Makalu Basecamp trek - Horizon Guides

Difficulty: Stenuous. Lots of steep up and down and the fast elevation gain means the risk of altitude sickness is high.
Trek Duration: 14 days
Max. Elevation: 4,870m
Accommodation: Camping; very basic herders’ tea houses.
Start/End Point: Num

There’s only one standard route to Makalu base camp and it’s a simple there and back along the same trail. But this is a real wilderness trek and there are only permanent villages for the first and last couple of days. Most of the time the only other people you’ll meet are herders with their yaks. For me, the highlight of this trek is camping in gorgeous spring flower meadows well away from other people and waking to soaring mountain views.

At a glance

Destinations

Makalu

Activity

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

Physical Level

Strenuous

Duration

14 days

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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.