Trekking in Asia compared: Nepal, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Bhutan
People ask us to compare these five countries as if they were five versions of the same holiday. They are not. The difference between a Kumano Kodo pilgrimage in Japan and an Everest region trek in Nepal is not a matter of degree, it is a different activity that happens to involve walking.
So here is a comparison on the five things that actually differ: how high you go, how hard it is, when you can go, what you sleep in, and who carries your bag. Then a paragraph on each, saying who it is for.
The comparison
| Nepal | Japan | Kyrgyzstan | Georgia | Bhutan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical trekking altitude | 8,000 to 18,000 ft (2,400 to 5,500 m) | 1,000 to 10,000 ft (300 to 3,000 m) | 7,000 to 12,500 ft (2,100 to 3,800 m) | 5,000 to 10,000 ft (1,500 to 3,000 m) | 8,000 to 16,000 ft (2,400 to 4,900 m) |
| Difficulty | Moderate to very hard. Altitude is the difficulty, not the terrain | Easy to moderate. Long days, steep steps, no altitude problem | Moderate to hard. Rough underfoot, real altitude, few markers | Moderate. Steep, but low enough that fitness is the only factor | Hard. High passes, remote, few exit points |
| Season | Oct to Nov best, Mar to Apr second. Monsoon ruins Jun to Sep | Apr to Jun and Sep to Nov. Alps Jul to Sep only | Jun to Sep only. Passes closed and camps down outside it | Jun to Sep. Tusheti road closed roughly Oct to May | Mar to May and Sep to Nov. High routes Sep to Oct |
| Where you sleep | Teahouses: a private room, a shared squat or Western toilet, a hot shower for a fee at lower altitude | Ryokan, minshuku and mountain huts. Futon, hot spring bath, excellent food | Shared yurts and tents. Outdoor long-drop, no shower | Guesthouses in villages: family homes, private rooms, hot water most nights | Tents on the trail, comfortable hotels either side. Camp toilet tent |
| Support | Guide plus porters. Your bag is carried | Nothing. You carry a day pack, luggage is forwarded by courier | Guide, driver, and horses on multi-day routes | Guide, and horses on the longer routes | Full camp crew: guide, cook, horsemen, mandatory |
| Best for | The mountain view, and the trekking culture | Walking as a way of seeing a country, in comfort | Wildness and horses, at a low price | Villages, towers and food, at a moderate one | Remoteness, with everything arranged |
Nepal
Nepal is the reason most people think of Asia as a trekking destination, and it earns it. Nothing else here puts you in front of mountains of that scale, and no other country is so completely built around walking: the teahouse network on the main routes means you can trek for a fortnight carrying almost nothing and sleep in a bed and eat a cooked dinner every night.
The difficulty is altitude rather than terrain. The Annapurna and Everest trails are mostly well-graded paths a reasonably fit person could walk comfortably at sea level. At 16,000 feet (4,900 m) the same path is a different proposition, and altitude sickness is why treks fail, not fitness or steepness. Any itinerary without acclimatisation days is one to refuse, and the honest ones are longer and cost more because of it. Our Everest region route has two rest days in it that are not optional.
Accommodation is a private twin room with plywood walls, a shared bathroom, a dining room heated by a stove and a menu that is the same everywhere. Hot showers exist lower down for a fee and stop existing higher up. Simple, and more comfortable than people expect.
Season is the other absolute. October and November give the clearest air of the year, March and April the second window. From mid-June to mid-September the monsoon puts the Himalaya behind cloud for days, cancels the mountain flights and puts leeches on the forest paths. We tell people with fixed July dates to go somewhere else, and mean it. Our Annapurna teahouse trek is what we recommend most for a first Himalayan trek.
Choose Nepal if the mountains themselves are the point, and you have three weeks and are willing to go slowly.
Japan
Japan is the outlier on this list and the one most people never consider. There is no altitude problem, the trails are immaculately maintained and signposted, and at the end of the walking day there is a hot spring bath and a multi-course dinner.
Two kinds of walking here. The pilgrimage routes, principally the Kumano Kodo on the Kii Peninsula, are forest paths between shrines walked in stages of four to six hours, with luggage forwarded by courier so you carry a day pack. You sleep in family-run guesthouses and small ryokan, eat extremely well, and the ascent and descent are the difficulty rather than the height. A walk through a country rather than into a wilderness, and one of the best things in our whole library. Our sixteen-day route puts four days on the trail inside a broader Japan trip.
The Japanese Alps are the serious end: Kamikochi, the Tateyama range, hut-to-hut routes at up to about 10,000 feet (3,000 m). Steep, rocky, with chain-and-ladder sections, and huts where you sleep on a futon in a shared room and eat what you are given. The season is roughly July to September and the huts book out.
