Kathmandu

Kathmandu sits in a valley that was once a lake—and the legend that Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, drained it with a sword stroke captures a geological truth: the Kathmandu Valley is a former lakebed surrounded by the Himalayas, and its fertile soil made civilization possible at 1,400 meters elevation in one of the world's most rugged mountain ranges.

The Newari civilization that built Kathmandu's pagoda temples invented a form that traveled to China, Japan, and Southeast Asia—the multi-tiered pagoda is Nepali in origin, not Chinese. Kathmandu Durbar Square, with its dense concentration of medieval temples, palaces, and courtyards, represents seven centuries of Newari architecture. The 2015 earthquake (7.8 magnitude) destroyed several UNESCO-listed structures and killed nearly 9,000 people across Nepal.

Kathmandu controls the only viable trade route between India and Tibet, a geographic monopoly that sustained Newari merchants for centuries and now sustains the Nepali state. The city's economy depends on tourism (Everest trekking, temple circuits, spiritual tourism), remittances (Nepal is one of the world's most remittance-dependent economies, with overseas workers sending back over 25% of GDP), and aid (foreign development assistance funds a significant portion of government spending).

The Tribhuvan International Airport—Nepal's only international airport until recently—is the bottleneck through which everything enters and leaves. A second airport at Nijgadh has been planned for decades and remains unbuilt.

Kathmandu's air pollution regularly exceeds WHO guidelines by 5-10x, trapped by the valley's bowl geography. The same mountains that make the valley beautiful make it a pollution sink.

The temple-covered valley that Manjushri supposedly drained now floods with people, traffic, and particulate matter. Kathmandu's challenge is whether a city built for 50,000 can function with over a million—and whether the mountains that protect it also suffocate it.