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 — logistics guides.
Logistics, permits & gear
Permits, gear and getting there — the boring page that saves your trek
What you need to carry, what you can rent in Lakeside for a fraction of buying it, and how the permit system actually works.
Read the guide →6 min readRent or buy? What to bring to Nepal and what to pick up in Lakeside
Four items you should never buy for one trek, one you must never rent, and the small things that quietly ruin trips.
Read the guide →6 min readWhich permits you need, region by region
Three categories cover almost everything: conservation area, national park, and restricted area. Knowing which one you are in explains every rule you will meet.
Read the guide →5 min readKathmandu to Pokhara: bus, flight, or drive it yourself
Two hundred kilometres that take twenty-five minutes or eight hours depending on what you book. What each option is really like.
Read the guide →6 min readTravel insurance for Nepal: the clause that actually matters
Most policies quietly cap trekking cover at an altitude below the trek you booked. Here is how to check, and why helicopter cover is the line item that counts.
Read the guide →7 min readWhat your money actually buys: budget, standard and luxury compared
The same trek is sold at four times the price by different companies. Here is where the difference goes, and where it does not.
Read the guide →6 min readCash, cards, SIMs and wifi: the practical stuff nobody tells you
There are no ATMs above the road head, cards do not work in teahouses, and your signal stops before the good views start. Plan for all three.
Read the guide →6 min readWhat to actually pack, season by season
The same trek needs different bags in March and December. Four lists, and the items people consistently bring for nothing.
Read the guide →5 min readTipping, and the small customs worth knowing
How much to give and when, plus the handful of everyday rules that will save you from unknowingly being rude.
Read the guide →5 min readWhat is in our first-aid kit, and what should be in yours
Your guide carries a kit and an oximeter. There are six things you should still have in your own pocket, and one conversation to have before you leave.
Read the guide →5 min readArriving in Nepal: visa, airport, and the first twenty-four hours
What happens between the plane door and your hotel, and the four things worth sorting before you do anything else.
Read the guide →5 min readTwenty words of Nepali that will change your trek
You do not need the language. You need about twenty words, and two of them matter more than the other eighteen.
Read the guide →5 min readShowers, laundry and staying human for two weeks
Hot water gets scarcer and more expensive the higher you go, and stops entirely near the top. What actually works.
Read the guide →6 min readDomestic flights: how they really work, and how to not miss your flight home
Lukla and Jomsom cancel routinely. That is not a warning about a rare event — it is the normal operating condition, and the whole trip should be built around it.
Read the guide →5 min readVegetarian and vegan in Nepal: easy, and harder than it looks
Vegetarian is close to the default here. Vegan runs into ghee, curd and milk tea at every meal — solvable, but not by pointing at a menu.
Read the guide →6 min readTravelling in Nepal with limited mobility: an honest assessment
Most of the country is genuinely difficult, and a real amount of it is possible. Here is which is which, without the encouragement or the dismissal.
Read the guide →5 min readYour suitcase does not come on the trek
What goes in the duffel, what stays in Pokhara, and how to organise it so you are not repacking on a lodge floor at six in the morning.
Read the guide →6 min readWhen something goes wrong: illness, injury, theft and getting home
The four situations that actually interrupt trips here, and exactly what happens in each — because knowing in advance is most of the reassurance.
Read the guide →7 min readHow to choose a trekking company in Nepal
There are thousands of registered operators here and the good ones are not obviously different from the bad ones on a website. Six questions that separate them.
Read the guide →6 min readTrekking with a medical condition: what to tell us, and what to ask a doctor
Asthma, heart conditions, diabetes, pregnancy, a replaced joint. None of these is automatically a no — but each changes the route, and one of them changes the insurance.
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