Difficulty is moderate and consistent: long days and a lot of vertical on excellent surfaces. Nobody gets altitude sickness. June is wet and August is hot, so late September and October are the best weeks.
Choose Japan if you want to walk for six hours and then have a bath and a superb dinner.
Kyrgyzstan
The wildest walking on this list and the cheapest, and the two facts are connected.
Kyrgyzstan is about ninety percent mountain and almost none of it is developed for trekking: no teahouse network, few marked trails, long stretches with no habitation. What there is instead is the summer pasture system. From June to September herding families move up to the jailoo with their animals and their yurts, and a route is built around them. You walk or ride between pastures, sleep in the family’s yurts or in tents, and eat what the camp eats.
Altitude is real but moderate by Nepali standards. Song-Kul sits at about 10,000 feet (3,000 m) and the passes run to 12,000 or 12,500 feet (3,650 to 3,800 m). Enough for a headache on the first night, not enough to be dangerous for a healthy walker who has spent two days lower first.
The accommodation is the thing to be honest about. A yurt camp on the jailoo means a shared yurt with several mattresses on the floor, an outdoor long-drop a short walk away, no shower and no electricity beyond a solar lamp. It is below freezing at four in the morning, in July, at Song-Kul. That is the experience rather than a failing, and the people who love Kyrgyzstan love it precisely for that, but nobody should discover it on arrival.
The other distinctive thing here is the horses. Kyrgyzstan is the best horse trekking country we work in, because the horses are working animals and the people leading you are herders. Our thirteen-day horse trek puts six days in the saddle across two ranges.
The season is absolute and short: June to September. Outside it the passes close, the camps come down and the country contracts. Our Kyrgyzstan hub covers the rest. One practical note: Kyrgyzstan is not one of our own offices. We run it through a long-standing local partner in Bishkek, and our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines.
Choose Kyrgyzstan if you want emptiness, do not need a shower, and would rather be on a horse.
Georgia
The most underestimated walking country in the region, and what we suggest most often to people who want a serious mountain trip without altitude.
The Greater Caucasus runs across the north and the two trekking regions are Svaneti and Tusheti. Svaneti is the accessible one: Mestia to Ushguli takes four days, crosses passes at around 9,200 feet (2,800 m), and ends in villages full of medieval defensive towers that form one of the highest permanently inhabited settlements in Europe. Tusheti is the remote one, on a road that is genuinely alarming and open only from June to early October.
The distinctive feature is where you sleep: not tents and not huts, but family guesthouses in the villages, with a private room, hot water most nights and the best food on this list. Georgian home cooking, with wine made in the same house, at the end of a six-hour walking day, is an argument for the whole country.
Altitude is low enough not to be a factor. The difficulty is steep ascents, long days and Caucasus weather that changes fast. Fitness is the only requirement. Our Svaneti and Tusheti route covers both.
Choose Georgia if you want mountains and villages rather than mountains and wilderness, and if food matters to you.
Bhutan
The most controlled trekking experience on this list, and for some people that is exactly the appeal.
Bhutan is walked with a full camp crew and this is not optional: guide, cook, horsemen and pack animals, tents set up before you arrive and taken down after you leave, a mess tent, a toilet tent and a hot bowl of water in the morning. There is no teahouse network and no village guesthouses on the routes. You are camping, in a considerably more organised way than anywhere else.
The routes range widely. The Druk Path, five days between Paro and Thimphu at up to about 13,500 feet (4,100 m), is the accessible one and what we build most, inside a twelve-day trip. The Jomolhari routes go higher and further north. The Snowman trek, eleven passes above 15,000 feet (4,600 m) over three weeks, is one of the hardest commercial treks anywhere and has a real failure rate.
The country is expensive, because of the daily Sustainable Development Fee, which we state as guidance and confirm before quoting since the figure has changed more than once. What it buys is empty trails: Bhutan sees a fraction of Nepal’s trekking numbers and you can walk for days without meeting another group.
Season is March to May and September to November, with the high routes realistically September and October only.
Choose Bhutan if you want remoteness with everything arranged, and budget is not the deciding factor.
Plan this trip
Tell us how many days you have, how high you are willing to sleep and whether you would rather have a hot shower or an empty valley. We will tell you which of these five to book. Free first proposal, no obligation.
Keep reading
- The Annapurna teahouse trek, 15 days
- Walking the Kumano Kodo, 16 days
- Horse trekking in Kyrgyzstan, 13 days
- Svaneti and Tusheti, 12 days
- The Druk Path trek, 12 days
