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Strange how most visitors to Nepal can dream themselves into lost turrets of experience while never actually climbing to more than about three times the height of Canary Wharf. For the plain fact is that neither Kathmandu Valley nor the popular trekking routes around Pokhara ascend any higher than a thousand metres. Like Kafka’s castle, the high Himalayas are always there, looking close enough to touch, yet tantalisingly out of reach.

North from Pokhara, you gaze upwards in awe at mighty Annapurna, Goddess of abundance and giver of grain. And beside her rises the sharply masculine Macchapuchhre, called the Fishtail because of his unmistakeable twin peaks. If you trekked on for ten more days, you would feel hardly any closer. After that, you would be in the realm of the professional climbers, allowed there only a few at a time. And in the case of the Fishtail, you would not be allowed there at all. For Macchapuchhre is reserved for the Gods, and no man will ever set foot on that summit. Even the Everest climbers take care to appease the deities with devotional offerings. Long before anybody told the Nepalese that it was the highest peak on earth, they felt strongly that this was where the Gods chose to walk.

Of course, this Shangri-la optimism could only flourish in the clean-swept minds of people living arduous lives in a remote and barren region. And nobody could fail to praise the philosophical outlook, the noble bearing and the gracious manners with which they face these unending hardships. But is this just patronising the poor? Hardly, as there are so many countries where poverty is not at all identified with nobility and grace, so this surely merits a salute. And also because these men are definitely not for patronising, and are long accustomed to being saluted. Who are they exactly? Well, perhaps the name of that small but significant region just to the East of here would be a clue. Gorkha.

Long shelves of books have been written about the victorious Brigade of Gurkhas, possibly embarrassing to those men of few words who may feel that the medals and the battle-honours say it all. Two centuries ago, the British recognized them as the perfect infantry and couldn’t wait to recruit them into special regiments. Today, though in much reduced numbers, they are still there, no less special, and their wages, religiously sent home, remain a valuable source of hard currency for Nepal. These particular Gurkhas, of course, are the elite of their group. But the others, mostly veterans of the Nepalese army, are cut from the same timber - small and strong, fiercely disciplined, fanatically brave.

But the Gurkhas are the first to admit that they have no imagination. Nothing will ever be invented in these hills. (Pokhara never saw a wheel till 1958.) And a cheerful manner is not the same as a sense of humour. If you suggest that the life-giving monsoon would still sweep up from the Bay of Bengal on time, even if the Newari villagers had not propitiated the rain-serpents with dancing and prayer, you will get a very unsmiling response. But then they take a naturally religious view of water, seeing it as the fountainhead of all growing things, the elixir of the Gods.

Drinking-water is also subject to a strange local taboo that you will need to remember when trekking with the Gurkhas. Incredibly, even in combat, these hardened campaigners refuse to drink from a water-bottle that has touched someone else’s lips. When they offer you a swig of water, they expect you to pour it into your mouth without touching. And don’t hand the bottle back with the left hand, or they are obliged to throw it away. For reasons to do with their sanitary habits, the left hand is considered unclean - though, illogically, you may hand something over with both hands, and it is taken as an effusive compliment.

Still you can see why they worship water. The growing season is short enough anyway, and a drought would be no joke. So the monsoon is greeted with joy and thanks when it gets here in July, even when it storms down in a sudden astonishing cloudburst, as it did immediately our plane landed, soaking the pretty garlands of welcome that had just been placed around our necks. But that is a small price to pay for trekking in the kind of peace and privacy that may be hard to find in peak-season. Satisfying too, to see the little stepped terraces from the air, and the normally grey-brown hills green as billiard-cloth.

But however much they appreciate water, there must be times when they privately curse those fast-flowing rivers, sometimes with not a bridge for twenty miles, for they make transport unbearably slow. And of course everything has to be carried on foot. From time to time, you will see a small forest of ripe maize seven or eight feet tall suddenly get up and walk. Don’t worry, it’s a Gurkha. At one terraced hill-village, we amused ourselves by trying to calculate how many man-years it would have taken to carry those great slates up here from the distant quarries, but we gave up.

