Phoksundo Lake - Horizon Guides

Difficulty: Easy-moderate
Trek duration: Three days to the lakes, five to six days return
Max. elevation: 3,730m
Accommodation: Camping, basic homestays
Start/end point: Dunai

This short and sweet trek follows the Suli Gaad river through pristine forest to the beautiful Phoksundo Lake. It is 4.8km long, 1.8km wide and, at over 600m deep, the deepest lake in Nepal. Being a national park, it is rich in wildlife. Many of the villages here follow the ancient Bön religion, and villagers and the monks at the monasteries will be happy to explain how it differs from Buddhism.

The trek to the lake is a short one — five to six days on a straight there and back route. But there are plenty of opportunities to combine this trek with others. The two most popular are either over to the Do Tarap valley or, if you can afford the expensive restricted area permit, up to the legendary Shey Gompa.

At a glance

Destinations

Dolpo region

Activity

Adventure, Backpacking, Hiking & Trekking, Active, Walking, Nature & Wildlife, Culture

Physical Level

Mild

Duration

3 days

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Trekking in Nepal

Stuart Butler

I clearly remember the day, thirty years ago, when walking down the street during my first visit to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, I looked up at the clouds towering above the northern end of the city and it suddenly hit me that they weren’t clouds at all but were the snow-capped peaks of the mighty Himalaya. A week later, and after three long days of walking, I stood within a giant amphitheatre of rock and ice, totally enveloped by those same mountains.

Stuart Butler

Stuart is an award-winning travel journalist and guidebook author who has been visiting and trekking in Nepal for over thirty years. One of the world's leading authorities on Nepal trekking, he is the author of Lonely Planet’s Trekking in Nepal, the Rough Guide to Nepal, the Tibet chapter of the Rough Guide to China and the Bradt guide to Kashmir & Ladakh. He is also regularly published in The Independent, BBC, Time Out, The Telegraph, among many other UK and international publications.