Recommendations for places to stay and eat in Kolkata, Kathmandu, and Pokhara

Soda is a readily available alternative to water in India and Nepal

We've posted some hotel and restaurant reviews on Fodors and Trip Advisor, but I thought I'd post here as well in case anyone stumbles upon this blog looking for some practical information on Nepal and India.

Food in Kolkata:

Kolkata is the capital for Bengali food, which we didn't have sufficient time to really sample, unfortunately. I mentioned in a previous post that we ate at Khalsas, which is located at Madge Ln. off of Sudder St., and serves an extensive menu of Indian and Bengali food. I had super spicy chicken tikka and Matt had black lentils and rice. We had a Western-style breakfast at the backpacker haven Blue Sky Cafe, also on Sudder St., where I dug into my chocolate pancake (a crepe drizzled--or should I say drenched--with chocolate syrup) like there was no tomorrow. On our first night, we escaped the stifling humidity in the air-conditioned comfort of Fire & Ice on Middleton St., just east of Chowringee/Ashutosh Mukherijee Rd., an Italian restaurant serving up fine pizzas and even finer focaccia bread drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with rosemary and garlic.

View from our window at the Tibet Guest House

I should mention that in both India and Nepal we drank only bottled water or bottled soda; at Mike's Restaurant in Pokhara they advertised that their tap water had been filtered and was safe to drink, and added a little guilt-trippy comment about plastic bottles, so we tried it, and it looked and tasted just fine. But for the most part, traveling in Southeast Asia isn't like traveling in Europe, where the water may taste a bit different but is, of course, fine to drink; it really is risky (for a pampered Westerner, at least) to drink the water in Nepal or India.

View from K2 (run by the same people as Kilroy's)

Food and accommodation in Nepal:

Kathmandu accommodations - We had a comfortable stay at the Tibet Guest House, which is on the southern edge of the touristy Thamel area. TGH is located on a quiet street and has a great little cafe serving Lavazza coffee, cookies and biscotti. The hotel's restaurant, where we had breakfast a couple of times, was just so-so. The lobby of the TGH is always teeming with new arrivals, many of them trekkers on their way out to the mountains for a few weeks. We stayed there before and after our trip to Pokhara, both times in deluxe rooms. The first room was #404, and offered a panoramic view, the second, #409, had matching, new-ish furniture, and seemed positively huge compared with every other place we'd stayed during this trip.

Kathmandu restaurants - We really enjoyed sampling the variety of food on offer in the Thamel area, from wood-fired pizza at Roadhouse Cafe to burgers and momos at K2, pastry and bagel breakfasts at the Weizen Bakery, tasty Nepalese in the lovely, outdoor courtyard at the Thamel House Restaurant, and succulent cashew chicken and daal bhat at the New Orleans Cafe.

View from the terrace of Mike's Restaurant

Pokhara accommodation - I can't say enough good things about the Glacier Hotel. I came down with a high fever on the long, bumpy ride to Pokhara, so it was a relief to see a representative of the Glacier Hotel waiting for us as soon as we stepped off the bus. When my fever didn't let up after a day and a half of rest, the hotel manager found a good health clinic for us and personally accompanied us there. I saw a doctor who made a diagnosis and gave me appropriate meds. The Glacier was a great place to recuperate; from our garden-facing room, there were lovely views of Lake Fewa and the mountains, and because the hotel is set back a bit off the main drag, it was relatively peaceful and quiet.

Pokhara restaurants - We ate breakfast a couple of times at the Harbor Inn, the hotel's restaurant, but also ventured out to Mike's Restaurant (which serves American-style breakfast from an outdoor seating area with amazing views of the lake). For dinner, we both really liked Cafe Concerto, which serves great Italian food and some of the best gelato I've ever had. Matt loved the momos at a hole-in-the-wall Tibetan place a few storefronts down from our hotel.

Pizza at Cafe Concerto in Pokhara