Manaslu Circuit trek - Horizon Guides

Best trek for: Incredible scenery with fewer crowds
Difficulty: Difficult
Duration: 14-18 Days (It’s best to allow 18 days to enjoy the many side trips and to acclimatise properly)
Max. elevation: 5,160m
Accommodation: Trekking lodges
Start / end point: Arughat or Soti Khola/Dharapani or Besi Sahar

In my opinion, the Manaslu region competes with Annapurna and Everest for breathtaking scenery and epic hiking, but with a far more rustic feel – and much fewer crowds.

When the Manaslu Circuit opened to trekking tourism back in the early 1990s it was an almost immediate hit. The first trekkers returned with tales of stupendous mountain scenery, fascinating and varied village life and challenging walking. It soon gained a reputation as the new Annapurna Circuit — and as that walk was long considered the world’s best trek, it was a big claim indeed. This walk really does have it all. Over two weeks the scenery — and the people — gradually change. Hills turn to mountains, fields of wheat to pine forests, glaciers, and high mountain wastelands. You start among Hindus and later meet Tibetan Buddhists.

At a glance

Destinations

Manaslu region

Activity

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

Physical Level

Strenuous

Duration

14 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.