Gokarna Forest Golf Resort - Nepal

Gokarna Forest Golf Resort is a few minutes from Kathmandu in the Kingdom of Nepal, laid out in a 500-acre remnant forest of medieval Kathmandu Valley. The Himalayas provide the ultimate mountain backdrop for this course at the rooftop of the world, set in the former Royal Hunting Preserve that was once the Forbidden Valley. Opened in 2000, Gokarna was designed by young Scottish architect David McLay Kidd, who captured the golf world's attention with his unabashedly throwback links course at Bandon Dunes in Oregon. Gokarna is routed through groves of silver oaks with creeks and carp-filled lakes coming into play on several holes and spotted deer wandering the fairways. Most of the course runs through hills and valleys, but the sixth hole opens to the plain of the holy Bhagmati River.

Himalayan Golf Course - Nepal

Pokhara, Nepal's second city 125 miles west of Kathmandu, boasts two nine-hole courses, the Yeti Course at the Fulbari Resort, and the Himalayan Golf Course. The courses lie in the fertile Pokhara Valley with its rice paddies, mustard fields, and wild geraniums under the immense peaks of the Annapurna Himalayan Range and Annapurna I, the tenth highest mountain in the world at 26,538 feet. The Himalayan Course, designed by ex-British army officer Major R.B. Garung, threads its way through a steep river canyon with the boulder-filled stream fed by the Himalayan snows providing a worthy hazard. The signature hole is the fifth, with the green set in the island formed by the forked stream, facing the razor-edged "fish tail" peak of Machhapuchhre.