How to walk Nepal's hill paths, from pace and poles to the descent
Nepali hill paths climb in stone staircases. Walking them takes a different technique from walking at home, and you can learn it in about a day.
By the Lakeshore team · 6 min read · Updated 5 October 2026
After fourteen seasons of walking behind people, I can tell you most guests arrive with the wrong technique, and nearly all of them can fix it in a day once somebody tells them how.
The main thing is that Nepali trails are stairs. Forget slopes with the occasional step. These are stone staircases that climb for hours, built over centuries for feet and hooves, and walking them like a hill at home doesn't work. This is what I tell people on the first morning.
Go absurdly slowly at the start
The mistake I see most is starting too fast. The first twenty minutes feel easy, so people walk at their normal speed, and by the second hour they're stopping every hundred steps.
The pace that works feels wrong for the first twenty minutes and just right for the next four hours. If you can talk in full sentences, you're going at about the right speed.
Watch the porters. They carry twice what you do and still walk slower than you want to, because that's the pace that lasts all day.
Short steps on stairs
On a long staircase, take the smallest step that gets you to the next stone, never the biggest one you can manage. Big steps work the large muscles hard and burn through your legs.
Put your whole foot down where you can. Walking on your toes at the step's edge is how calves cramp on day three. Find a rhythm and hold it through the flat sections instead of speeding up and slowing down. Keeping it steady is what gets you up the 3,300 steps to Ulleri on the Poon Hill trek.
The descent, which is what hurts
Almost everyone worries about the climbs, and then the descents catch them out. Going down is where knees, quads and toes take the damage, and where most trekking injuries happen.
Use two poles, set a little longer than for climbing and planted ahead of you on steep ground. They take roughly a third of the load off your knees, and nothing else on this page helps as much.
Keep your knees soft, not locked, land quietly and take small steps. If you can hear yourself thumping down, you're doing damage.
Wear boots that fit, with room at the front. Four hours of descent with your toes jammed into the end of a boot is how people lose toenails, which happens a lot and is entirely avoidable.
Breathing and altitude
Above 3,000 m, put the effort into breathing out, not breathing in. Most people under-exhale at altitude and then wonder why they feel short of breath.
On a hard climb, pressure breathing helps more than most people expect. Breathe out forcefully through pursed lips, and your guide will show you how.
Then slow down even more. The pace that worked at 2,000 m is too fast at 4,000 m, and easing off instead of pushing is the whole skill.
The small things
Drink before you're thirsty. Three to four litres a day is normal at altitude, and most people manage half of that.
Change layers before you overheat, not after. If you're stopping to pull off a jacket at the top of a climb, you're ten minutes late.
Look after your feet at every break. Straighten your socks, adjust your laces and deal with a hot spot the moment you feel one. Caught early, a blister needs a plaster. Caught late, it costs you three bad days.
Eat more than you feel like. Appetite drops with altitude, and your body needs the calories to adapt.
What experience looks like on the trail
It isn't speed. On any trail the experienced walkers are the steady ones in the right layers, who arrive looking much as they did when they set off.
They stop less, because they aren't recovering. They eat and drink as they walk, and they put the jacket on before the ridge, not on it.
None of that is fitness. It's small habits, and with your guide beside you, you'll have most of them by the end of your second day.
Walk it with us
Private departures on your dates, guided by the people who wrote this page.
Questions we get asked
Do I really need trekking poles?
On any trek with a long descent, yes. They're the cheapest, most effective injury prevention you can get, and renting a pair from our office costs a couple of dollars a day.
How fit do I need to be?
Fit enough to walk five or six hours a day, several days running, without dreading the next one. For most people on most routes, technique and pace matter more than fitness.
What is the best training before I come?
Walk downhill, on steps, carrying a daypack. Everyone trains for the climb, but it's the descent that hurts.
Should I take painkillers to keep going?
For general aches, now and then, and think about it first. Masking pain in a particular joint so you can keep walking on it is how a niggle becomes an injury, so tell your guide instead.
How do I know if I'm going too fast?
If you can't speak in full sentences, you are. The test works at every altitude, and it's the only one you need.
Still deciding?
Tell us your dates and how much walking you've done, and we'll tell you whether Annapurna Base Camp is right for you. If it isn't, we'll say so.
Nothing to pay online. We confirm your dates first.
Or call the office +977 61-457830