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Kathmandu is the obvious place to do some serious shopping,especially
 if
its your last stop before leaving the country.
Traditional souvenirs and curios
If you are in the market for a
khukuri knife, you
won't have to go far; street vendors and shops sell them wherever there
are tourists, there is a whole shop devoted to them next to the Ram
Doodle in Thamel.Brass sets of baghchal, Nepal's own "tigers and goat"
game are almost as common. Stalls and shops between Indrachowk and Asan
sell all manner of household
brassware.
A couple of small shops in Thamel and Khichapokhri (south of New Road)
are devoted to Nepalese
musical instruments,
while hack minstrels peddle
sarangi (traditional
fiddles) around Thamel and cheap bamboo
flutes in Durbar
Square.
Vendors in Basantapur Square and Thamel flog vast arrays of Tibetan-style
curios. It's all
attractive stuff, but much of what is claimed to be silver, turquoise,
coral or ivory is fake, and virtually none of it is antique. Gold- and
silversmiths in the old city (mainly north and west of Indrachowk)
produce fine ethnic
jewellery tourist
shops sell cheaper but perhaps more wearable ornaments, usually made with
white metal.
Gem sellers are
grouped mainly at the east end of New Road. The pote pasal near
Indrachowk is the place to go for traditional
glass beads. Boxes
and
embroidered bags of
Nepalese tea, sold in many shops in the tourist areas, make good gifts.
Countless boutiques sell identical ranges of Kashmiri
handicrafts,
predominantly silk
carpets, chain-stitch
tapestries, and various items made out of papier mache,
soapstone and
sandalwood.
Contemporary crafts
Nepali artisans are turning out an ever-expanding range of contemporary
crafts that adapt traditional materials or motifs to foreign tastes
unusual forms of dhaka and other
textiles, beautiful
greeting cards of handmade paper, Maithili-style
paintings and papier
mache items, toys, dolls in ethnic dress, ready-made clothes, woollens,
leather goods, batiks, scented candles, and ingenious articles out of
bamboo and
pine needles.
Clothing and fashion
Thamel and Freak Street are fun of shops selling
wool sweaters,
jackets, mittens and socks, which are among Nepal's best bargains -just
steer clear of the cheap
garments, which fall
apart at the seams.
Similarly inescapable around here are kit bags,
caps and other
fashion items made from black felt with Tibetan rainbow fringes. Hardly
fashionable, though many people lap them up, are
T-shirts and
ready-made clothes. Tailors, usually found inside the same clothing
shops, are skilled at machine-embroidering
designs on clothing.
Shawls and scarfs made of
pashmina, the Nepali
equivalent of cashmere, are the cheapest at Indrachowk. Topi, the caps
that Nepali men wear in much the same way Westerners wear ties, are sold
around Ason Tol.
You will find sari material around Indrachowk.
Thangka and other fine art
It's hard to say where to look for bargains on
Thangka and paubha ,
since there are so many standard depictions and levels of quality that
any comparison of prices is often an apples-and-oranges exercise. The
biggest grouping of dealers is in Makhan Tol, north of Durbar Square, but
there are many others along Tridevi Marg and else where in Thamel.
Books
Kathmandu has a great collection of
English-language bookshops, and browsing them is one of the city's main
forms of nightlife many stay open till l0 pm. Most are nameless
holes-in-the-wall.
Music
There's no lack of music around Kathmandu to keep your Walkman humming.
Several shops in Thamel sell cheap
rock/pop reissues and
new agey East-West mood music on tape and
CD, as well as some
traditional Nepali
folk and classical compilations on tape. Countless
cassette stalls
throughout the city sell Nepali folk and pop, and Indian pop and
movie
soundtracks at these
stalls will be less than half what the tourist places charge, but finding
what you're looking for will be harder if you don't speak (or read)
Nepali.
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