---
title: "Old Pokhara Bazaar: The Town Before Lakeside"
canonical: "https://lokoon.com/blog/old-pokhara-bazaar"
author: "Lokoon"
published: "2026-11-15T04:27:06.233343+00:00"
modified: "2026-11-15T04:27:06.233511+00:00"
kind: "blog"
---

# Old Pokhara Bazaar: The Town Before Lakeside

> Four kilometres north of the tourist strip, Pokhara's original market street has traders' houses, a hilltop temple and a river gorge. A two-hour walk.

Ask most visitors what Pokhara looks like and they will describe a lakeside road of cafés and gear shops. That strip is recent. The original town grew up several kilometres to the north, along a trade route that linked the plains of India with Tibet by way of the Kali Gandaki valley. Its old bazaar is still there, and a walk through it gives the city a past.
A market on the salt route
For centuries, mule caravans carried salt and wool down from the Tibetan plateau and grain, cloth and metalware up from the south. Pokhara sat at a natural meeting point between mountain and lowland traders. In the eighteenth century, Newar merchant families from the Kathmandu Valley were encouraged to settle here, and they brought their architecture with them: brick houses with carved wooden windows, tiled roofs and shopfronts opening directly onto the street.
Fires, modernisation and concrete have taken much of that streetscape, but enough remains to picture it.
Start at Bindhyabasini
Begin at the northern end, at Bindhyabasini Temple, the city's oldest and most revered shrine. It stands on a small wooded hill reached by a broad flight of steps. The white, dome-topped temple is dedicated to a form of the goddess Durga, regarded as Pokhara's guardian deity.
The hilltop is a lively place. Families come for blessings, newly married couples for photographs, and priests perform rituals in a row of small pavilions. Saturdays are busiest, and animal offerings are made on some days. From the terraces there is a clear view north to Machhapuchhre and the Annapurnas on a good morning, with the city spread to the south.
Remove shoes before the main shrine and ask before photographing ceremonies.
Walking south through the bazaar
From the foot of the temple steps, the old market street runs south. This is the section known as Purano Bazaar. Look above the modern signboards for carved window frames and overhanging wooden balconies on the older houses. Shops here sell cloth, cooking pots, gold jewellery, spices and farm tools to people from the surrounding hills, much as they always have.
Around Ganesh Tole and Ram Krishna Tole, a few buildings have been restored, and small shrines sit at the junctions. A little further on is the Bhimsen Temple, a two-tiered pagoda dedicated to the patron deity of Newar traders, with erotic carvings on its roof struts and a small square around it where vegetable sellers set up in the morning.
The walk from Bindhyabasini to Bhimsen takes about twenty minutes without stops.
The gorge at the edge of town
Pokhara is built on a deep bed of gravel, and the Seti River has cut a remarkable slot through it. In places the river runs in a chasm so narrow you could almost step across the top, with milky glacial water roaring far below. One of the easiest places to see this is near Mahendrapul, the bridge in the commercial centre a short distance south-east of the old bazaar. A small viewing spot lets you peer down into the cleft.
It is a five-minute stop, and a reminder of how young and unsettled the landscape here is.
Practical details
- Getting there: a taxi from Lakeside to Bindhyabasini takes fifteen to twenty minutes. Local buses also run north along the main road.

- Time needed: two hours for the temple, the bazaar walk and the gorge.

- Best time: early morning, when the temple is active, the mountains are clear and the market is setting up.

- Food: tea shops and sweet shops along the bazaar sell samosas, fried bread rings, milk sweets and tea. This is a good area to try a local breakfast.

- Dress: modest clothing for the temple.

What to notice
The appeal lies in the contrast with Lakeside. Nobody here is selling treks or yoga classes. Shopkeepers weigh out lentils on balance scales. Tailors work at treadle machines on the pavement. Porters from hill villages rest with their loads at the roadside. It is an ordinary Nepali market town, which is exactly what makes it worth an hour.
Adding to the morning
From the old bazaar you can continue by taxi to the city's museums in the eastern part of town, or head up to the Sarangkot ridge, whose access road begins not far from Bindhyabasini. Combining a dawn visit to Sarangkot with the temple and bazaar on the way down makes an efficient and varied morning before returning to the lake for lunch.
Pokhara existed long before the first trekkers arrived, and the old bazaar is where you can still see why.

Source: https://lokoon.com/blog/old-pokhara-bazaar