Itinerary · for one

Nepal · the Annapurna foothills

A post-monsoon, low-altitude loop of central Nepal · twelve nights, solo, no climbing permits. Kathmandu for three nights at the start — Durbar Square at dusk, Bodhnath kora at lamp-lighting, Swayambhunath at sunrise, Patan in the morning, Bhaktapur as a day-trip, a thali of dal-bhat at Thamel House. The tourist bus or a short flight west to Pokhara for three nights — paddle-boat across Phewa Tal, the World Peace Pagoda on the south ridge, Sarangkot for the dawn line of peaks, masala chiya by the lakeshore. Then three nights on the Ghorepani–Poon Hill teahouse circuit (no climbing, no porters, just a single-track stone path through rhododendron forest) — Tikhedhunga up to Ulleri, Ghorepani for the 4 a.m. walk to Poon Hill at 3,210 m to watch the sun reach Dhaulagiri and Annapurna South in that order, then down through Tadapani to Ghandruk village and back to Pokhara. Two nights in Chitwan’s Tharu lowlands — canoe down the Rapti at dawn, jeep into the buffer zone for one-horned rhino, an evening of stick-dance at the village. One last night in Kathmandu before the flight east.

1 traveler 5 bases 12 nights 11 min read

v1 · May 14, 2026

Oct 15 · Day 1 · the first one

Wheels down at Tribhuvan. Then the clearest skies of the year.

Out of Hong Kong on a Thursday, Kathmandu by Friday afternoon — the bowl of the valley already cooling into autumn. The monsoon left two weeks ago and the air it scrubbed clean hasn't filled with dust yet. Twelve nights ahead, lower-altitude on purpose — three in Kathmandu for the Durbar Squares and Bodhnath at dusk, three in Pokhara for Phewa Tal in flat morning water, three on the Ghorepani–Poon Hill teahouse loop above 2,800 m for Dhaulagiri and Annapurna South at sunrise, two in Chitwan's sal forest by oxbow river, and one final night back in Thamel for the duffels and the long flight south. No summits, no permits beyond ACAP and TIMS, just the part of Nepal that's walkable, sleepable, eatable.

Begin the journey ↓

Oct 15 → Oct 27 · 12 nights · 5 bases · 390 km between bases

Chapter 01 · Oct 15–17 Days 1–3

Kathmandu · the valley

Three nights to settle into the valley that holds three medieval cities, four UNESCO Durbar Squares, and the largest stupa on the subcontinent. Walk slow, drink the tea, let the altitude do nothing because Kathmandu sits at only 1,400 m.

3 nights

Land Tribhuvan (KTM) · taxi or hotel pickup to Thamel · ~30 min outside rush hour

Permits Pick up ACAP (NPR 3,000) + TIMS (NPR 2,000) at NTB Pradarshani Marg for the Poon Hill leg

Things to do

Bodhnath stupa at dusk · kora clockwise with the monks, butter-lamp flames in the dome wall
Swayambhunath at sunrise · 365 steps, prayer wheels, the valley waking below the eyes
Kathmandu Durbar Square · Hanuman Dhoka, the Kumari Ghar courtyard, the post-2015 rebuilds
Patan Durbar Square · the Krishna Mandir in carved stone, the museum in the old palace
Bhaktapur as a day-trip · Nyatapola, the potter's square, juju dhau (king curd) in a clay pot
Dal-bhat thali at Thamel House · the standard plate, refilled until you wave it off

Thamel keeps everything walkable but is loud; Patan is quieter and closer to the morning temples

Bookings

hotel Kathmandu Guest House · 3 nights in Thamel core pending

flight HKG → KTM (Cathay or HK Express via BKK/SIN) pending

No direct from HKG year-round; route via BKK or SIN

Chapter 01 · the story

Boudhanath rises at dusk like a white moon dropped into the valley, and the kora is already moving — monks, grandmothers, a boy spinning a hand-held prayer wheel — clockwise, always clockwise, around the largest stupa on the subcontinent.

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The valley is a bowl at 1,400 m holding three medieval kingdoms, four UNESCO Durbar Squares, and the haze of half a million two-stroke engines burning the same morning. The road from Tribhuvan to Thamel takes thirty minutes outside rush hour and ninety inside it. The taxis have no meters that work and the drivers do not pretend otherwise. You agree the fare at the airport curb in rupees and you do not look back.

Bodhnath is the test. It is the largest stupa on the subcontinent and the centre of Kathmandu’s exile-Tibetan world, and at dusk the kora fills with monks in maroon and old women in chuba aprons and the Newar shopkeepers from the surrounding ring of houses, all of them walking the same direction around the dome. The butter lamps in the wall niches burn yak butter. The eyes painted on the four sides of the harmika watch the four directions, and the painted question mark on the bridge of the nose is the Nepali numeral ek — one — meaning unity, meaning the one path.

