheap – a welcome find after several days in the sticks.

Location was good – right at the bottom of the town, just before Chinese customs (although you’ll still need a taxi to get you to the border crossing several kilometres further down the mountain). We’d give Sherpa a much better rating if there was hot water and no builders: 5/10

We stayed in one of many ‘Snowland Hotel’s in New Tingri. There were at least three others within spitting distance from ours – this one is on the corner of the Lhasa-Zhangmu road and the road to New Tingri centre. We stayed in their cheapest room with 5 beds and little in the way of furnishings for 25 yuan per person. As always, there was no hot water or heating and at least two duvets were required to fend off the biting cold during the night (in the morning we woke up to find that the bottle of water we keep next to the bed was frozen!).

Toilets were a bit disgusting hole-in-the-floor affairs long-dropping into a slop room on the ground floor, but are probably typical of this part of the world. Enquiries about showers were met with a chuckle and a firm ‘no’.

The attached restaurant was popular with lorry drivers and other passers-by and served fairly bland but filling Tibetan food for a reasonable price. It was a good place to while away the time until the pass between Tingri and Zhangmu opens as the heat from the oven makes the temperature bearable.

There are supposedly 3-star hotels somewhere in town (although we saw absolutely no trace of them) and it might be a good idea to pay a little extra for some home comforts in this inhospitable corner of nowhere, but by all means come here if you are after the authentic Tibetan experience!

Unrated: it would get 0/10 in normal circumstances, but since it is in the middle of the arse-end-of-nowhere, it is a bit harsh to rate it so poorly. From what we saw, there are no alternatives.