Your suitcase stays in Pokhara while you trek
What goes in the duffel and what stays in Pokhara. Sort it out before you leave and you won't be repacking on a lodge floor at six in the morning.
By the Lakeshore team · 5 min read · Updated 5 October 2026
Every trek starts with a repack. It goes better if you've thought it through before you're sitting on a hotel bed at ten at night with everything you own spread across the floor.
The setup is simple. A suitcase stays behind, a porter carries a duffel, and you carry a daypack yourself. Where people go wrong is nearly always putting the wrong things in the daypack, or the wrong things in the duffel. This is how we tell our trekkers to split it.
The three bags
The suitcase stays in Pokhara for the whole trek. Into it go your city clothes, the outfit for the flight home, anything valuable, any electronics you won't need, and everything you packed just in case.
The duffel goes with the porter, and you won't see it from breakfast until you reach that evening's lodge. It holds your sleeping bag, spare clothes, wash kit, evening layers and a book. Keep it under 9 kg, which is the limit for each trekker, with two trekkers sharing a porter.
You carry the daypack: water, waterproof, warm layer, sun cream, hat, sunglasses, camera, snacks, medication, documents, money and headtorch.
What goes in the daypack
Anything you'd want within five minutes of needing it: layers, a rain shell, water, sun protection, blister plasters, your own painkillers and any medication you take.
Your passport, permits, insurance details and cash go in the daypack too, never the duffel. Now and then a duffel takes a different route, and if your permit is in a bag two hours behind you at a checkpost, you're stuck waiting.
Put a dry bag or a liner inside the pack. Rain in Nepal comes in fast, and daypacks aren't waterproof, whatever the label says.
Storing the suitcase
Almost every hotel in Lakeside stores guests' luggage at no charge while they trek. It's completely standard, and they have a room set aside for it. Ask when you check in, not on the morning you leave.
If yours won't, tell us and we'll sort something out. Take a photo of your bag and get a receipt or a tag. Bags don't tend to go missing, but a storeroom with forty identical black duffels in October gets very confusing.
Packing the duffel
Use dry bags or packing cubes, one per category. Without them, finding socks in an unlit room at five in the morning is a small daily ordeal.
Put the sleeping bag at the bottom and the evening layers on top, because that's the order you'll want them in.
Pack nothing fragile and nothing loose. The duffel gets thrown onto a roof rack, strapped onto a porter's doko and set down hard about twenty times a day.
Add a rain cover or a heavy-duty liner bag. Porters keep walking in the rain, and the duffel isn't waterproof.
What most people over-pack
Clothes come first. You'll live in two shirts for a fortnight and stop caring by day four.
Toiletries. Bring small bottles, and remember that on most routes there's no shower for the top few days anyway.
Books and electronics. Charging gets expensive above 3,000 m, and you'll be asleep by eight-thirty anyway.
Food from home. Bring the snacks you really like and leave the rest, because lodges sell chocolate and biscuits the whole way up.
Walk it with us
Private departures on your dates, guided by the people who wrote this page.
Questions we get asked
Do you provide the duffel?
Yes, with the trek, and the rest of the rental kit too if you want it. Reserve it when you book and it'll be waiting for you at the office.
How strict is the 9 kg limit?
Strict. The weight goes on a person's back, and an overfilled duffel is the most common way visitors end up treating a porter badly without realising it.
Can I get into my duffel during the day?
No. Assume you won't see it until the evening, which is why the daypack list above matters.
Is it safe to store luggage?
Hotel storerooms are locked, and storing bags there is entirely routine. Keep passports, cards and anything irreplaceable with you or in the hotel safe, not in the stored bag.
Still deciding?
Tell us your dates, and we'll tell you whether Trekking Gear Rental 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