The summer greenness of these open hills reminds us that this was once the terminus of the hash-route, and the scene of an invasion so bizarre that it may end up as folklore, like the melting footprints of the yeti. These were the Hippies or flower-kids of the Sixties, when an orgy of self-indulgence had to be explained away as the new philanthropy. It took the West a full generation to see through these chuckling guru-millionaires and their layabout disciples (though it was the visa laws that finally sent them packing in 1975.) But the hard-pressed Nepalis must have winced at all this talk of freedom and equality. Even more so at the Hippies’ arrogant claims to spiritual status. For their dizzy new cocktail of mystic faiths and doctrines, laced with lysergic acid, was a long way from the sober spirituality of the mountain people. And there was their cynical invocation of the medieval Tantric cults which appeared to give a priestly nod to the excesses of the flesh. One in particular claimed that sex could help to drive out sin. Hell, what are you waiting for, Man? Come and get stoned all the way to Kathmandu.

Kathmandu. It’s that sort of name, like Timbuktu. End of the line. Edge of the world. Don’t expect a well-planned capital city. Apart from the business quarter to the East (or airport) side, it’s mostly good old Third World squalor and sanctity, the gold among the wreckage. Rickshaws, motorbikes, three-wheeled taxis with old ‘For Hire’ signs, recognizable from vintage London cabs, all making more noise than headway, usually because there’s a cow lying in the road. You wonder why nobody gives the cow a boot in the butt. Then, of course, you remember why. Ancient bazaars of silk and saddlery - try and buy something from the Tibetan refugees - darkened caverns serving strong bottled beer, sumptuous and tasteful hotels, and ceremonial Newari dining. (For eating out - and much else - consult the highly informative Nepal Traveller placed in front of you on Royal Nepal Airlines.) And of course, the only airport on earth where you have to turn your watch back by fifteen minutes, just to remind you that Nepal isn’t in India!

The Hippies’ old stomping ground Freak Street may have sunk back into a dingy lane, but just round the corner from here runs the broad avenue of Basantapur, leading to Durbar Square, a nest of carved temples that alone deserve two or three days of loving scrutiny that you won’t have allowed for. Perhaps this will be your first sight of those three-tiered wedding-cake pagoda roofs. You are seeing them in their glory. From the splendour of the Royal Palace with its imposing towers and courts to various tiny temples dedicated to Ganesh the benign elephant-God or the many-armed Ashta Matrika, there is something friendly and approachable about these places of worship. Why, just over there is a shrine to the God of toothache, not far from the God of backache. Look further, and you even come across a God of lost property. It is refreshing to see so many deities with a twinkle in the eye, and enchanting to make their acquaintance among the reassuring warmth of ancient timber.

To me the greatest of these temples is the House of the Living Goddess, where the real flesh-and-blood Kumari fleetingly appeared at her window, to our delighted amazement. Celebrated as the reincarnation of the virgin deity, she is selected on grounds of beauty and courage at the age of five from one particular family of Newari goldsmiths, and then reigns until puberty, never leaving her little temple, except to preside over festivals. That shaded courtyard, intricately carved with Goddesses, doves and peacocks, suddenly lit by the flawless face of divinity, remains with me as a brilliant cameo of timeless Nepal.

If you liked Durbar Square, you have a treat in store - another Durbar Square within easy reach, just across the sacred Bagmati river in neighbouring Patan, called the city of a thousand golden roofs, and rated as the architectural glory of Nepal. This is like a grander version of the other Durbar Square, and the stone-built Krishna Mandir with its rows of miniature pavilions in the Moghul style is a fantastic sight.

Also within easy reach of central Kathmandu, but on the other side (Northwest) is the legendary hilltop Buddhist temple of Swayambhunath, more than 2500 years old and inhabited by a family of thieving monkeys that may well have been there longer. (Watch your wallet.) You climb three hundred stone steps and suddenly there is the Buddha staring at you from a wall, with vividly painted blue eyes that look uncomfortably like graffiti. Below him is a great white plaster mound representing the four elements. Above him, visible all across the valley, are thirteen gilded rings, representing the thirteen degrees of knowledge. And all round him are great racks of prayer-wheels, turned endlessly by the faithful.

It is fitting to end at Swayambhunath, for here is where it all began. This sacred spot was created as a blue flame in a mythical lotus flower floating on a perfect lake that drained away to uncover the wonderful Kathmandu Valley. And for as long as they continue to come across sea-shells on the slopes of Everest - which they do - I shall believe that anything could happen in Nepal.

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