Dwarika's Hotel

It is a living museum that is energized with a purpose.

A remarkable example is provided by a unique hotel that won the Pacific Asia Travel Associations (PATA) heritage award in 1990… Blended into the rooms and walls are door frames, windows and other fixtures hundreds of years old with exquisite carvings.

And “Dwarika’s Kathmandu Village” has become one of Nepal’s premier – and most unorthodox – hotels. Unorthodox maybe too tame a word, for it is possible that Dwarika’s has no counterpart anywhere in the world.

Perhaps aside from Hotel Saint-Merry in Paris,which has the flying buttress of a neighboring church jutting through one of its rooms, the bathrooms of Dwarika’s maybe the most unusual design statement of any hotel anywhere. In a world of cookie- cutter luxury hotels, Dwarika’s stands completely apart... The hotel is more like a museum where the fortunate few have the chance to spend the night.

An architectural feat, Dwarika’s is also a collector’s paradise. Nowhere else can one bump into surprises at every step or do so much window gazing… The Shresthas have designed their own furniture using traditional motifs. They have restored old chests to make them into tables, made writing desks from old paving stones and elegant mirrors from carved window frames. No two rooms in Dwarika’s are alike and it is a veritable architectural challenge.