What a teahouse is actually like: food, rooms, showers and the stove
Where you sleep for two weeks, what you eat every night, why the dining room is warm and your bedroom is not, and how much of it costs extra.
By Dawa Gurung · 7 min read · Updated 1 August 2026
People research the mountain and arrive knowing nothing about the building they will sleep in for fourteen nights. Of eighty-six articles across the eight biggest Nepali operators' blogs, five were about accommodation and food. It is the single most under-written part of trekking here.
Teahouse trekking is what makes Nepal different from most of the world's mountain ranges. You do not carry a tent or a stove. You walk between family-run lodges, eat what they cook, and sleep in a room that costs almost nothing.
Here is what that is actually like, including the parts nobody mentions.
The rooms
A twin room with two hard single beds, a foam mattress, a pillow and a blanket or two. Walls are usually plywood, which means you can hear your neighbours, their alarm and their zips. Bring earplugs; it is the cheapest comfort upgrade available.
There is no heating in bedrooms anywhere on any teahouse trek. None. At 4,000 m in November the inside of your room is near freezing overnight, which is why a proper sleeping bag is not optional and a blanket on top of it is normal. The room itself costs very little — often a few hundred rupees, sometimes nothing at all if you eat dinner and breakfast there. The lodge makes its money on food, and that arrangement is why you should not eat your own snacks in the dining room.
The food, and why dal bhat wins
Menus are surprisingly long — pasta, pizza, fried rice, momos, soup, porridge, eggs, pancakes — and almost identical from lodge to lodge because the trekking regions standardised them decades ago.
Dal bhat is the one to order. Rice, lentil soup, curried vegetables, pickle, sometimes greens. It comes with free refills, it is what the family is cooking anyway so it arrives fastest and freshest, and it is the meal designed to fuel people who walk all day. The porters eat it twice a day for a reason.
The pizza is not good. It is fine, and it is not what the kitchen is built for. By day four most people have worked this out on their own.
Prices climb steeply with altitude, because everything arrived on a porter's back or a mule. A plate of dal bhat at 4,000 m can cost three times what it does at the road head, and that is not a markup, it is transport.
The dining room and the stove
Every teahouse has one heated room, and in the evening everyone in the building is in it. There is a stove in the middle — wood, or yak dung higher up — lit around five or six in the evening and out by nine.
This is the social heart of the trek and one of the best things about trekking in Nepal. You will end up talking to people from six countries over a pot of tea, and the stove is why.
Two pieces of etiquette. Order your dinner together with everyone else if you can — the kitchen cooks on limited fuel and a stream of individual orders wastes it. And do not hog the stove seats; rotate.
Showers, charging and wifi
Hot showers exist up to a surprising altitude and cost extra — a few hundred rupees, gas-heated and often properly hot. Higher up they become a bucket of warm water, and at the top of most routes they stop existing. Most people stop caring around day four.
Charging is charged for, per device per hour, and gets expensive high up where the power is solar. Bring a power bank and charge it, rather than paying to charge three things separately. Wifi is sold by voucher on the main routes and is slow. Above a certain point it stops. Assume you will be offline for the top few days of any trek and tell people at home so, rather than having them worry.
Water, and the plastic problem
Bottled water is sold everywhere and gets expensive with altitude. It is also the biggest waste problem on Nepal's trails — every empty bottle has to be carried back down by somebody.
Carry a filter bottle or purification tablets and use the safe-drinking-water stations that many villages now run. Over a two-week trek you will save several thousand rupees and around thirty bottles.
Tap and stream water is not safe untreated, at any altitude, however clean it looks.
Booking, and the October problem
For most of the year you turn up and there is a room. In peak October and April on the popular routes, lodges above the last village fill by mid-afternoon and late arrivals share rooms or sleep in the dining room.
This is why we start early in peak season and why our guides phone ahead. It is also why the quieter routes are worth considering in those months.
At Machhapuchhre Base Camp and similar high, small places on a busy night, nobody gets a private room. That is the ceiling, and no amount of paying more changes it.
Walk it with us
Private departures on your dates, guided by the people who wrote this page.
Questions we get asked
Do I need to bring a sleeping bag?
Yes. Blankets are provided but they are not enough above about 3,000 m. Rent a four-season bag in Lakeside for a few dollars a day rather than buying one.
Is the food safe?
Cooked food in teahouses is generally fine. Stick to vegetarian at altitude — meat has often travelled a long way unrefrigerated — treat all water, and skip salads and unpeeled fruit.
Can I get a private room?
Almost always, except at small high lodges on peak-season nights. We book ahead where booking is possible.
How much extra should I budget per day?
Roughly 1,500 to 2,500 rupees a day covers showers, charging, wifi, drinks and snacks if you want them all. Less if you skip the shower and the beer. Bring it in small notes — there are no ATMs above the road head and cards are not accepted.
Are there western toilets?
Mostly yes at lower altitude, mixed higher up, and squat toilets are common. Bring your own paper and hand sanitiser; neither is guaranteed.
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