Now think of a farm on a terraced hillside, of an ancient fortress and citadel of terracotta tiled roofs and gold finials glinting in sunshine.

Below is a fertile valley, a river meandering through it. The scene is given vast scale by the surrounding great green hills – yet actually merely foothills – rising in the north to the snows of The Langtang Himal.

That farm, fortress, and citadel are Nuwakot: just a 5km detour, a mid-way gem . . . and for how much longer to be barely mentioned by guidebooks? Nuwakot Bazaar is a center-piece of the Nepalese story; of the shaping of far-flung tribes and of trans-Himalayan races into a unified kingdom.