Dwarika's Hotel

Dwarika's Hotel
Location	Kathmandu, Nepal
Coordinates	27°42′17″N 85°20′34″E / 27.70472°N 85.34278°E / 27.70472; 85.34278
Website	www.dwarikas.com

Dwarika's Hotel is a luxury hotel in Kathmandu, Nepal. It is located in Battisputali. The hotel is a collection of various traditional heritage Nepali houses that congregate around courtyards and considered one of Nepal's finest hotels. The hotel, a 76-room 5-star luxury hotel that welcomes over 3000 visitors a day, took over 30 years to construct, and has won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Culture Heritage Conservation^[1]

The Hotel is known for its efforts in cultural preservation. It started when founder Dwarika Das Shrestha, on impulse, decided to save old wood carvings from traditional Kathmandu buildings that were about to be thrown away. Later put into a room that housed a single masters student from abroad, the carvings garnered such interest that Shrestha found the idea of constructing rooms with traditional wood carvings, and thus began a venture that is now one of Nepal's finest hotels. Shrestha also revived the technique of "Dacchiapa," the Newari traditional method of making carved bricks.^[2]

The hotel is still managed by the Shrestha family, and now possesses one of the biggest private woodwork collections in the world. The restoration workshop that the late Dwarika Shrestha established in order to revive wood carvings as early as 1962 is still in operation, although only used for significantly damaged pieces^[3]

Literature

• William Warren, Jill Gocher (2007). Asia's legendary hotels: the romance of travel. Singapore: Periplus Editions. ISBN 978-0-7946-0174-4. 

External links

• Dwarika's Hotel Homepage
• Photographs

References

1. ^ "UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation: 2006 Awards Jury Commendation for Innovation Entries". http://www.unescobkk.org/culture/world-heritage-and-immovable-heritage/asia-pacific-heritage-awards-for-culture-heritage-conservation/previous-heritage-awards-2000-2009/2006/project-entries/awards-jury-commendation-for-innovation/nepal/. 
2. ^ "Interaction with Ambica Shrestha of Dwarika's Hotel and Resorts". http://e4nepal.com/social-entrepreneur/ambica-shrestha/. Retrieved 3 July 2011. 
3. ^ "Dwarika's Story". http://www.dwarikas.com/heritage/dwarikas-story.html. .