Those living in urban and suburban areas can usually pursue whatever it is they are interested in. We also have the choice of experimenting with a bunch of subjects and fields before we actually settle on one as our ultimate career or profession choice. But that is not the case for most Nepali kids who either live in rural regions or cannot afford such privilege due to their families’ financial situation. Changing Stories is working to equalize this playing field.

With numerous restaurants and cafes cropping up in almost every street of Kathmandu, we are spoilt for choice where different cuisines are concerned. From Mexican and Italian to Chinese and Indian, restaurants around town serve all types of food. There are even many authentic Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants in Kathmandu.

17-year-old Nima Yangchey started her musical journey through Instagram. Though she has now moved on to producing regular YouTube content, Instagram was the platform that gave her the initial boost. Yangchey currently has 10k subscribers on her YouTube channel, 700k+ views on her videos and has recently crossed the 15k followers mark on Instagram.

Food Truck Park officially opened its doors this Nepali New Year just a few weeks ago and already this quaint place is trending all over social media attracting many new customers everyday.

Niusha Karki is Nepal’s first travel blogger and possibly one of Nepal’s first instagrammers too. She has been blogging about her travel escapades since 2015 and has been on Instagram since 2012. Her first memory of travelling is of when she was just two-years old and, since then, she has been travelling every year. In the recent years, she has actually been on multiple trips every year.

Two years ago, when 30-year-old Swarupa Basnet decided to get married to her boyfriend of eight years, the couple wanted to keep the wedding ceremony simple and share the expenses equally between their families. This concept was unheard of and many people from her now husband’s side of the family and even her own relatives mocked them for it back then.

Manita Shrestha won the gold medal during the First Inter Club National Weightlifting Championship recently held at the Sports Hive in Jhamsikhel, Lalitpur. Among the participants for the championship were people from the army, police and civilians, all with a common goal of performing well – which in turn qualifies a handful of them for the upcoming Asian Games and South Asian Games.

In the past decade, a lot of coffee shops and restaurants have popped up in Kathmandu and many have quite unique stories behind their establishment. Mo:Mo la Palpasa, located at JP Road in Thamel, is a quaint little place that has been gaining popularity among the locals as well as tourists because of the hygge-esq ambience it radiates. The two founders of the cafe talk us through their journey of starting Mo:Mo la Palpasa and the future plans they have for it.

Initiating a business venture and successfully managing all aspects of it are strenuous and often requires a lot of patience and courage. Add in a multitude of business ventures coordinated through the same company and all the businesses being new ideas at that and that responsibility quotient goes several notches higher. But Amit Khanal, chief executive officer of Yellow Planet Multipurpose Company, has been doing just that for more than two months now and, though the task at hand is mind boggling, he intends to give it his best shot.

20-year-old Arpana Tamang who has been a DJ for just four years now is perhaps one of the biggest names in the music industry, playing at major national and international venues and festivals.

Ojaswi Baidya, Loonibha Manandhar, Sampanna Shrestha, and Susan Chakradhar met back in December 2016 as participants for the Greenovation Challenge, which the quartet won later in November 2017 for their entrepreneurial startup Tyre Treasures. Although, Shrestha had initially come up with an idea of recycling and reusing waste produced by each household, Baidya and Manandhar are the only active executive members of the organization right now. The innovating and unique idea pitched by Shrestha was later worked on and they started making use of non-biodegradable inorganic waste – primarily tyres – to create interesting products, which can be used for various purposes.

Neha Christopher always loved to dance but it was actually her mother who steered her towards exploring the therapeutic side of dancing. Now a certified dance and movement therapist, Christopher came to Nepal sometime in August 2017. Since then, she has already facilitated six different workshops in collaboration with six different organizations including Rupy’s International School, Pushpanjali School, and Katha Ghera and she is all geared up for an upcoming four-month long workshop with The British School students.

There is no escaping advertisements these days. Advertisements are not limited to TV infomercials now. Ads can be created and branded in or through all kinds of – but not limited to – digital media because of the colossal advancement in technology in the last two decades. And all these ads are – in almost all cases – created by marketing agencies. One such agency, in particular, that is steadily gaining popularity in the advertising world in Nepal is Project A.

A couple of weeks ago, Mansi Dahal posted on her social media accounts that she would be publishing an anthology titled No Names But Connections. This news, of a 20-year-old Nepali publishing limited copies of a collection of poems in English in New York, travelled all the way to the other side of the world and throughout Nepal.

Manish Khadgi had been working as a photographer for the past six years – a fashion photographer for the last few years at that – when he decided to launch his own fashion brand. The driving force behind this was the fact that Khadgi saw a lack of quality fashion clothing for men in the country. And so, Ramp was born. Though the clothing brand, Ramp, was initially focused on catering to men and bringing about some much-needed change in men’s fashion, Khadgi quickly decided not to cater exclusively to men and included clothes for women in their fashion line as well.

Rhea Pradhan was looking for something to do in her free time post SLC and that’s when fashion blogging caught her fancy and she entered the blogging scene. This was back in 2011, and terms like digital influencers and vloggers were not a thing – even blogging was a relatively new scene. Pradhan happened to stumble upon Le Happy blog by Luanna Perez-Garreaud and, inspired by her individuality and how well Perez-Garreaud expressed herself through her style in her blogs, Pradhan wanted to do something similar and jumped on the blogging bandwagon.

We were curious about Icekraft because, in the past few months, our Instagram feeds have been flooded with pictures of the place and their tempting food. Located in Kamaladi, Kathmandu, Icekraft is primarily an ice cream parlor but they also serve waffles, fries, pancake and corn. The Week went to Icekraft to sample a few of their popular food items to evaluate whether it really lives up to its Instagram hype and we were in for quite a pleasant surprise.

For those who missed earlier performances, The Vagina Monologues is back. V-Day Kathmandu’s The Vagina Monologues Alumni are hosting the 2018 Vagina Monologues, which is the fourth rendition of The Vagina Monologues being conducted in Kathmandu as a fundraiser for an original Nepali production [this summer].

Thinley Lhamo is soon going to make her debut in the Nepali film industry through the highly anticipated movie, Nakaa, starring alongside the likes of Bipin Karki, Robin Tamang, Sajan Thapa Magar, and Shiva Mukhia (from The AXE Band).

Despite protests and campaigns against discriminations of all kinds, we still get to see a lot of it on a daily basis and then there’s a discrimiation we rarely give mucn thought to, much less talk about and condemn: Discriminating among breeds and gender of animals. Sharmila Karki, founder of PAWsitive Hands, says that the questions that irk her the most are to do with inquiries about breed and gender of dogs before adopting or abandoning them.