demanding pace | 12 nights | from $3,460 per person
Nepal Vacation Package: 12 Nights at a Demanding Pace
Seven walking days with real ascent, a bed and a hot meal at the end of each. Below the altitudes that need acclimatization, and above what most people mean by a walking holiday.
What the days ask of you
This trip is filed as demanding. Everything below is measured, not adjectives.
- Walking on an average day
- four to seven hours on each of seven consecutive walking days
- Longest stretch without a seat
- seven hours, and it is the fifth day, when it costs the most
- What is under your feet
- stone staircases built into the hillside, mud, and suspension bridges
- Climbing
- six hundred to nine hundred meters of ascent per day, day after day
- Altitude
- highest point is comfortably below where acclimatization becomes a medical question
- Heat
- warm at the bottom, cold at the top, and both in the same day
- Times you move
- two road legs, each about seven hours on a poor surface
- Who this is not for
- once you are on the route no day can be skipped. That is the whole constraint
What is included
- Twelve nights: three in a city hotel and nine in lodges on the route, twin rooms
- All meals on the walking days, breakfast only in the city
- A guide and one porter for every two travelers, carrying the main bag
- All permits and the conservation fee
- The road transfer to the trailhead and back, which is long and which we do not shorten by flying
- A group of no more than ten
What is not included
- International flights, quoted separately
- City meals other than breakfast
- Any entry document, which is yours to arrange
- Gratuities for the guide and porters, which are a real and expected sum, and we will tell you what it is
- Boots, poles, a sleeping bag liner and a down layer, which you bring
- Hot showers and charging at the lodges, which are charged by the item
What it costs
from $3,460 per person, on two people sharing.
That is the lowest figure we have actually placed this trip at in the last season. It moves with the month, the room or cabin grade, whether you travel alone and how far ahead you book. Flights are not in it unless this page says they are. The figure is confirmed in writing, with the operator named, before you commit to anything.
When this is worth doing, and when it is not
October, November, March and April. October is the clearest and the busiest. The monsoon between June and September closes the route in practice, and December to February the higher lodges are cold enough that the trip stops being enjoyable.
The highest point on this route is comfortably below the altitude at which acclimatization becomes a medical question, and that is a deliberate choice. It does not make the walking easy. Seven days of four to seven hours with six hundred to nine hundred meters of ascent is the whole trip, and no part of it can be skipped once you are on the route.
What gets settled when you confirm
An honest account of your walking, which we ask for and read. Whether you want a second porter, which several people do and nobody regrets. The two city nights at the end, which most people extend. And the departure, since these run on fixed dates with a minimum of four.