This Guide is aimed at those hikers who are joining a Tour and will have the support of professional guides and porters throughout their trip. I outline those items that are included with a Tour as well as explore what’s not included. 

If this is your first time travelling to Nepal, this Guide is a must read.

Whenever a group of hikers gather around, the conversation soon turns to food and the Everest Base Camp trekkers are no different. One of the delights of this trek is the variety and abundance of food available particularly when you consider that nearly everything is physically carried in either by porter, yak or mule train. 

Having woken at 5am to the freezing cold, I reflected once more on Raju’s briefing the night before. For the first time since leaving Lukla, Raju warned that this was going to be a hard day. According to Raju, we’d already had seven easy days though with the challenging climbs, high altitudes and reduced oxygen, easy was not the description any of us would have chosen. If Raju was telling us to prepare for a hard day, we’d better take him seriously.

Hundreds of dove grey pigeons fluttered up, stirred into action by a uniformed man waving his arms and shooing at them only to settle the moment his back was turned. The pigeons resumed eating the grain being tossed to them by a tourist, these were the true city dwellers, capable of adaptation wherever they went. Cooing softly amongst themselves, they ignored the pilgrims prostrating themselves before the enormous white domed Boudhanath Stupa.

On the far riverbank several fires burned sending dirty smoke lazily up to mingle with the haze of Kathmandu. The river flowed languidly past, a dark, murky olive, certainly not the kind of river you’d choose to swim in. A faint smell of spices and something else, sour milk perhaps, reached us as we sat on the large concrete steps, captivated by the scene before us.

He was lounging on the step about halfway up, distracted by an empty water bottle and took no notice of us as we stopped to catch our breath, one hundred and fifty steps completed, still more than two hundred to go.

We’d timed our early morning visit to follow the hundreds of Buddhist and Hindu pilgrims who tour the site as the sun rises each morning.

The Everest Base Camp Trek is the dream of any outdoor enthusiast and every year, thousands of people achieve that dream.

Major highlights include tracing in the steps of mountaineers to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar, the extraordinarily beautiful views of the Himalayan mountains, immersing yourself in the local Sherpa culture and traversing through the UNESCO listed Sagarmatha National Park.

The Everest Base Camp trek introduces hikers to the Khumbu Region, steeped in history and culture and inhabited by some of the friendliest people you’ll ever have the privilege to meet.