For the past five years, Samip Mainaly has traveled the highs and the lows of Nepal. He has traversed through the familiar trails of the country as well as been to the lesser-known places. As a travel guide, leading groups of travelers to unknown areas of Nepal is what he does best but he is a travel enthusiast himself and confesses he can’t just stay at one place for too long.

Granted there are many nurseries in Kathmandu from where you can purchase plants of all kinds. But The Plant Shop at Gyan Mandala in Jhamsikhel, Lalitpur, is where you must go if you want to bring one home only after understanding how to take proper care of it. Maya Ghale, proprietor of The Plant Shop, will tell you exactly how to tend to the plant you decide to buy before you take it home.

Nirmal Dhimal, 19, was lazily scrolling through the YouTube recommendation list when he stumbled upon a song. So intrigued he was by this song called Growl by EXO and its music video that he immediately clicked on the band’s next recommended song. One song led to another and, by the end of the hour, Dhimal claims that he was hooked onto K-pop (Korean pop music).

What should have been a sweet sixteen turned into a bitter nightmare but what birthed off it was the most extraordinary thing to have ever happened to Sristi KC who lost her sight to a bad case of an eye-medication overdose at the tender age of 16. What was a life of color abruptly turned into an abyss of darkness that made no sense to the teenager. Why was it that light was sucked off her life and all she had now was an asphyxiating pitch-black embrace?

Freddo means cool or cold in Italian and when you step inside Freddo Café you will come to see that the quaint little café really lives up to its name. It might have been just three months that Freddo Café has relocated at Thamel (moving from its previous Kamal Pokhari location) but it’s already a popular hub among the crowd that throngs to Thamel on a daily basis.

Beauty and body perfection have commonly been associated with women. The issue related to women body objectification and dissatisfaction has long been in discussion in Nepal. The conversation is obvious because traditional patriarchal ideology and gender roles have made women behave and want to look a certain way. But with the portrayal of ‘ideal’ male bodies in the media in the recent times, young men in Nepal too are suffering from body image issues. However, the conversation is lacking where men are concerned.

All of us role played some version of the game ‘chor-police’ (cops and robbers) while growing up. In our minds, there was a clear demarcation of the black (evil) and white (good) in terms of cops and robbers embodying certain values – it was always the good police vs. the bad robbers. Those were much simpler times. Now, if we fast forward to the current climate, it is really hard to tell the good guys from the bad. In every incident of note from the immediate past, whether it is the gold smuggling case or the Nirmala Pant rape and murder case, our cops have been found wanting – in terms of their character, competence, and duty to the public. In colloquial Nepali, ‘chor-police’ now sounds more like a description of our entire police force rather than a kid’s game.

If you love ice cream but would like a healthier alternative, then head to Sweet Fix at Freak Street in Basantapur, Kathmandu. The gourmet popsicles are sure to satisfy your cravings and leave you wanting just one more. Started by 23-year-olds, Shreya Upadhyay and Kritika Lamsal, Sweet Fix serves popsicles of different flavors and each, we vouch, is a delight.

If you are active on either Instagram or Facebook, you might have seen these cute little bottles in the shape of filament tubes branded Blenders. These are the bottles of the first Nepali milkshake brand ‘Blenders, The Milkshake Bar’. Launched early May this year, currently the milkshake brand has a single outlet at City Center in Kamalpokhari, Kathmandu, with plans of opening another outlet during Dashain this year.

Everybody likes a sweet treat. But, in Nepal, we have always had limited options. If it’s not ice cream, then it’s usually a toss between imported chocolates or cake. It needn’t be so anymore because some young Nepalis have taken it upon themselves to revamp the dessert scene.