Board games are quietly catching on in Kathmandu

Nobody announced this. There was no moment when board games arrived in Kathmandu. But there are more tables in this city than there were when we started, and we get to watch it from an odd angle. We know what people ask for, and we know how that list has changed.

What changed in the asking

When we began, almost every request was for a game somebody had seen abroad or seen in a film. Monopoly, Scrabble, Uno, and then a long silence.

Now people arrive with a title they have watched being played. They have seen a group play it online for three hours and they want that specific evening, with their own friends, at their own table. That is a completely different kind of question to be asked, and it changes what is worth stocking.

Why it is happening here in particular

We think there are three reasons, and only one of them is about games.

• An evening out costs money every time. An evening in with four people costs it once, and a box gets played thirty times.
• A game on a table does not need power, a signal or a booking.
• Most households here already have the hard part, which is people. Cousins, flatmates, neighbours who turn up unannounced.

The last one is the real answer. Board games need a group that already exists, and a lot of places have to organise what happens here by accident.

What is still missing

Two things, and we would rather be honest about both.

Games are expensive here. Everything on our shelf was imported and paid customs on the way in, and there is no version of this where a box costs what it costs abroad. We can be careful about it. We cannot fix it.

And most people still have never been taught one. That is the bigger gap by a long way, and it is the only thing on this list we can actually do something about. It is why the game nights are free, and why we will happily teach you a game you bought somewhere else and never opened.

Bring it along. We mean that.