Trekking

You do not need to be a mountaineer. Every trek we operate is a walking trek no technical climbing, no crampons, no ropes. What you do need is cardiovascular base fitness the ability to walk 5–7 hours per day on uneven ground, carrying a daypack (roughly 5–7 kg), for multiple consecutive days. If you currently walk 10 km in 2–3 hours without exhaustion on varied terrain, you have the baseline.

You also need leg strength and endurance stone steps, long descents, and altitude add up. Three months of preparation with at least two weekly walks of 2+ hours on hilly terrain makes the difference between arriving sore and arriving broken. And no untreated cardiovascular, respiratory, or altitude-sensitive medical conditions. We ask direct medical questions on the pre-trek documentation, not because we are gatekeeping, but because the altitude does not negotiate.

Specific trek difficulty varies. Mardi Himal is the gentlest. Everest Base Camp and Annapurna Circuit are moderate-to-challenging. Manaslu Circuit is the hardest. The trek pages list the honest difficulty assessment for each. If you are unsure, write to the CEO with your current fitness baseline and he will tell you which trek fits.

Every trekking day follows roughly the same rhythm. 6:30 AM wake-up tea in your room (the guide brings hot ginger tea to your door). 7:00 AM morning SpO2 check above 3,500m, logged in the Daily Trail Log. 7:30 AM breakfast (porridge, eggs, toast, or Tibetan bread). 8:30 AM first hour of walking in Silent Hiking. No conversation. Just the sound of your boots, your breath, and the valley.

9:30 AM – 12:30 PM walking at a steady pace; the guide decides rest stops based on group energy. 12:30 PM lunch at a trail teahouse, usually dal bhat. 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM afternoon walking to the day's lodge. 4:00 PM arrival, hot drink, shower if available and altitude allows. 4:30 PM evening SpO2 check. 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM rest, reading, group conversation, or evening co-practice. 6:30 PM dinner. 8:00–9:00 PM lights out. Early nights are non-negotiable at altitude.

The pattern is consistent. The variation is the landscape.

You can. The Small Group Promise (max 8 trekkers) and our guide authority over pacing mean the group can accommodate a slower walker, a photographer, or someone who needs a five-minute sit-down without a schedule crisis. On private departures (The Journey and The Transformation), this is fully yours the only "schedule" is the acclimatization plan, and the guide will adjust the walking pace to match your group.

On fixed-date departures (The Trail), we ask returning travelers to be considerate of their companions but an 8-person group is small enough that individual needs rarely collide with group needs. If you know you are a slow walker and want the full privacy, The Journey is the right product for you.

No. Silent Hiking is the first hour of each trekking day only a branded protocol where the group walks in silence to start the day without conversation, to let the landscape land before the chatter does. The rest of the day is conversational.

Silent Hiking is framed as altitude physiology and presence practice, not as a vow of silence or a spiritual exercise. You can talk over lunch, ask your guide questions about the trail, swap stories at the lodge in the evening, and call your family from a satellite phone window if you need to. The co-practice sessions (breathing exercises at 10 AM before departure) are voluntary the guide does them; you join if you want to.

If you are hoping for a fully silent retreat, write to us directly that is a custom engagement, not a standard trek.

Start with honest difficulty rather than with the famous name.

Mardi Himal is the gentlest trek we run. Lower maximum altitude, shorter days, and the trail stays below the altitudes where the protocol gets serious. It is the right first trek for most people who are fit but have never walked at altitude.

Langtang Valley is the next step up. Moderate, reached from Kathmandu by road rather than by mountain flight, with a maximum altitude that is meaningful but manageable.

Everest Base Camp and the Annapurna Circuit are moderate to challenging. Both are achievable as a first high-altitude trek if you train properly and respect the acclimatization pacing, and plenty of first-timers do exactly that. Both also involve multiple days above 4,000m where altitude becomes the real variable, and EBC depends on the Lukla flight.

Manaslu Circuit is the hardest trek we operate. It is not a sensible first Himalayan trek.

The question that actually decides it is not "which is most famous" but "how many consecutive days can I walk 5 to 7 hours on uneven ground." Write to the CEO with your honest current fitness, your available dates, and how much time you have to train. He will tell you which trek fits, including when the answer is a different trek from the one you asked about.

No. You carry a daypack; a porter carries the rest.

Your daypack is 25 to 35 litres and holds what you need during the walking day: water, the layers you might add or shed, sunscreen, camera, snacks, your personal medication, and a rain shell. That comes to roughly 5 to 7 kg, and it is the weight you should be training with.

