A rim village that became the valley's viewpoint
For most of its history, Nagarkot was a farming area on the edge of the valley, its ridge covered in forest and scattered with small settlements of Tamang and Brahmin-Chhetri families. Its position above the old trade route through Sankhu, the valley's north-eastern gate towards Tibet, gave it strategic value, and the name itself is often read as the fort of the city.
Its modern story began with the view. As tourism grew from the 1970s, travellers and Kathmandu residents came up to see sunrise over the Himalaya. In the 1990s the first resort hotels opened, among them Club Himalaya, set on what is now called Windy Hill. Lodges, guesthouses and restaurants followed along the ridge, and Nagarkot became a standard stop for first-time visitors to Nepal.
The 2015 earthquake damaged many houses in the villages around Nagarkot. Rebuilding has gone on since, and the ridge has also seen new hotels and roads. Away from the main road, though, the farmland, forest and village paths remain much as they were, and the morning view is unchanged, still the reason people make the climb.
