Day by Day
Days 1 to 3 Kathmandu The Sacred Valley
Arrive at Tribhuvan International Airport and transfer to the hotel with a welcome from the SherpaHolidays team. The expedition briefing that first evening is the starting point for everything that follows: the full 18-day route is covered in detail, including the altitude profile from Lukla to Kala Patthar, the acclimatization strategy, the daily distances and elevation changes, the lodge accommodation along the route, and the physical demands of the upper Khumbu. The Everest trek is the most popular high-altitude trekking route in the world, but popular does not mean easy, and the briefing prepares guests for what the altitude will require of them from Namche upward.
Swayambhunath occupies a hilltop above the western edge of Kathmandu, its white stupa and the golden tower above it visible from much of the city. The site has been a centre of Buddhist practice for over two thousand years. The monkeys that give it its common name live in the trees on the hillside below the main complex and have been there long enough to be considered part of the place. Pashupatinath on the Bagmati river is Nepal’s most sacred Hindu site: the ghats where the dead are cremated and the courtyards where sadhus receive visitors give it a quality that is impossible to summarise and unrepeatable in any other context in the world. Boudhanath, the great stupa on the eastern edge of the city, is one of the largest in the world and has been the centre of the Tibetan Buddhist community in Kathmandu since the exile of 1959. The medieval streets of Kirtipur, the old city on a ridge above the valley, are less visited and correspondingly more genuine in their preservation. All of this is the cultural foundation for the mountains ahead.
Stay: Luxury Hotel in Kathmandu
Days 4 to 6 Lukla to Khumjung The Sherpa Heartland
The morning flight from Kathmandu to Lukla departs early, before the valley cloud builds and closes the mountain airstrips. The aircraft tracks east over the middle hills, the terrain rising below as the foothills give way to the approach ranges of the Khumbu, and descends in the final approach along the hillside to the Lukla runway at 2,840 metres. The landing is firm and the airstrip is short. Lukla itself is a busy, purposeful place: lodges and outfitters line the single main street, porters organise their loads in the square below the runway, and the trail north into the Khumbu begins immediately beyond the stone gateway at the top of the village.
The trail from Lukla follows the Dudh Kosi River through some of the finest valley forest in Nepal. Rhododendron, magnolia, and giant fir cover the slopes on both sides of the river, the trees large and old in the sections that have been protected within the national park. The river runs fast and loud below the suspension bridges that carry the trail between the banks, its water grey with glacial silt from the high peaks above. The villages of Phakding and Monjo appear at regular intervals along the trail, their stone houses and teahouse gardens familiar staging posts for a route that has been in use since long before the first trekking expeditions of the 1960s.
Namche Bazaar at 3,440 metres is the Sherpa capital: a horseshoe-shaped bowl on the hillside above the Dudh Kosi gorge, its tightly packed lodges, bakeries, and expedition outfitters filling every available level of the natural amphitheatre. The Saturday market in Namche, when Tibetan traders bring goods down from the high plateau and valley people bring produce up from below, has been running for generations and remains the commercial heart of the Khumbu. The acclimatization day at Namche is spent with a walk up to Khumjung at 3,780 metres, the largest traditional Sherpa village in the region. From the ridge above Khumjung, Everest, Lhotse, Nuptse, and Ama Dablam are all visible on a clear morning: the first time the great peaks of the upper Khumbu appear as a collective presence rather than distant shapes above the ridgeline.
Stay: Best Available Mountain Lodges
Days 7 to 11 Tyangboche to Lobuche The Final Approach
The trail from Namche to Tyangboche descends first into the Dudh Kosi gorge on a path that drops steeply through juniper and fir before crossing the river and climbing the far side through increasingly mossy forest to the saddle at 3,860 metres. Tyangboche Monastery is the most important religious institution in the Khumbu: its position on a forested platform with Ama Dablam rising immediately above and the Everest group visible to the north makes it one of the most dramatically positioned buildings in Nepal. The monastery was founded in the early twentieth century and rebuilt after a fire in 1989. The monks who maintain daily practice here are part of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition that the Sherpa people brought across the Nangpa La from Tibet several centuries ago. Watching the evening puja from the courtyard of the gompa, the butter lamps lit and the chanting audible from outside, is an experience that the number of photographs taken of it does not diminish.
