In 1961 after moving to Kathmandu, Bangdel got a job at the Royal Nepal Academy and eventually became its vice-chancellor. He later went on to become the founding general-secretary of Nepal Art Council and the New Art Circle, where he taught 15 talented new artists for free.
Bangdel also wrote three Nepali-language novels between 1948 to 1951, Muluk Bahira, Maitighar and Langada Ko Sathi. They were tales of struggle and hardship of families in the mountains. Bangdel’s eyes saw the world: he lived through wars and revolutions, he saw pain, angst and misery all around him, and he transferred them to canvas and text.
In later years, Bangdel went on to become an art historian and was an activist lobbying for the return of Nepal’s stolen religious objects. He wrote Early Sculptures of Nepal (1982), 2500 years of Nepali Art (1987), and Inventory of Stone Sculptures of the Kathmandu Valley (1995). However, his most important book, and one that is still as relevant today as when it was written in 1989, is Stolen Images of Nepal which documented 300 missing religious objects from Kathmandu. Most of them are still missing.