Pokhara

Pokhara lies beside Phewa Lake beneath the mountains of the Annapurna range. The valley sits on an old trading route between India and Tibet, as well as the road from Kathmandu towards Jumla. In the seventeenth century it belonged to Kaski, one of the small hill kingdoms ruled by a branch of the Shah family. Earlier rulers are said to have kept a winter seat at Batulechaur in the northern valley.

In the eighteenth century the king of Kaski sought to develop a market in Pokhara. He invited Newar families from Bhaktapur, who settled near the Bindhyabasini temple and the trading quarters of Nalakomukh and Bhairab Tole. They joined a valley inhabited by Khas, Gurung, Magar and Thakuri communities. In 1786 the expanding Nepalese kingdom took Pokhara, by then an important meeting place for merchants crossing the hills.