The year was 2011 and Hemanta Bhandari was a 11th grade student. For school assignment, his English teacher had asked the class to write an essay about Visit Nepal Year 2011. 

In his piece, Bhandari extolled Nepal's mighty mountains, pristine lakes and awe-inspiring nature. Little did he know that one day he would be traveling to the places he had mentioned in his essay.

Bhandari, now 28, is a full-time video content creator and travel vlogger. He visits different parts of Nepal with his team, making informational and entertaining content about places and their journey. The videos are then uploaded on the YouTube channel, ‘Nepal’ 8th wonder of the world. 

“The channel is dedicated to promoting popular as well as hidden beauty spots of Nepal,” says Bhandari.  

Bhandari was born in Pathari Shanischare of Morang district. He grew up watching nature and travel documentaries on the Discovery channel. Though he always had an interest in nature, he says he never thought of becoming a video creator one day. 

In his high school years, he was active on social media. He used to run various Facebook pages that mainly created and posted memes. It was around this time Bhandari also had an idea of starting a page solely dedicated to posting pictures of places of Nepal, clicked by different travelers under the #Nepal8thwonderoftheworld. The page was also called ‘Nepal’ 8th wonder of the world. 

"I remember going to cyber cafes just to upload the pictures of Nepal on the page,” says Bhandari.  “At home, I used a small Nokia phone to post the photos.”

Bhandari was 18 when he moved to Kathmandu. He had no clue what he would do in the capital city. But since he had a deep interest in nature and traveling, he got a job at a travel agency. After working there for a couple of years, he was hired by an advertising agency.  

“At the ad agency, I learned a lot about advertising and sponsorship,” says Bhandari.

In 2018, Bhandari decided to quit his full-time job at the agency and start producing travel videos and post them on YouTube. The project, in a way, was an extension of his Facebook page where he used to post images of Nepal. So he decided to give the same name to his YouTube channel as his Facebook page.  

“I was 24 at the time and I decided to take my chances,” says Bhandari. 

Through Instagram, he reached out to the individuals who could help him create high-quality videos for his channel. He also roped in some sponsors.

“The Nepal Tourism Board and Honda Nepal were my sponsors from day one,” says Bhandari. "I also had connections with different media who agreed to collaborate with my first expedition."

‘Mad honey hunters of Himalayas’ was the first project that Bhandari brought out in collaboration with ‘4 am Productions’. 

The video was a hit and got more than 50,000 views. 

“It was the biggest encouragement I could imagine,” he says. “I realized that what I was doing at the time was completely new. There weren’t many travel vloggers that created high-quality content at the time.”

Buoyed by the response, Bhandari formed a permanent team to create content for his channel. They would bring out a new video every month. At present, there are seven full-time workers working for the channel, which has more than 100,000 subscribers. 

‘Winter in Manang’ is the most viewed video on the channel with almost 1.4m views. The video shows the lifestyle of the people of Manang during the biting winter cold.

“This has become my life, showing people around the world how beautiful Nepal is and how our people live,” says Bhandari. 

It normally takes us 8 to 10 days for the team to shoot one episode. 

Besides posting travel videos on YouTube, Bhandari has also set up a website where he and his team post travel blogs and articles. 

With his travel videos and documentaries, Bhandari says he wants to promote tourism in Nepal. 

“Our plan is to explore unknown places of Nepal and show them to the world,” he says. “I have this deep need for exploration, learning about new places, their people and their culture.”