Across town at Swayambhunath the steps climb 365 above the valley floor and the macaques wait for you to forget your hands are full. The Durbar Squares — Kathmandu, Patan, Bhaktapur — were levelled or half-levelled by the 2015 earthquake and the rebuilds are still going, brick by carved brick, eleven years in. The Nyatapola stands as if nothing happened. Bhaktapur’s potter’s square turns out the same wide shallow bowls it has for four hundred years, and the juju dhau — king curd — is still served in unfired clay cups you smash on the way out.

What stays from these three nights is the layering: medieval temples in the lanes, dust in the throat, butter-lamp smoke at dusk, the quiet rooftop kitchens that keep cardamom tea warm from five in the morning until nine at night.

Chapter 02 · Oct 18–20 Days 4–6

Pokhara · Phewa Tal

A lake town at 800 m where the mountains lean directly into the south-facing skyline. Three nights to soften from Kathmandu, paddle Phewa Tal at dawn, climb to Sarangkot for the alpenglow, and pack for the Poon Hill walk.

3 nights

Get there Tourist bus from Kathmandu Sorhakhutte ~7 hr, or Buddha Air / Yeti KTM→PKR ~25 min

Trek prep Hire a guide (NPR ~3,500/day, optional but recommended) in Lakeside · permits already in pocket

Things to do

Sarangkot at dawn · the line Dhaulagiri–Annapurna South–Machhapuchhre–Annapurna II goes pink to gold to white
Paddle-boat across Phewa Tal to Tal Barahi temple on the island · the lake mirrors the Annapurnas at sunrise
World Peace Pagoda on the south ridge · 45-min climb from the lakeshore for the wide view back at town
International Mountain Museum · summit history of the Annapurna massif, useful before the trek
Old Pokhara bazaar · Bhimsen temple, the brassware lanes, dal-bhat at a thakali kitchen
Masala chiya at a lakeside chaisha at sunset · the only correct way to end the day

Lakeside (Baidam) is the standard tourist strip · choose a south-facing room for the lake-and-mountains view

Bookings

hotel Lakeside guesthouse · 3 nights in Pokhara pending

flight KTM → PKR (Buddha Air or Yeti) pending

Optional · the road is scenic but long

activity Trek guide for Ghorepani–Poon Hill loop · optional but eases logistics pending

Chapter 02 · the story

Phewa Tal at dawn is a flat mirror, and the mirror holds the Machhapuchhre fishtail — 6,993 m, the holy unclimbed mountain — at twice its real size. You paddle out to Tal Barahi and the reflection is steadier than the peak.

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Pokhara sits at 800 m on the south edge of the Annapurnas, and the geometry of it is the joke that never stops being funny: the mountains do not rise from a distant plain the way mountains usually do, they rise from the lake, eight kilometres away across the water, eight vertical kilometres up. From a south-facing balcony in Lakeside the ratio of sky-to-mountain is reversed.

Sarangkot is the dawn ritual. The road climbs forty minutes by jeep above the lake to a ridge at 1,600 m, and the line at first light goes Dhaulagiri, Annapurna South, Hiunchuli, Machhapuchhre, Annapurna II, in the order the sun finds them. Dhaulagiri at the western end is the seventh-highest mountain on earth at 8,167 m. Machhapuchhre at 6,993 m is the holy one, the fishtail, the peak the Nepali government will not permit anyone to climb. The summit has been touched once, in 1957, by Wilfrid Noyce, who stopped fifty metres short of the top out of respect.

Down at the lake the rowboats are doongas — flat-bottomed wooden things painted blue and yellow — and the temple on the island is Tal Barahi, the boar incarnation of Durga, two-storeyed and pagoda-roofed and surrounded by water on all sides. The Annapurnas reflect from the north shore inverted in the still water and the doonga slides through the reflection without breaking it. The thakali kitchens on the east side of Lakeside serve dal-bhat with twelve refills and the buckwheat-flour dhindo for the same NPR 400.

The three nights are for softening: paddle at dawn, sleep through midday heat, climb to the World Peace Pagoda on the south ridge in the late afternoon, pack the boots for Birethanti at the end of the third day.

Chapter 03 · Oct 21–23 Days 7–9

Ghorepani · the Poon Hill loop

Three days walking a stone path through rhododendron forest. No summits, no porters required, just teahouse beds with hot lemon-and-ginger and the most photographed mountain panorama on earth at 5 a.m. on day two.

