The Everest region in 14 days
The most requested trek in the world, and the one most often attempted on too few days. Fourteen is the shortest schedule we will run it on, because two of those days do no walking at all and one of them exists purely because flights to Lukla cancel.
- Duration
- 14 days
- Pace
- Active
- Hotel changes
- 10
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Mar, Apr, May
- From
- $2,940 per person
This route reaches Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar, the viewpoint that actually shows you the mountain. It is not technical. It is long, cold, high, and the single hardest thing about it is the altitude, which is described honestly below rather than in the small print.
Who it suits: fit walkers who can manage six to seven hours a day on hill paths for two weeks. No climbing experience is needed. Previous altitude experience helps but is not required.
Your specialist: your named Nepal specialist, with our Delhi office arranging permits, and a licensed Nepali guide and porters with you throughout.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Kathmandu. Transfer, kit check with your guide, and an early night.
Day 2: Fly to Lukla, walk to Phakding. A 35 minute flight to one of the shortest runways in commercial aviation, then three hours of easy descending walk. About 8,560 feet (2,610 m).
Day 3: Phakding to Namche Bazaar. Six hours, and the first hard day: the climb to Namche is about 2,000 feet of ascent in the last two hours. 11,290 feet (3,440 m).
Day 4: Namche, acclimatisation. No trek. A short walk up to the Everest View Hotel for the first sight of the mountain, then back down to sleep low. This day is not optional and it is the reason people succeed.
Day 5: Namche to Tengboche. Five hours along the valley wall and up to the monastery, the spiritual centre of the Khumbu. 12,690 feet (3,867 m).
Day 6: Tengboche to Dingboche. Five hours. The trees stop. 14,470 feet (4,410 m).
Day 7: Dingboche, acclimatisation. The second rest day, with a short climb up Nangkartshang ridge and back down to sleep. Also not optional.
Day 8: Dingboche to Lobuche. Five hours, past the memorials at Thukla pass to the climbers who did not come back. 16,210 feet (4,940 m).
Day 9: Lobuche to Gorak Shep and Base Camp. The long day. Three hours to Gorak Shep, then three hours out and back to Everest Base Camp on the glacier. 17,600 feet (5,364 m) at camp.
Day 10: Kala Patthar, then descend to Pheriche. A pre-dawn climb to 18,190 feet (5,545 m) for the view of Everest that Base Camp itself does not give you, then a long descent. Sleeping low again feels extraordinary.
Day 11: Pheriche to Namche. Six hours down.
Day 12: Namche to Lukla. Seven hours, the last walking day.
Day 13: Fly to Kathmandu. Or, if the weather closes Lukla, this is the buffer day and you fly on day 14 instead.
Day 14: Kathmandu, departure. A hotel with a bath, a proper meal, and the flight home.
What is included
A licensed English-speaking guide and one porter per two trekkers, all teahouse accommodation on the trek, all meals on trekking days, the Sagarmatha National Park and Khumbu municipality permits, both Lukla flights, two nights in Kathmandu with breakfast, all transfers, a pulse oximeter carried by the guide with twice-daily readings, and a WhatsApp group with our Delhi office and our Kathmandu team, network permitting.
Honest notes, and please read them
Altitude is the real difficulty. Above about 8,000 feet most people feel something: headache, poor sleep, breathlessness on stairs. That is normal. What is not normal is worsening headache that painkillers do not touch, vomiting, confusion, or breathlessness at rest. Those mean descent, immediately, and our guides descend rather than argue. Two acclimatisation days are built in for exactly this reason and we will not sell you a shorter version.
The teahouses are basic. Plywood rooms, a shared squat or seated toilet, no heating except a stove in the dining room, and a charge for charging your phone. Above Dingboche the water in the pipes freezes at night. This is the experience, not a failure of the arrangements.
Lukla flights cancel. Weather closes that airstrip regularly, sometimes for two or three days. Day 13 exists as a buffer. If it is used, you fly on day 14. If the weather is worse than that, the alternative is a helicopter at your own cost, and we will tell you honestly what it costs at the time.
Monsoon. June to September the views are gone and the trail is wet. We do not run this route in those months.
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