Showers, laundry and staying human for two weeks
Hot water gets scarcer and more expensive the higher you go, and stops entirely near the top. These are the habits that work.
By the Lakeshore team · 5 min read · Updated 5 October 2026
It's never in the brochure, and everybody asks about it, usually a day or two before they fly.
You'll be less clean than at home, it'll matter less than you expect, and three or four small habits are what separate a bit grubby from miserable. This is how washing, laundry and toilets work on a teahouse trek, from the lower lodges up to base camp.
Showers by altitude
Low down, hot showers are easy to find and cost a few hundred rupees. Gas-heated ones are really hot. Solar ones depend on whether the sun was out, so shower in the late afternoon, not the evening.
Higher up they cost more and work less often, and at the top of most routes the shower is a bucket of warm water, if there's anything at all. At Annapurna Base Camp and Machhapuchhre Base Camp, assume nothing. Most people settle into a full shower every three or four days at the lower stops and a wash from a bowl in between. By day four hardly anyone minds, and that surprises people more than anything else on this page. Hot showers aren't included in our trek prices, so keep some small notes for them.
Three things that help
Bring wet wipes, or buy a bowl of hot water from the kitchen for a few rupees and use a small flannel. Washing your face, hands, armpits and feet before dinner is ninety per cent of feeling human, and it takes four minutes.
Put on clean socks every day, or as close to that as you can manage. Your feet matter most, for comfort, for smell and for blisters. Everything else can wait.
Dry shampoo weighs nothing and buys you several days.
Laundry
Lower down, lodges will wash clothes for a small charge, and things dry. Above about 3,000 m in autumn or winter nothing dries overnight. Hang a wet shirt in an unheated room up there and in the morning you have a cold wet shirt.
So the system that works is to wash lightly and often low down on the way in, wear the same two shirts up high, and stop worrying about it.
Merino base layers earn their price here. You can wear them for days before they get unpleasant, which cotton can't manage.
Toilets
You'll find a mix of western and squat toilets, with more squat ones the higher you go. Bring your own paper. It isn't provided anywhere, and the price goes up as you climb.
Hand sanitiser matters more than anything else in this article. Stomach illness is the most common thing that ends a trek early, and it's overwhelmingly passed on by hands, not food. Toilet paper doesn't decompose at altitude, so bag it and carry it down to a village that can dispose of it instead of leaving it behind a rock. Used paper behind rocks is the most visible problem on the busy trails.
Coming back down
Leave a clean set of clothes in your suitcase in Pokhara. Putting on something that hasn't spent two weeks in a duffel is a small pleasure that feels much bigger than it is.
Lakeside has plenty of laundries that will wash a trek's worth of clothes in a day for very little.
And according to a great many of our clients, the first hot shower after a fortnight is among the better showers of their lives.
Walk it with us
Private departures on your dates, guided by the people who wrote this page.
Questions we get asked
How often can I shower on a two-week trek?
Every three or four days at the lower lodges, and not at all for the top few days of most routes. Plan for that and you'll be fine.
Should I bring a travel towel?
Yes, a small microfibre one. Lodges don't provide towels, and a full-size one is weight you'll resent.
Can I charge an electric toothbrush or shaver?
High up, charging is paid per device per hour and gets expensive. Bring the manual version and save the power for your phone and camera.
What about periods on trek?
Bring everything you need from home, because above the road head supplies are limited and unpredictable. Pack out all waste in a sealed bag, since nothing decomposes at altitude. Tell your guide if you'd like lodges with a private bathroom, and they'll pick them where that's possible.
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