Kanchenjunga North - Horizon Guides

Best trek for: Challenging & remote with spectacular views
Difficulty: Challenging
Trek duration: 18 days
Max. elevation: 5,140m
Accommodation: Camping or basic herders' lodges
Start/end point: Taplejung

Way out in the east of Nepal a wall of rock and ice rises up over eight and half kilometres into the sky. This is Kanchenjunga and at 8,586m it’s the third highest mountain on Earth. The hike to the base camp of this daunting peak is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting treks in Nepal.

There are two main Kanchenjunga treks, my vote is for the three-week trek to the Kanchenjunga North base camp, which is the longest, hardest and by far the most spectacular. I can't think of many better views without venturing into the realms of mountaineering, but note the risk of altitude sickness is high.

At a glance

Destinations

Kanchenjunga

Activity

Adventure, Hiking & Trekking, Active, Walking, Nature & Wildlife, Culture, Solo Travel

Physical Level

Strenuous

Duration

18 days

Related Guides

Guide

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.