A quite oasis amidst the rush of the city, this place projects a beautiful intermingling of the ancient culture and the modern way of living. Kathmandu Durbar Square or Basantapur Durbar Chetra is located at the center of the city and is one of the three royal palaces (Durbar Square) in the Kathmandu valley. This area held the palaces of Malla and Shah Kings who ruled over the city. Now, it is a popular destination for national as well as international tourists.

It’s Friday – that time of the week when you start looking forward to relax and unwind. But aren’t you tired of doing the same thing weekend after weekend? How about doing something meaningful and fun at the same time to make sure you are completely recharged when you head to work when the weekend is over? Don’t just waste time by binge watching a series or whatsapping with your friends all day long. Here, The Week presents 10 exciting ways you can utilize your weekend and make it super exciting

The Workshop Eatery was opened in 2015 by food enthusiasts who have worked in the food industry in both United Kingdom and Australia. They wanted to start a burger trend and then, looking at the American expats in the city, introduced tex-mex food instead which is an American take on Mexican food. Located at Kupondol, opposite Tranquility spa, the lunch hour rush here is something you should avoid if you can. Choose any other time of the day to relax and have a hearty meal.

You might be surprised but it is actually very easy to stick to your six-month-old New Year fitness resolution once you find an exercise plan that excites you. Having understood this, it seems Gymkhana at Dharapati, Maharajgunj is seeking to help people with just that. To amp up the valley denizens’ enthusiasm for working out, they are introducing Muay Thai here.

Toothache, bleeding gums, and sensitivity are a few common problems that most of us battle with on a regular basis. Experts say that these problems occur when we don’t brush our teeth properly. The Week’s Swasti Gautam spoke to Prof. Dr B.K Shrestha, head of the department of Dentistry, Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Maharajgunj and preceptor of post-graduate orthodontics program to find out more about the importance of oral hygiene. Here is a conversation with Dr B.K Shrestha that will help you understand where you are going wrong with your daily dental hygiene routine.

It has been brought to my attention that a lot of you ‘common’folks are getting worked up over my request to acquire a brand spanking new set of wheels to upgrade my motorcade. My demands have been labelled ‘un-presidented’(and here I was thinking this word only applied to Donald Trump), and many of you have accused me of being greedy, apparently because you pay something called taxes and resent funding my extravagance. Ooh, cry me a river!

Back in school I used to love those light abridged classics, short and sweet, just the way I fancied them in my early teens. It was then that I discovered HG Wells and his time-travel machine and I wanted to immediately take it for a ride, racing back to the time of Prithvi Narayan Shah and founding of modern Nepal, about which I had read so much in our course books.

The egotistic decisions of our politicians without careful deliberation of issues at hand have always helped in facilitating the impoverished condition of our country. The recent demand from our madam president, Bidhya Devi Bhandari, for an armored car and vehicles to escort her worth millions is a good an example of such decisions. While our country is facing numerous predicaments due to unemployment, lack of educational facilities, and scarcity of basic resources, this unwarranted want from the president’s office has created a great discontent among youth. The constant harangues of the politicians and the insatiable demands of the leaders are making our youth question the very essence of the newly obtained democratic system. The Week’s Swasti Gautam spoke to some people to find out what they have to say about the president’s expensive concerns about her security while she commutes through the roads of the capital.

Though the tradition of chhaupadi, a practice that prohibits women from participating in regular activities during menstruation as they are considered impure, has received much criticism and even been condemned by health experts, it is still largely prevalent in many parts of Nepal. Despite the many mental, physical, and psychological ramifications of the tradition and repeated campaigns to do away with it, chhaupadi still seems to have a strong hold in our societies. How does the chhaupadi tradition affect our women and communities and why does it still thrive? Arun Bam reports.

Not everybody can dominate the work scene as well as balance the home life, but Girley Agrawal makes it look entirely too easy. Apart from being a mother of two sons, she is also the head of the CG Education Foundation. The Week caught up with her to learn about her career and how she manages to balance both work and personal life with such finesse.