Trail guides
What the trail is actually like.
Everything below is written by the people who guide these routes — no borrowed brochure copy, no promises the mountain cannot keep. If a trek is harder than it looks on paper, we say so here before you book it.
20 guides — day hikes.
Day hikes around Pokhara
Four Pokhara day hikes, ranked by how little effort they need
You do not need a week and a permit to stand in front of the Annapurnas. Here are the four walks we send people on when they have one free morning.
Read the guide →5 min readHow to do the Sarangkot sunrise properly
Everyone drives up in the dark and stands on the same tower. There is a better version of this morning, and it costs you one afternoon.
Read the guide →5 min readAustralian Camp is the best two hours you can spend near Pokhara
A grassy shoulder at 2,060 m with nothing between you and Annapurna South. Also, it is not Australian, and never was.
Read the guide →4 min readThe World Peace Pagoda — a boat, a forest and the postcard view
Row across Phewa Lake, walk up for forty minutes, and get the shot of Pokhara that everybody recognises. The easiest real viewpoint in the valley.
Read the guide →6 min readPanchase, the hill nobody walks an hour from Lakeside
Five ridges, a 2,500 m summit, one of the richest orchid forests in Nepal, and a decent chance you will not meet another trekker all day.
Read the guide →7 min readSix more walks around Pokhara, including ones we do not sell
Dhampus, Kalikasthan, Naudanda, the Begnas–Rupa ridge, Astam and Pumdikot. No package, no guide needed for most — just go.
Read the guide →6 min readWalking around Pokhara when it is raining
Monsoon and the shoulder weeks are not a write-off. The mountains hide, the forest comes alive, and half the good walking here does not need a view.
Read the guide →6 min readBirding around Pokhara: lakes, forest and the spring migration
Kaski district holds several hundred species between the wetlands and the forest above them, and the best sites are a taxi ride from Lakeside.
Read the guide →5 min readSunrise or sunset? Which Pokhara viewpoint for which light
Everyone gets up at half past four for Sarangkot. Half of them would have had a better time going out at five in the afternoon instead.
Read the guide →5 min readNot sure you will like trekking? Try one day first
You can find out whether multi-day walking in the Himalaya is for you in about six hours, on the exact terrain the real trek uses.
Read the guide →6 min readWalking in the Himalaya in your seventies
Altitude, stairs and long days are the three things that stop people — and all three are avoidable without giving up the mountains.
Read the guide →5 min readA day at Begnas and Rupa: the lakes nobody photographs
Twenty-five minutes east of Lakeside there are two more lakes, a wooded ridge between them, and almost no visitors at all.
Read the guide →5 min readRunning and walking from your Lakeside hotel
Flat routes along the water, a hill for repeats if you want one, and the two hours of the day when the air is worth breathing.
Read the guide →5 min readDhampus and Pothana: the ridge villages above Pokhara
Twenty minutes past the viewpoint everyone stops at, there are two working Gurung villages on a ridge with the whole Annapurna wall in front of them.
Read the guide →5 min readThe southern ridge: Peace Pagoda to Pumdikot
A Japanese stupa at one end, an enormous Shiva at the other, and a forest ridge between them that most visitors never walk.
Read the guide →5 min readKahun Danda: the hill on the wrong side of town
There is a viewpoint an hour's walk from the middle of Pokhara that sees almost no foreign visitors, because it is east of the lake and nobody looks that way.
Read the guide →5 min readThe flat walk: Pokhara's old town on foot
Two hours, no hills, and the part of Pokhara that existed before the tourists. Carved windows, a hilltop temple and a working market.
Read the guide →5 min readWalking for the stars: night skies above Pokhara
Get an hour above the town lights in winter and the sky is extraordinary. Where to go, when, and how not to break an ankle getting down.
Read the guide →4 min readTwo hours and no plan: short walks straight from Lakeside
For the morning you have a gap, no transport arranged and no appetite for a project. Five walks that start where you are standing.
Read the guide →6 min readHow to walk in these hills: pace, poles and the descent
Nepali hill paths are stone staircases, not gradients. The technique is different from walking at home, and it is learnable in about a day.
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