I always thought of unspoilt valleys, snow-capped mountains, friendly Nepalese people, and for some reason yaks when I thought of Nepal. My expectations were perhaps a little naïve, because Kathmandu is so much more than that! It is equal parts miserable, memorable, and fascinating.

The capital of Nepal, stands at an elevation of 1,400 metres in the Himalayan foothills in central Nepal, wedged between China and India, and counts as the gateway to the Nepalese Himalayan mountains. It has as an urban population of 1.5 million, and is the centre of Nepalese history, art, culture, and economy, with a multiethnic, predominantly Hindu and Buddhist population. The language spoken in Nepal is Nepalis but English is widely understood.

We booked our porter-guide for our upcoming Annapurna circuit trek through a local travel agency. Harka, it’s manager, a Kathmandu native, felt the Chinese were going their best to throw Nepal into turmoil. He felt his home city had become unliveable. I don’t know enough about the political situation, but I can account for the fact that whatever waste disposal system they do have really isn’t working.

Rubbish was piled up in pungent, colourful heaps at every corner, the riverbanks were lost from sight, covered in thick layers of trash, and the river consisted of a tragically small trickle of polluted water.

To say the city is overwhelming is putting it mildly. It is pure sensory overload, and oftentimes miserable in its constant exposure to chaos, sickness and poverty. I watched a beggar, his limbs deformed by leprosy, cowering in the rubble of a derelict building, while street kids rummaged through the mountains of rubbish at his feet. Traffic choked the metropolis in exhaust fumes, blaring horns, and dust clouds that never seemed to settle.

Irritated cows turned in circles on their continuous but fruitless search for green grass. And at a major intersection, a police officer tried to regulate traffic, wildly waving his arms around at the hundreds of rickety, worn-out cars hurtling towards him, until I saw him give up, throw his arms in the air one last time, and leave the chaos to itself. It was bedlam!

I honestly had trouble picturing the pretty town that Kathmandu, I have been told, once was. I found it unsettling at first, and when the feeling wouldn’t leave we fled to the sanctuary of our hotel, a haven of calm tidiness, filled with hammocks and loungers in a garden full of pretty flowers. We sought more normalcy, in nearby Thamel, a reasonably clean tourist area, with nice restaurants, bakeries, and cafes.

My normalcy admittedly, and one that likely doesn’t extend to a lot of the locals’ daily hardships, in a country where the GDP per capita in 2010 was US$689 (World Bank; compared to US: US$52,787) and a quarter of the population lives on less than US$1.25 a day.

There is a strong dichotomy that underlies this city. There are delightful, colourful pyramids of artfully arranged shining, succulent fruit in carts but they lean against the backdrop of decrepit homes.

There is a joyful, spiritual intensity firmly embedded in Nepalese everyday life and its people radiate an exhilarating energy but this contrasts starkly against the exhaustion of inescapable poverty and corruption. I cut to the bone.

We hired a local guide and visited Swoyambhu, Patan and Kathmandu Durbar Square, Pashupatinath Temple, Bhaktapur, and Boudhanath.