I've been in Nepal 20 days in August 2011 and more than 1 week in Kathmandu! I' m an italian girl and I travel alone and I found a home in dolphin!!! The owner and the guys who work there are simply fantastic, always smiling and ready to help everyone. The room are clean and perfect related to the price! The location is in the centre of Thamel, Confortable! Let's try!!claudia

We spent 15 days in Nepal, shared between the regions of Khatmandu Bhaktapur and Pokhara where we spent several days in each place. Dolphin Guesthouse has allowed us to enjoy the bustling Thamel without its drawbacks. It is close to the center of Thamel for restaurants, shopping ... but the place is very quiet and very safe. For a very competitive price, we were able to enjoy a very comfortable double room, very clean, with hot shower, full breakfast served on the terrace in a quiet and sunny place. We were able to leave a lot of luggage for each trip of several days, which allowed us to travel more comfortably.
Each important transport was proposed and organized by the owner on a day basis, which allowed us to choose places to visit with flexibility and at fixed price, so difficult to achieve with the Nepali taxis. For the round-trip Khatmandu-Pokhara, the driver remained several days in Pokhara as part of the service.
Each time, the owner in addition to his kindness, gave us good advice and provided excellent services for very reasonable rates. We felt full of confidence.
Excellent quality / price ratio. To recommend.

Dolphin Guesthouse is a clean, comfortable, relaxing place to stay, located on a quiet side street in the north end of Thamel. It was a great place to make as our base in Kathmandu, and have somewhere nice to step back from the crowds and crazy traffic that careers down the local labyrinthine, narrow streets.

Rooms are comfortable and clean, bathrooms are tiled and have western style toilets.
The help and assistance we received from the multilingual owner, Mr. Surendra Joshi was first class.
He saved us a lot of time and worry about finding a good trustworthy local booking agent, and helped us with our domestic flight tickets to Pokhara and organised reputable taxi drivers for us all at no extra cost. In a busy, crowded city like Kathmandu, it was wonderful to have someone who could give us up-to-date information, as we found details listed in the guidebooks can be outdated quickly here.

Once you've been in Nepal a while you get used to adjusting your expectations. Accommodation that would get a scathing review if you found it in New Zealand or France can seem like luxury after a week in Himalayan trekking lodges. With that in mind...

Our room was small, with simple furnishings. The bathroom best suited a contortionist, as you couldn't actually stand in front of the sink - the toilet was there. And the shower was sometimes cold. But it was clean and the bed was fairly comfortable. Breakfast is fairly plain but decent and is taken on the roof, which gives you airy views over the rooftops of ever-growing Kathmandu. Of course, all this comes at a very cheap price by western standards.

But I have to rate Dolphin Guest House high because its owner, Surendra, is an incredibly nice and helpful man who does his utmost to help new visitors to this confusing and confounding city find their feet. Among other things he: advised us of the right taxi fare to every place we visited, found me a camera repair shop and took me there personally as the shopkeeper didn't speak English, and explained to a nearby tailor that I needed my jeans repaired. Small things, but they really helped. Thank you Surendra.