Budget Travel
South Asia
Trekking the Himalayas costs less per day than a hotel room in most European cities.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
Trekking the Himalayas costs less per day than a hotel room in most European cities.
Nepal contains eight of the world's fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres including Everest. It also costs, on the Annapurna Circuit, approximately thirty-five dollars a day including accommodation, three meals, and tea house stops along the trail. That thirty-five dollars buys you a bed in a teahouse with a view of the Himalayas that people pay ten times that for in Alpine resorts and see mountains a third the size. The calculus of value in Nepal is extraordinary. You are getting the most dramatic mountain landscape on Earth at prices that make it accessible to almost any traveller with a passport.
Nepal taught me that the most extraordinary things on Earth are not always the most expensive. Often they are the opposite.
The Forgotten Atlas
The Annapurna Circuit is the classic. Fourteen to twenty days, circumnavigating the Annapurna massif through villages, rhododendron forests, high passes, and terrain that changes from subtropical to Arctic in the space of a day's walk. The Everest Base Camp trek is the most famous — sixteen days return from Lukla, through Sherpa villages and increasingly dramatic terrain to the glacier at the foot of the world's highest mountain. The Langtang Valley trek is the least visited of the three main routes and the most gentle — beautiful, intimate, and devastated by the 2015 earthquake in ways that the communities have been slowly recovering from.
Kathmandu is the gateway and it deserves more than the one or two days most trekkers give it before heading to the hills. The Boudhanath stupa — one of the largest in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still the centre of the Tibetan Buddhist community in exile — is an extraordinary place to sit at dusk and watch the circumambulation. Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal, sits on the banks of the Bagmati River where cremations happen openly and continuously. The old city of Bhaktapur, an hour from Kathmandu, is a medieval Newari city that survived the 2015 earthquake and looks almost unchanged from the 15th century.
Fly to Kathmandu. Get your trekking permits at the tourist office. The Annapurna Circuit requires a TIMS card and an Annapurna Conservation Area Permit — straightforward to obtain. Take a guide for safety and local knowledge.
The trekking hub. Gear shops, trekking agencies, guesthouses, and the most concentrated energy in the city. Chaotic and functional.
The stupa. Come at dusk. Walk the circumambulation with the monks and the pilgrims. The most peaceful place in Kathmandu.
The second city and the trailhead for the Annapurna region. A lakeside town with the Himalayas immediately behind it. Beautiful and relaxed.
The medieval city. UNESCO listed. The Durbar Square is the finest example of Newari architecture in Nepal.
Vegetarian restaurant in Thamel. The dal bhat here is the best in the city. The rooftop is excellent for watching Thamel below.
The Nepali set meal — rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry, pickle — available at every teahouse. Unlimited refills included. The most important meal in the Himalayas.
Tibetan-Nepali dumplings. Steamed or fried, meat or vegetable. The snack of Nepal. Find the cart with the queue.
Sit by Phewa Lake in the evening with the Annapurna range behind and eat whatever the restaurant is doing well that day. This is what the word contentment means.
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