Easy4 days · 2,000 m

Sikles Gurung Heritage Trek

Four days into the largest traditional Gurung village in Nepal, on the quiet eastern side of the Annapurna wall.

Sikles Gurung Heritage Trek — drop a photo

Sikles is the biggest intact Gurung settlement in the country — several hundred stone houses terraced up a hillside under Annapurna II and Lamjung Himal, an hour and a half from Pokhara and almost entirely off the trekking circuit. This is a homestay trek rather than a teahouse one: you sleep in family houses, eat what the household eats, and your guide is usually related to somebody in the village. The walking is easy and mostly under 2,000 m through rhododendron and bamboo on the Madi Khola side, where the forest is wetter and greener than the Modi Khola trails and the birdlife is much better. Come for the culture; the mountains are a bonus.

Why you'll love it

Gurung family homestays in the largest traditional Gurung village in Nepal
Annapurna II, Annapurna IV and Lamjung Himal from the village terraces
Excellent birding in the Madi Khola forests — this is ACAP's wet side
90 minutes from Lakeside, and almost no other trekkers

Day by day

Ninety minutes by jeep up the Madi valley, then a walk up into the village. Afternoon wandering the lanes and the upper gomba, evening with your homestay family.

What's included

Licensed English-speaking Gurung guide from Pokhara
ACAP & TIMS permits arranged for you
Gurung homestay accommodation + 3 meals a day
Private jeep Pokhara–Sikles return
Porter (1 per 2 trekkers, 9 kg each)
First-aid kit & daily oximeter checks

Not included

Nepal visa & flights to Nepal
Travel insurance (required, incl. helicopter evacuation)
Drinks, snacks & hot showers
Personal trekking gear (rentable from us)
Tips for guide, porter & host families

Guides that cover this trip

Written by the people who run it — what the trail is like before you book.

Walking in the Himalaya in your seventiesAltitude, stairs and long days are the three things that stop people — and all three are avoidable without giving up the mountains.6 min read →Kapuche — a glacier lake at 2,546 m, four days from LakesideGlacial lakes normally sit above 4,000 m and cost you a week of acclimatising. This one does not, and almost nobody has heard of it.6 min read →Kori Danda — 3,800 m in four days, and no one else up thereA grass ridge above Sikles with Annapurna II, Annapurna IV, Lamjung Himal and Manaslu across the skyline. Two of the twenty-five operators we surveyed list it at all.6 min read →Staying in someone's house: how homestays actually work hereSimpler than a lodge, warmer than a hotel, and the version of Nepal most visitors say afterwards they wish they had had more of.6 min read →

from

Rs 40,100 per person

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