Everything else goes into a duffel that a porter carries between lodges. You will not see it during the day; it is waiting when you arrive.

Porter support is included on every tier, at a 1:4 porter-to-trekker ratio on The Trail and The Journey, and 1:2 on The Transformation. That ratio is a welfare decision as much as a service one. Managed loads and fair wages are the difference between a porter with a career and a porter with a back injury, and the daily rate we pay against the regional average is published on every trek page rather than described in the abstract.

If you would rather carry everything yourself, you can, and some trekkers prefer it. Tell your guide at the start. The porter is employed and paid either way.

Five to seven hours on a typical day, split around a lunch stop.

The day starts with wake-up tea around 6:30 AM, an SpO2 check above 3,500m, and breakfast. Walking begins around 8:30 AM, opening with the first hour in Silent Hiking. Lunch is usually around 12:30 PM at a trail teahouse. The afternoon section runs to roughly 4:00 PM, when you reach the day's lodge.

That is the pattern, but hours are a poor measure of a trekking day. What actually determines how hard a day feels is the elevation gained, the surface underfoot, and the altitude you are doing it at. Three hours climbing stone steps up to Namche is harder than six flat hours in the Kali Gandaki. A 300-metre gain at 5,000m is harder than a 900-metre gain at 2,000m.

Acclimatization days are shorter by design, often a three to four hour walk up to a higher point and back down to sleep at the same lodge.

The guide sets the pace, and the pace at altitude is slower than you think it should be. That is intentional. Walking slowly enough to hold a conversation is the pace that gets people to the top.

You walk. Acclimatization days are not rest days, and the difference matters.

The principle is climb high, sleep low. On an acclimatization day you typically walk three to four hours up to a viewpoint or a higher village, spend some time there, and come back down to sleep at the same lodge you woke up in. Your body gets the physiological signal of the higher altitude without having to sleep at it, and sleeping altitude is where most altitude trouble begins.

Sitting in the lodge all day is the version that feels restful and works less well. If you are genuinely unwell that changes, and your guide will tell you so.

These days are built into every itinerary at the altitudes where they matter, on every tier. On The Journey and The Transformation there are also flex days, which are a different thing: unallocated days we can spend on extra acclimatization if someone is struggling, on weather, or on something worth seeing. On The Trail the acclimatization days are there but the flex days are not, and that is one of the real differences between the tiers.

Your SpO2 readings on an acclimatization day are among the more useful pieces of information your guide has, because they show whether your body is genuinely adapting or just holding on.

It means your guide does the practice with you rather than instructing you from the side.

In practice this is two things. Silent Hiking, the first hour of each trekking day walked without conversation. And the breathing sessions, usually around 10 AM before departure and sometimes again in the evening, using the altitude-adapted breathing techniques introduced at the Kathmandu Pre-Trek Session.

The guide is not standing in front of the group leading a class. The guide is breathing alongside you, walking the same silent hour, on the same trail. That is the whole idea. The alternative model, where a facilitator delivers a practice to clients, places the guide outside the group at exactly the moment the group is most exposed.

Participation is voluntary. The guide does the breathing session whether or not you join. Nobody is marked absent, and there is no framing in which opting out means you are doing the trek wrong.

The reason it is a protocol rather than a nice idea is that controlled breathing has a genuine physiological role at altitude, and the first quiet hour has a practical one: it is when the guide can hear how the group is actually moving and breathing before the day gets loud.

Spring, March to May, and autumn, September to November. Those are the two seasons when the weather is most reliable, the views are clearest, and the lodges are fully operational. Our published prices are the peak-season prices for that reason.

Autumn is the most settled and the most popular. Post-monsoon air is the clearest of the year, and the trails are busy. Spring is warmer, with rhododendron in bloom at lower altitudes, and in the Khumbu it is the season with the Everest climbing traffic.

Winter, December to February, is possible on a few routes and difficult on most. High passes such as Thorong La and Larkya La close under snow. We run Everest Base Camp with extra buffer days, Mardi Himal, and lower Langtang in winter at roughly 85 to 90% of the peak rate, but we often talk people out of it unless they have real cold-weather experience.

Monsoon, June to August, closes most routes: leeches, slick trails, obscured views. The exception is Upper Mustang, which sits in Nepal's rain shadow and is genuinely good during monsoon.

If your dates are fixed, tell us the dates and we will tell you which treks are honest options for them.