National specialities:
• Dal Bhat (lentils and rice).
• Tarkan (spiced vegetables).
• Gurr (a Sherpa dish of raw potatoes, pounded with spices, then grilled like pancakes on a hot, flat stone ground and mixed with milk, tea or water).
• Rotis (flat pancake-like bread made from wheat or rice flour).
National drinks:
• Chiya (tea brewed with milk, sugar and spices; in the mountains it is salted with yak butter).
• Arak (potato alcohol).
• Raksi (wheat or rice spirit).
• Chang (beer made from fermented barley, maize, rye or millet).
Tipping: Only usual in tourist hotels and restaurants. Taxi drivers need only be tipped when they have been particularly helpful. 10 per cent is sufficient for all three services. Elsewhere, tipping should be avoided.

Kathmandu has a few cinemas featuring mainly Indian films. For Western films, see the programmes of the European and US cultural centres. Most people are asleep by 2200. Nightlife is fairly limited; a few temples and restaurants offer entertainment and some tourist hotels stage Nepalese folk dances and musical shows. There are casinos with baccarat, chemin de fer and roulette, open 24 hours a day, every day, at some 5-star hotels in Kathmandu.

There are bargains for those careful to avoid fakes and the badly made souvenirs sold by unscrupulous traders. Popular buys include locally made clothes such as lopsided topis (caps), knitted mittens and socks, Tibetan dresses, woven shawls, Tibetan multicoloured jackets and men’s diagonally fastened shirts; and pashmina (fine goat’s-wool blankets), khukri (the national knife), saranghi (a small, four-stringed viola played with a horse-hair bow), Tibetan tea bowls, papier mâché dance masks, Buddhist statuettes and filigree ornaments, bamboo flutes and other folk objects. Shopping hours: Sun-Fri 1000-2000 (shops are usually closed on Saturday).