3 nights

Trailhead Drive Pokhara → Nayapul ~90 min · start walking from Birethanti

Altitude Highest point Poon Hill 3,210 m · low enough that altitude sickness is rare with a slow second day

On trail

Day 7 · Birethanti → Ulleri (3,200 stone steps) → Tikhedhunga · 4–5 hr walking
Day 8 · 4 a.m. headlamps up to Poon Hill · sun reaches Dhaulagiri, Annapurna South, Hiunchuli, Machhapuchhre in order
Day 8 afternoon · Ghorepani → Tadapani through cloud forest · langurs at the moss line
Day 9 · Tadapani → Ghandruk · Gurung village built on the south face, slate roofs and stone paths
Gurung museum at Ghandruk · the regiment heritage of the British Brigade of Gurkhas, set against the home valley
Dal-bhat in a teahouse kitchen · the calorie equation that makes the loop possible

Teahouse rooms are basic (cold-water taps, blankets layer up). Pre-book Hotel Snowland or Sunny in Ghorepani in October; the rest walk-in fine

Bookings

rental Pokhara → Nayapul taxi (one-way trailhead) pending

activity Teahouse beds Tikhedhunga / Ghorepani / Ghandruk pending

Pay at the lodge in cash; expect NPR 500–1,500/night

Chapter 03 · the story

Poon Hill is 3,210 m, reached on day two at four in the morning by headlamp, and the reward is the entire south wall of the Annapurnas going pink — Dhaulagiri 8,167 m on the left, Machhapuchhre on the right, and the gap of sky between.

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The path is stone. Slate slabs laid edge-to-edge by hand a hundred years ago, polished by mule hooves and rubber soles to a glassy shine where it doesn’t drain, and the rule of the trail is to step on the seams. From Birethanti the first day climbs to Tikhedhunga along the Bhurungdi Khola, the river loud below, women carrying impossible loads of fodder uphill, and at Ulleri the famous 3,200-step stone staircase goes straight up the spur. Counting them is a trap. Looking up is worse.

Ghorepani sits in the saddle at 2,860 m, all blue tin roofs and prayer flags, and the rhododendron forest below has been the photograph on the cover of the trekking guidebook for forty years. The teahouses serve dal-bhat with twelve refills and hot lemon-ginger by the litre, and the wood-stove in the dining hall is the only heat in the building. You sleep in three layers under one wool blanket and the alarm is for 4 a.m.

Poon Hill is forty-five minutes up the spine, in the dark, with three hundred other headlamps moving the same direction like a slow candle-procession. At 3,210 m the platform comes out of the trees and the line of mountains starts to take the sun: Dhaulagiri at 8,167 m goes first, then Tukuche, then Nilgiri, then Annapurna South, then Hiunchuli, and last the fishtail of Machhapuchhre at 6,993 m on the right. The whole horizon is white for ninety degrees.

Day three drops through cloud-forest to Tadapani and on to Ghandruk, the slate-roofed Gurung village on the south face. The museum there holds the regimental history of the Brigade of Gurkhas — the kukris, the Victoria Crosses, the photographs of villages emptied of young men for the British Army — set against the home valley these men kept walking back to.

Chapter 04 · Oct 24–25 Days 10–11

Chitwan · the Tharu lowlands

Down from the hills into the Terai, where the Rapti curls past sal forest and the one-horned rhinoceros still wakes up with the village. Two nights at 150 m, hot afternoons, river fog at dawn.

2 nights

Get there Pokhara → Sauraha by tourist bus ~5 hr · or Bharatpur Airport (BHR) + 30 min drive

Permit Chitwan National Park entry NPR 2,000/day · paid through your lodge

Things to do

Dugout canoe down the Rapti at dawn · mugger crocodiles on the bank, kingfishers, mist over the sal forest
Jeep safari into the buffer zone · one-horned rhino, sambar deer, the chance of a sloth bear on the road
Tharu cultural evening · stick-dance in the village courtyard, raksi served in a clay cup
Elephant breeding centre at Sauraha · domesticated work elephants only; the wild ones stay in the park
Walk the village edge at sunset · paddy stubble, ox-cart, the smoke of cooking fires from mud houses
Tharu thali · fish curry, bamboo-shoot pickle, dhindo (millet polenta) instead of rice

Sauraha is the standard tourist gateway; pick a lodge with river-side rooms and your own canoe slot

Bookings

hotel Sauraha jungle lodge · 2 nights with safari package pending

activity Park-entry permits + jeep + canoe (package) pending

Chapter 04 · the story

The one-horned rhinoceros wakes up with the village, and the village has learned to step around the rhinoceros. At dawn on the Rapti the dugout slides past one in the shallows, eating water hyacinth, ignoring you completely.

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Down from the hills is a real thing in Nepal — the road drops two thousand metres in five hours, the air gets thicker and warmer, the language shifts from hill-Nepali to the soft Bhojpuri-inflected Tharu of the Terai, and the houses change from stone to mud-and-wattle with thatched roofs. Chitwan sits at 150 m on the Indo-Gangetic plain. The sal forest starts at the edge of the village paddy and the national park starts at the river.

