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In 1949, Benodebehari left Santiniketan to assume the position of curator at the Nepal Government Museum in Kathmandu. He was drawn by the landscape and people of Nepal and their colourful life. He recorded these in a series of drawings and water colours marked by a gaiety new in his art. The wealth of Nepal’s rich arts and craft practice made him notice, as never before, the continuity between the two in traditional cultures. This led him to rethink his views on art and art education and inspired him to carry the linguistic eclecticism evident in the Hindi Bhavana mural further in his later work. His stay in Nepal was short but rewarding and his work during these years assumed, without losing its painterly astuteness, a lightness of spirit and execution.On his return from Nepal in 1952, Benodebehari settled down in Musoorie in the Himalayan foothills. Landscape once again became his major trope, painting the mountains and the play of mist he tried to capture the more transient aspects of nature for the first time. 

After a short stay in Musoorie he moved to Patna with an assignment to revamp the art school there. However, his eyesight began to decline rapidly andafter an unsuccessful surgery he lost his sight completely in 1957. Blindness did not diminish his creative urge; directing it into new areas and drawing upon his inner resources he began to make drawings and small sculptures, paper-cuts and prints; even a large mural in ceramic tiles based upon figural images he made by folding papers