Utse is a Tibetan hotel and restaurant with a history of over fifty years. It is reminiscent of Tibetan Nepalese culture. The Hotel is located off Thamel in Kathmandu.
‘Utse’ is a Tibetan word and it translates to the Mountain Peak. We believe you walk in to Utse as a guest and leave as a Family.
The Utse Hotel and Restaurant is a Tibetan hotel and restaurant with a history of over fifty years. The old building is reminiscent of Tibetan Nepalese culture. The Hotel is located in Kathmandu near the neighbourhood of Thamel. Thamel began as a medieval site of Buddhist learning, later became a neigbourhood of villas for Kathmandu’s well-off, but was transformed in the 1970s by the arrival of the hippies and budget tourism.
Thamel first became popular during the 1970s and 1980s when hippie cuture appeared in Kathmandu. Unconventional travellers, living out of their backbacks, arrived in the Nepalese capital in hordes, and many of them made Thamel their resident hub while in the city. Over the dacades Thamel turned into a bustling centre of the tourist industry in Kathmandu, a place where everyone from Dharma-seekers to trekkers could feel at home.
Still, the early days of tourism in Kathmandu were limited due to the complete lack of infrastructure, and Nepali society’s unease with foreigners. Utse was first opened in 1971 by a Tibetan rafugee, Ugen Tsering and his wife, Diki, as the first Tibetan restaurant in Thamel. It soon became so popular that it helped develope Thamel into the major tourist area it became. The Utse Hotel and Restaurant is now a major landmark in Thamel.
In 1988 the new Utse Hotel was established. This 58 room hotel was built on the site of a former rice warehouse and wholesale shop for flour, grains and biscuits in the days when King Birendra was in power. Utse is known for preserving the Nepalese arts and culture inspired by the rich Tibetan heritage.
The owner, Ugen Tsering, was a first generation Tibetan refugee, a former guerilla fighter and bodyguard to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who migrated from eastern Tibet to Nepal in 1957 with nothing. He and his wife Diki started from scratch to build their business, while preserving Tibetan hospitality, through hard work.