Trekking in Nepal — the complete guide

The word that explains everything is teahouse. On every popular route there is a chain of family-run lodges roughly every two to four hours of walking, each with simple twin rooms, a dining room heated in the evening, and a kitchen serving a near-identical menu. You do not need a tent, a stove, or food for more than a day.

Rooms are cheap and deliberately so — lodges make their money on meals, so the etiquette (and often the condition of getting a room at all) is that you eat where you sleep. Prices rise steadily with altitude because everything above the road head arrives by porter, mule or helicopter.

Camping treks still exist, on remote routes like Dolpo and parts of Kanchenjunga where the lodge chain is thin or non-existent. Those are organised expeditions with staff, and cost several times a teahouse trek.

From 1 April 2023 the Nepal Tourism Board required foreign trekkers to be accompanied by a licensed guide (or porter-guide) on trekking routes, ending the long tradition of independent solo trekking. The stated reasons were trekker safety after repeated searches for missing solo walkers, and creating guide employment.

In practice, enforcement is real but uneven, and it is strongest where permits are checked: conservation areas, national parks and restricted areas. Where a route is issued a TIMS card, the guide requirement is checked with it. The Everest region works slightly differently because TIMS was replaced there by local permits, and reports of enforcement in Khumbu have been less consistent — which is not a licence to plan around it.

Nepali citizens are not subject to the guide requirement. Restricted areas — Upper Mustang, Manaslu, Upper Dolpo, Kanchenjunga, Nar-Phu and others — have always required a licensed guide and a minimum group size, and those rules predate 2023 and are strictly enforced.

The four questions that decide it are: how many days do you have, how high are you willing to sleep, do you want a flight or a bus to the trailhead, and do you want teahouses or tents.

There are two trekking seasons and two off-seasons, and the difference between them is enormous.

Autumn (late September to early December) is the main season: stable weather, clear mountain views after the monsoon has washed the air, and the busiest trails. October and early November are the peak of the peak — book Lukla flights and popular lodges ahead.

Spring (March to May) is the second season: warmer, longer days, rhododendron forests in flower below about 3,500 m, and more haze in the valleys. This is also the mountaineering season, so Everest Base Camp is at its most interesting with expedition traffic.

Monsoon (June to mid-September) means rain, leeches below the treeline, clouded views and landslide-disrupted roads — but it is the right season for the rain-shadow routes, Upper Mustang and Dolpo, which sit behind the Himalaya and stay dry. Winter (December to February) is clear and beautiful at lower altitudes but seriously cold high up, with passes such as Thorong La and Larke La often closed by snow.

Costs split into four parts: permits, guide and porter, teahouse living, and transport to the trailhead. As planning figures rather than quotes:

Falls, road accidents and stomach illness aside, altitude is the risk that turns a trek into an emergency. Acute mountain sickness affects a large share of trekkers going above 3,000 m, and its two dangerous progressions — high-altitude cerebral oedema (HACE) and high-altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE) — kill people every season in Nepal.

The prevention is unglamorous and it works: ascend slowly. Above about 2,750 m, standard guidance is to raise your sleeping elevation by no more than roughly 500 m per day, with an extra acclimatisation day for every 1,000 m gained. Every well-designed Nepali itinerary is built around this, which is why Everest Base Camp takes twelve days rather than six.

Learn the two red flags before you go: confusion or loss of coordination (a HACE warning) and breathlessness at rest (a HAPE warning). Both mean descend now, at any hour, by any means. The altitude guide in this series covers recognition and response in detail.

Standard travel insurance frequently excludes trekking above a stated altitude — often 3,000 or 4,000 m — and excludes helicopter evacuation. Both exclusions are exactly the ones you need removed. Check the policy names your maximum trek altitude explicitly, and that it covers helicopter rescue and repatriation.

Nepal has a well-developed helicopter rescue industry, and also a documented history of rescue fraud, in which unnecessary evacuations were arranged for insurance money. Protect yourself by insisting that any evacuation decision is made on medical grounds, ideally with a clinic or an HRA aid post involved, and by keeping your insurer's emergency number somewhere that does not depend on your phone battery.

Store the numbers now: Police 100, Ambulance 102, Tourist Police 1144, plus your embassy and your insurer's 24-hour line.

Each of these has its own full guide: day structure, altitude profile, where to stay, permits, and the specific ways that route goes wrong.