The dugout canoe goes out at six. The Rapti is a brown slow river braided through sandbars, and the canoe is a hollowed kapok log, and the boatman stands at the back with one bamboo pole and reads water the way a hill-guide reads weather. Mugger crocodiles bask on the banks with their mouths open — thermoregulation, not threat — and the slim-snouted gharial, critically endangered, drifts in the deep channel under the cliff at Kasara. Kingfishers go past in three colours. The mist comes off the water at this hour because the river is warmer than the air.

The one-horned rhinoceros — Rhinoceros unicornis, six hundred and fifty here at last count, the second-largest population on earth after Kaziranga — is the reason for the park, and you find them in the buffer zone at the forest edge eating elephant grass. They are the size of a small car and the texture of folded leather. The jeep stops thirty metres off. The rhino looks up, decides nothing about you is relevant, goes back to chewing.

Evenings in Sauraha the Tharu stick-dancers gather in the courtyard, two lines of men in white kurta clashing wooden sticks in patterns inherited from forest-clearing labour songs, and the raksi is served warm in clay cups. Two nights here is the right dose: any longer and the heat begins to win.

Chapter 05 · Oct 26 Day 12

Kathmandu · the last morning

One last night in Thamel to repack, drink one more milky cardamom tea, and catch the morning flight east. Tribhuvan is twenty minutes from a rooftop with a Himalaya ridge above the haze.

1 night

Get back Bharatpur (BHR) → Kathmandu (KTM) ~20 min on Buddha Air

Shopping Asan Tole for spices · Tibetan singing bowls (test them in person) · the Mandala Book Point off Kantipath

Last things

Asan Tole bazaar · cardamom, mustard oil, hand-stamped tea, the six-road junction at the heart of old town
Yangling momos for lunch · Tibetan-style steamed, fried, or jhol (in soup) — order one of each
Pashmina haggle in Thamel · ask the price of three, leave once, come back to the one you wanted
Mandala Book Point or Pilgrims · the deep Nepal-and-Tibet shelves, a postcard for home
Last masala chiya on a rooftop · the kitchens that keep the pot warm from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Same Thamel area as Chapter 1 keeps it walkable; flight tomorrow needs an early taxi

Bookings

flight BHR → KTM (Buddha Air) pending

hotel Kathmandu Guest House · 1 final night in Thamel pending

flight KTM → HKG (via BKK or SIN) pending

Chapter 05 · the story

The Buddha Air flight from Bharatpur to Kathmandu is twenty minutes and the ridge line out the left window is the trek you just finished, seen sideways, the whole loop reduced to a single white tooth on the skyline.

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The last morning in a country always feels slower than the rest. The taxi from the airport to Thamel takes the same thirty minutes as on day one but the city looks different now — the same dust, the same two-stroke smoke, the same stupa eyes — and the route through old town to Asan Tole is one you can read.

Asan Tole is the six-road junction at the heart of old Kathmandu and it is the spice market and the cardamom market and the mustard-oil market all at once. The smell at Asan Tole is unmistakeable: clove, cumin, the iron tang of brass, woodsmoke from the chiya kitchens on the corners. You buy a kilo of cardamom for the kitchen at home and a hand-stamped tea brick for the shelf. The pashmina haggle in Thamel runs the standard four moves — ask the price of three, fake the leave, return for the one you wanted, settle at sixty percent of the asking.

Yangling does three kinds of momo — steamed, fried, jhol in chilli-tomato soup — and the rule is one of each. The last masala chiya goes on a rooftop facing north. On the clearest mornings the Himalaya ridge floats above the haze of the valley, and Langtang Lirung is visible from the Mandala Book Point terrace if the air behaves. It usually doesn’t. The trip is the chance to have looked.

The taxi to Tribhuvan leaves at five for an eight-ten flight. The city is quiet at that hour, dogs in the lanes, dough-fryers starting the first sel-roti of the day, and the last sound of Nepal is the two-stroke engines beginning to turn over as you reach the airport gate.

Oct 27 · Day 13 · the last one

Last masala chiya on the rooftop. Then the flight home.

Final morning in Thamel, a glass of milky cardamom-and-clove tea from the metal pot a kitchen has kept hot since five. Last-minute pashmina bargaining in Asan Tole, momos at Yangling for the road, the chaotic drive to Tribhuvan with the Himalaya already a white ridge above the haze. Kathmandu by morning, Hong Kong by night. Twelve nights — three walked through teahouse country at 2,800 m, two woken by rhino tracks at the edge of a sal forest, the rest spent at temples and lakes that have been there longer than any of us, the dal-bhat and the long foothill horizon already half-remembered.

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