It’s not secret that Nepalis love to eat out. The burgeoning of restaurants and bars stand testimony to that fact. But what’s also true is that, at the end of day, we all want home-cooked dal-bhat. And if you live away from home or go abroad for a trip, you know that feeling when your entire being craves the familiar taste of local spices and textures.

The lure of the wilderness and the mountains is never as strong as it is during this time of the year when someone we know is definitely out there trekking and posting pictures of it on social media. Next year, we promise ourselves. But something or the other holds us back: We’ve never gone on a week-long trek before or we don’t think we will be able to survive without city-life facilities.

Music is generally a big part of festivals. In any kind of gathering, dancing and singing are often how people like to enjoy themselves. For Dashain, we recommend you update your playlist with a few songs and tracks that can help set the right mood. Here we list our favorite five albums for this festive season.

We all love having pets at home. Be it dogs, cats or, if you are brave enough, even snakes, pets add a dose of happiness to our lives. However, when it comes to animals out on the streets, most of us are pretty indifferent and some are even, at times, downright cruel to them. But once in a while, people are willing to consider that the lives of these animals are just as important as their own.

Today art is no longer limited to just paintbrushes and canvases. It has taken a more contemporary form with illustrations. Thanks to computers, the internet, and advancements in software engineering, an artist is no longer limited due to the logistics of colors and space – they can mix up and choose among thousands of methods to bring their ideas to life.

The Vegetarian, a novel written by South Korean writer Han Kang, was published in 2007. Its English translation, however, was made available only in 2015, following which it has managed to make a big global impact. The novel is actually based on a short story Kang had written back in 1997 called ‘The Fruit of My Woman’. The novel follows the story of a part-time graphic artist and homemaker Yeong-hye whose life takes a drastic and dramatic turn after a nightmare results in her becoming a vegetarian.

Have you ever wondered what Kathmandu looked like many years back? Was it just as chock-a-block with concrete houses and plagued with traffic back then as well? A photo exhibition at The Taragaon Museum might answer some of your questions.

Among the many different forms of art, urban sketching is a relatively new one. This art movement is led by Urban Sketchers, a non-profit organization with a global community of artists who draw on location, capturing the life that flows around them, wherever they happen to be.

Let’s suppose that the famous ship sailed by the founder of Athens (according to Greek mythology) Theseus is kept at a harbor as a museum showpiece. As the ship is thousands of years old, its parts keep rotting away, one by one, and each part is replaced with a new one. Eventually, all parts of the ship have been replaced. And so, the question arises, is the restored ship still the same as the original one?

It’s no secret that most of us like to travel and we use every opportunity we get to pack our bags and leave for a new place. But when it comes to making those arduous trips to Gosaikunda and Langtang a reality, we tend to find one reason or the other as to why we can’t make it ‘this’ time and keep putting it off. According to Sangharsha Bhattrai, a software engineer, artist, photographer, and traveler, traveling is all about giving up on making excuses and finding reasons to do it however scary and intimidating it might be instead.

The life of a wildlife photographer is one with many challenges. One has to wake up early, wait for hours on end, and sometimes over days, to capture that one shot and learn about animal migration patterns and their behavior. However, looking at the photographs, one can safely say that the results are worth it.

Samde Sherpa vividly remembers walking along the Annapurna Circuit as a 15-year-old. And ironically, he didn’t like it very much. The year was 2004 and he was accompanying his uncle who was acting as a trekking guide to a French team. “It was too much walking for me back then,” he recalls. However, after he returned home from the trip, he felt this sense of peace and calm like never before. And so, he decided he would go back to the hills and mountains as an adult.

At the central jail in Sundhara, Kathmandu, there are around 2,750 prisoners. Out of them, 150 work at the textile factory located within the premises. The ‘Kendriya Karagar Karkhana’ (Central Jail Factory) is where they work from 10 in the morning to four in the afternoon for a meager daily stipend. This is from where most fabric items like bed sheets, towels, tablecloths, handkerchiefs and the likes are supplied to various government institutions, hospitals, and the Nepal Airlines Corporation.

All of us come across various poems and satires of all kinds – on life, love, and heartbreaks – written at the back of jeeps and trucks on a fairly regular basis. Most of the times, they make us laugh for a minute or two and keep our commute interesting, and then we forget all about it. The most we might do is share a few lines we remember with friends. However, Abhushan Gautam sees these lines as pieces of literature that need to be documented lest they be forgotten as just random ramblings.

There is no dearth of online food delivery options in Kathmandu. Of late, there seems to be many new services coming up. However, when it comes to consistent, healthy and genuinely good food, the numbers tend to drop low. When cooking becomes a hassle or when you don’t have enough time to go out to eat at work, food delivery is the only way to go. Meals on Wheels Ktm is one such food delivery service that is not only efficient but delivers good, homely food at affordable rates.

Essentially a doodle is a drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. You can find yourself doodling when talking to someone on the phone, while listening to a lecture in class, or during a boring presentation at work. Everyone almost always has some form of scribbles or random sketches on the last pages of their notebooks. However, doodle has grown to become more than just mindless scribbling. It has become a part of an art form that’s actively chosen as a medium by artists to showcase their talent and creativity.

For me, a truly happy day is when I’ve taken a warm shower, put on a cute pair of socks, there’s soft jazz playing low on speakers and I’m curled up with a good book. This is when I tell myself that I’m glad to be alive. Sure, there are those moments in our life, like getting a job you always wanted or acing a test that you struggled with, which make us ecstatic but that subtle, long-lasting feel good always comes from appreciating the little things.

For most of us Nepalis, dumplings are everything. We don’t need an occasion to devour momos from our favorite restaurant. It’s the food for any day and every day. Moreover, we all already know that dumplings don’t get to the stomach, they go to the heart. To cash in on the dumpling-mania that has been going on forever in Nepal, restaurants have begun to serve different types and kinds of dumplings, taking inspiration from all over the world.

Dora Aljoofri, founder of Hang with Dora, a company that sells handcrafted items like plant hangers, nanglo wall decorations, and tassel bag charms to name a few, worked in the publishing industry (writing about fashion) for over a decade before making a career change to full-time crafting and freelance writing.

An art exhibition at The Taragaon Museum, located in Bouddha, Kathmandu, sees a turnout of around 250 people a day. However, according to various museum curators, good turnouts like these are limited to either exhibitions of well-known artists or contemporary art showcases in well-known galleries. If these criteria aren’t met, the circumstances paint fairly bleak picture.