Everest Basecamp trek - Horizon Guides

Best trek for: Everest views, bragging rights
Difficulty: Moderate to hard
Trek duration: 12 days+
Max. elevation: 5,545m
Accommodation: Trekking lodges
Start / end point: Lukla

This is another of the most popular treks in Nepal, and for good reason. Over two weeks you will hike through green foothills, past Buddhist monasteries, through stone-walled, slate-roofed villages and right into the heart of the mountains to arrive among the moraines of Everest base camp.

Facilities on this trek are as good as anywhere in the Nepalese mountains. Most lodges have varied menus, heating, separate rooms, electricity, hot showers and even wi-fi. There are genuinely luxurious lodges available. On the flip side, you’ll never walk alone on this route. Tens of thousands of trekkers walk this trail each year and sometimes local culture can be overwhelmed by international trekking culture. If you value peace and quiet, avoid this trek.

You can’t see Everest from base camp and with its masses of semi-permanent expedition tents the area resembles a festival site (indeed in April 2017 British DJ Paul Oakenfold played a live gig here!). Even so it’s an interesting place, especially in the April-May climbing season (in the October-November trekking season it’s mainly deserted). For most people the real reward of this trek is not base camp but the nearby Kala Pattar viewpoint (5,545m) which at dawn, before the clouds tumble in, offers a view of Lhotse (8,501m), Nuptse (7,861m), the Khumbu Icefall and, standing grand behind them all, Everest itself.

Most people return back the way they came but it’s possible to follow parts of the Three Passes trek over to Gokyo

At a glance

Destinations

Khumbu (Everest) Region

Activity

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

Physical Level

Moderate

Duration

12 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.