Nepal

Eight of the world's ten highest mountains are in Nepal, and the country has built an entire infrastructure - lodges, trails, permits, tea houses - around the fact of being at the foot of them. The Annapurna Circuit and the Everest Base Camp trek are among the most walked long-distance routes on earth, for reasons that are not complicated: the mountains are that good. Kathmandu's Durbar Squares hold a density of temples, courtyards and living heritage that survived the 2015 earthquake badly and is being rebuilt with considerable determination. Beyond the Himalayan routes, the Terai lowlands in the south hold Chitwan and Bardia - rhinos, tigers, elephants - visited by a fraction of those who come for the mountains.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: trekking permit logistics, Kathmandu's backstreet temples, Bardia wildlife timing and the tea house dal bhat that tastes different at 4,000 metres in a way that is not entirely explained by altitude.