From the Mahendra Highway, the Dhankuta road winds languidly through forest as it ascends the Bhabar, the sloping alluvial zone between the Tarai and the foothills. DHARAN , 16km north of the highway, sits a slightly cooler 300m above the plain.

Dharan hit world headlines in 1988 when a powerful earthquake killed 700 people and flattened most of the town. Disaster struck a second time at the end of 1989 when the British Army , foreseeing forces reductions, pulled out of Dharan and handed its Gurkha Camp back to HMG. The withdrawal dealt a blow to would-be recruits here, who must now travel all the way to Pokhara to compete for even fewer places in the regiments. Fortunately, Dharan has bounced back smartly. Earthquake-damaged areas have now been almost entirely rebuilt, the city's western half has actually grown into quite a neat little enclave of retired Gurkhas' bungalows, and the former Gurkha Camp has been reincarnated as a fancy medical institute.

Dharan's bazaar remains as earthily Nepali as ever, though. For many people throughout the eastern hills this is still the proverbial Bright Lights, where they come to sell oranges by the sackload and spend their profits on pots and pans, radios, watches, clothing, haircuts and bottles of Urvashi from well-stocked spirits stalls. In the area northeast of the central Bhanu Chowk, you'll see hill women investing the family fortune in gold ornaments - the age-old safe haven - and shops selling silver coins to be strung into necklaces. If you happen to be in the market for a cauldron, check out the brass-workers' quarter further east.

A Rs25 riksha or tempo ride west of the bus park, the British Gurkha Camp (as it's sometimes still called) is now officially the home of the B. P. Koirala Health Science Institute , which runs an extensive medical teaching facility and, rolling in Indian aid, is throwing up new buildings all over the place. You can wander freely around the grounds now, which you wouldn't have been allowed to do when the Gurkhas occupied it, and although there's not much to see, the long, tree-lined lanes are blessedly quiet - it's like a university campus during summer break. The southeastern portion of the camp used to be occupied by the Dharan Country Club, complete with a nine-hole golf course, but this appears not to have survived the handover from BAPSO to the institute.

The modest Dantakali Mandir occupies a low ridge just east of the bazaar, and is accessed by an easy path that continues on to two other temples to Buddhasubbha and Bindyabasini. Chatara , 15km west of Dharan, is the finishing point for rafting trips on the Sun Koshi. Walk an hour north of Chatara and you'll reach the sacred confluence of Barahakshetra , site of a temple to Vishnu incarnated as a boar (Barahi) and an annual pilgrimage on the day of the full moon of October-November.