Above Tyangboche the forest thins and then gives way to open alpine meadow. The peaks are fully visible now on all sides, their scale and proximity increasing with every day of ascent. Dingboche at 4,220 metres sits in a wide valley below the Imja Khola glacier, its stone-walled potato and barley fields evidence of the sustained effort the Sherpa people have put into making agriculture viable at this altitude. The acclimatization day at Dingboche is important: the body needs the rest and the altitude gain, and the optional walk toward Chukhung at 4,730 metres provides additional acclimatization without requiring a full day of trekking distance.
The trail from Dingboche to Lobuche follows the lateral moraine of the Khumbu glacier through the Khumbu Valley. The vegetation here has simplified entirely: lichens on the boulders, low scrub in the hollows, and the bare rock of the moraine beneath the feet. The Pyramid Research Station appears on a hillside above the trail. The memorial cairns for climbers lost on Everest line the ridge above Lobuche: a long row of stone monuments with inscribed plaques that serve as an understated record of what the mountain has cost over the decades of its climbing history. Lobuche at 4,930 metres is the last lodge settlement before the glacier terrain of the upper Khumbu, its handful of stone buildings providing the final comfortable night before the highest section of the trek.
Stay: Best Available Mountain Lodges
Day 12 to 13 Kala Patthar and Everest Base Camp The Summit View
The walk from Lobuche to Gorak Shep crosses the terminal moraine of the Khumbu glacier on a trail that gains altitude steadily through loose rock and gravel. Gorak Shep at 5,140 metres is the last stop: a flat sandy plain above the glacier with a handful of lodges that serve meals and hot drinks to groups in various stages of acclimatization. The predawn start for Kala Patthar the following morning requires an early alarm and the discipline to move in the cold and dark before the day’s warmth arrives. The ascent to 5,550 metres takes two to three hours at the pace that altitude requires, and the summit ridge arrives with the first light already touching the peaks above. The view of Everest from Kala Patthar is the clearest and most direct available to a trekker in Nepal: the full summit pyramid above the Nuptse ridge, the South Col visible on the left skyline, the route of the 1953 ascent legible to anyone who knows what to look for.
Everest Base Camp is reached the same day, in the afternoon after the descent from Kala Patthar. The walk from Gorak Shep follows the moraine alongside the Khumbu glacier to the flat expanse at 5,300 metres where the expedition tents are pitched during the climbing season. Outside the season, from October to February, base camp is unmarked on the ground: a wide area of moraine at the foot of the icefall, the glacier calving and shifting audibly below, the route up through the seracs closed and white above. What is here at any time of year is the scale of the place and the knowledge of what it represents in the history of mountaineering. Standing at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall, looking up at the route that every Everest expedition has used since 1953, is the defining moment of this trek.
Stay: Best Available Mountain Lodge at Gorak Shep
Days 14 to 18 Lobuche to Kathmandu The Homeward Trail
The descent from base camp and Gorak Shep retraces the approach through Lobuche and the moraine terrain of the upper Khumbu. The body on the way down is noticeably different from the body on the way up: the altitude is decreasing rather than increasing, the muscles are strong from two weeks of daily walking, and the pace is correspondingly easier. The landscape that required all available attention on the ascent is now familiar, and the familiarity allows a different quality of observation: the details of the rock formations, the quality of the light on the peaks in the afternoon, the sound of the glacier that was background noise on the way up and is now audible as a specific and interesting thing.
Tyangboche on the descent has a different character from Tyangboche on the ascent. The urgency of gaining altitude is gone. The monastery, seen now from the vantage of having been above it for a week, looks smaller and somehow more remarkable for the scale of what surrounds it. The forest below Tyangboche smells of moisture and vegetation after the dry air of the high Khumbu. Namche Bazaar, when it reappears on the hillside above the gorge, is almost welcoming. The final night in the mountains is at Lukla, and the following morning the flight to Kathmandu returns the group to the valley in time for a last day in the city.
Patan and Bhaktapur are the two best-preserved medieval cities in the Kathmandu Valley, and arriving at them after two weeks in the high Khumbu gives them a quality they would not otherwise have. The stone courtyards, the carved timber, the pagoda temples, and the life of the streets around them look different after altitude and moraine and glacier. The traditional Nepali dinner that concludes the expedition, with the full guide and support team present, is a proper celebration of what the group has done together. The international departure the following morning completes the journey.
Stay: Best Available Mountain Lodges then Luxury Hotel in Kathmandu
