Kathmandu or Lhasa?

Neither city offers anywhere to swim. Kathmandu's valley rivers are unfit for bathing, and Lhasa's great lakes are icy, high and sacred. The water you will remember is the white water for rafting about three hours from Kathmandu, or the turquoise of Yamdrok seen from the Kamba La. In either city, a swim means a hotel pool.

Kathmandu eats much better. Beyond dal bhat and momos, it has Newari cooking (buffalo choila, bara pancakes, yomari dumplings and rice beer) in small places around the bazaars, Patan and Kirtipur. The Tibetan quarter at Boudhanath also serves the thukpa and butter tea you would go to Lhasa for.

Lhasa's table is honest but narrow: yak momos, tsampa, yoghurt and salty butter tea, with few fresh vegetables. Its one real highlight is the sweet tea house, where locals spend hours over milky tea and noodles. It is good for a few days, but not a reason to come.

Both are outstanding, but in different ways. Kathmandu's heritage is spread across the valley. You get three things in sequence: the temple crowd of Durbar Square, the Kumari's house and the courtyard shrines of Asan, then the stupas of Swayambhunath and Boudhanath, the open cremations at Pashupatinath, and Patan with the finest square and the best museum for Newari craft.

Lhasa is more concentrated and more overwhelming. The Potala, the Jokhang with pilgrims prostrating on the Barkhor, and the hillside monastery towns of Drepung and Sera can be seen in three or four days. Kathmandu rewards slow wandering, while Lhasa is about a few monumental places and the devotion around them.

Kathmandu has a real night out, although it all happens in Thamel: rooftop bars, pool halls and a few dance clubs full of trekkers marking the end of a route, mostly winding down around midnight. Elsewhere in the city, evenings are quiet.

Lhasa is quieter still, partly because alcohol hits harder at altitude. A usual evening is a walk around the lit Barkhor and a beer in a traveller café. Its own local form of going out is the nangma hall, part bar and part dance floor, where Tibetan pop and group dancing run late.

The two are close, but the landscapes could hardly be more different. Kathmandu is green: there is oak and rhododendron forest in Shivapuri Nagarjun, and snow peaks at sunrise from Nagarkot or Dhulikhel. You can also fly to Everest and back in about an hour, raft rivers and start treks to Langtang. It also asks nothing of your lungs.

Lhasa is the bare, brown, high plateau under an intense blue sky. Its prize sights are Yamdrok Lake and the even higher Namtso. Kathmandu has the slight edge because days of acclimatising and the need for guides limit how much of Lhasa's landscape you can actually use.

From Kathmandu you go out to towns, and from Lhasa to monasteries. The trip that matters from Kathmandu is Bhaktapur, a whole royal town of brick squares and potters, which you can combine with the carvings of Changu Narayan. After that, Kirtipur, Bungamati and Panauti are gentler variations on Newari village life, and traffic slows every outing.

Lhasa's outings are religious sites rather than places where people simply live: Ganden in its mountain bowl, the cliff caves of Drak Yerpa, Tsurphu up its quiet valley and Samye in sandy country to the south-east. Each one is striking, and all are reached by hired car with a guide.

Neither city is easy with young children, but Kathmandu is the gentler of the two. The monkeys at Swayambhunath, the prayer wheels at Boudhanath, the small zoo in Patan and the Garden of Dreams give children something to enjoy, even if traffic, dust and care with food make days tiring.

In Lhasa the problem is altitude sickness, which small children may not be able to describe. On top of that come the Potala's steep stairs, dim chapels where quiet is expected and basic medical care. Both suit older children best, in Lhasa's case robust teenagers with a real interest in Tibet.

Lhasa is the easier city to move around in. The Potala, Jokhang and Barkhor are a short walk apart, taxis and buses reach Drepung, Sera and the Norbulingka without trouble, and pedicabs work the old town. The only real effort is the thin air, which makes stairs hard for the first days.

Kathmandu's old city and Thamel are walkable, but you share the lanes with motorbikes, there is no metro and the minibuses are hard to work out. Visitors depend on taxis and ride-hailing, and crossing to Patan or Boudhanath can drag on in heavy, dusty traffic.

Kathmandu has more to buy, and it is spread across distinct districts. Thamel has pashmina, felt goods, singing bowls and trekking gear, Boudhanath has Tibetan carpets and thangkas, and Patan sells bronze and copper statues cast in its own workshops. You bargain everywhere.

Lhasa's shopping centres on the Barkhor and is more devotional: prayer wheels, butter lamps, incense, turquoise and coral jewellery, and Tibetan knives. Much of it is mass-produced, so look closely. Beyond the old quarter there are only ordinary malls.

Kathmandu is about as cheap as travel gets. Guesthouses, meals and taxis cost very little. Within the city, the noticeable costs are the entry fees foreigners pay at the Durbar Squares, Pashupatinath and Bhaktapur, and imported drinks. The large sums go on what lies beyond it: trekking permits and mountain flights.

Day-to-day spending in Lhasa is low as well, but the way a trip is put together changes the total. A licensed guide, a hired car for every excursion and steep fees at the main sights put the overall cost of a stay in the middle range. Summer hotel prices add to it.

In both cities stage life is thin, and the best performances follow the religious calendar. Kathmandu has a little more on most nights: bands playing rock and Nepali folk in Thamel, dance dinner shows, Indra Jatra's masked dances and an autumn jazz festival.

Lhasa's distinctive art is Ache Lhamo, masked Tibetan opera, staged most famously at the Norbulingka during the Shoton festival in late summer. Outside that season there are nangma halls and the chanting of monks at morning prayers.

Kathmandu is the better place to slow down. Kopan and the other monasteries above Boudhanath run meditation and Buddhist philosophy courses for foreigners. Yoga, Ayurveda and singing-bowl sessions are easy to find, and massage is offered on every Thamel lane. Calm means stepping out of the noise into a monastery or garden.

Lhasa's quiet is real, but the altitude disturbs sleep and rest in the first days. It is found in a dawn kora with pilgrims, a monastery courtyard or a slow afternoon in a tea house. It does have one thing Kathmandu lacks: the hot springs at Yangpachen, a couple of hours away.