Workshop Visits

We have hosted visits with somewhere over two hundred buyers, collectors, and curious travellers in the last fifteen years. Most come on a day's notice, a few plan months in advance. The form of a visit is more or less the same: tea, a walk, a lane, a workshop, more tea, an honest conversation with the maker through a translator we trust. No rehearsed tour, no gift shop at the end. The maker is at work; you are a guest in their workshop.

What a half-day looks like

Most visits run three to four hours in the Kathmandu valley, including travel between workshops. A typical itinerary:

• 09:30 · we collect you from your hotel by car.
• 10:00 · first workshop in Patan — Pemba Sherpa's singing-bowl workshop, three generations on the same lane. Pemba hammers a bowl in front of you; you strike each of his current pieces and feel the difference between tunings.
• 11:30 · walk fifteen minutes through Patan Durbar Square — temples, the lanes of the metal-smiths, the courtyards where the dye is mixed.
• 12:00 · second workshop — the Tara Cooperative women's weaving studio. Twenty-four weavers, mostly working pashmina and hand-embroidered silk. You see a piece on the loom from the first knot.
• 13:30 · lunch with one of the makers at a Newari home kitchen — dal bhat, sometimes momos, always tea.
• 15:00 · return to your hotel.

Half-day: €80 per person · transport, translator, and tea included; lunch separately ~€8 per person.

Longer formats

• Full day · €140 per person, lunch included. Adds Bhaktapur's Newari carpenter guild — pegged joinery, no nails — and the wood-carving courtyards. 09:00 to 18:00.
• Two days. Adds Boudhanath stupa and Karma Lama's bowl workshop, plus a morning at the brass casters' lane.
• Three days, plus Langtang foothills · €420 per person. Adds an overnight at a Tamang village outside Dhunche where pashmina is combed from the Chyangra goats each spring. This is a real overnight: the road is bumpy and the rooms are simple. We do not recommend it during monsoon (June–August) or deep winter (January–February).

How to arrange

Email us at least 5 working days before your preferred date with: (i) when you are in Kathmandu, (ii) how many people, (iii) which crafts interest you most, and (iv) any mobility considerations — some lanes are stepped and narrow. We confirm the itinerary within 48 hours.

What's included

• Air-conditioned car and driver for the day
• English / Nepali translator, where the maker prefers their first language
• Lunch with the maker on full-day and longer visits (vegetarian by default; tell us about allergies)
• Bottled water, and masks for the dustier workshops
• A small introductory packet — maker names, lane addresses, a brief history of each craft you will see

What's not included

Workshop entry fees (none), tips for makers (their preference, not expected, usually declined), tickets to Durbar Square if your itinerary passes through (small entry charge for foreigners, around NPR 1,000), and the unavoidable five minutes you will spend standing very still while a Newari grandmother insists on tying a thread around your wrist for protection. (You should let her.)

Photography

Most makers welcome photographs of their hands at work and their workshops. A few prefer not to be photographed themselves — we tell you which before you visit. Please always ask the maker directly, even if you have asked us; the answer changes by mood and by day.

What we ask of you

Three things. One: arrive on time — most makers fit visits between their working hours, and a late arrival becomes an apology to a busy person. Two: if you intend to buy at the visit, buy directly from the maker, not through us — we make nothing on this and prefer it. Three: please do not ask the maker to demonstrate a technique they have already shown that morning; if you can see the rhythm of a workshop without interrupting it, you have seen more than most visitors.

Best time of year

• Best: October to early December (after monsoon, clear air, festival energy) and February to April (warm, before the dust season, dyeing in full swing).
• Workable: mid-December to January (cold mornings, woollens in production), late April to May (warm).
• Difficult: June to August (monsoon — wet lanes, fewer workshops at full pace, no road to Langtang).

For trade visitors

If you are a buyer in our Trade Program, the bespoke tier includes one hosted visit each year — full day, two workshops of your choice, lunch with the master of whichever workshop you draw from most often. Coordinate directly with your trade contact.