Vibrant lodges and teahouses of Kyanjin Gompa village surrounded by rugged Himalayan peaks in the Langtang Valley, Nepal.
Everest Base Camp now has a queue.
Not on the mountain itself, but on the path to it. In peak October the lodges book out. Meanwhile the trail moves at the pace of its slowest group. And the photograph you flew across the world for has eleven other people in it.
For a certain kind of traveller, that is the whole problem. You did not come for the altitude. You came for the space.
I co-founded a trekking and tour company in Kathmandu. And our licensed Nepali guides work these routes through the season. So here is the honest operator's view of where Nepal is still quiet. Also, what it costs, and why the numbers are lower than you expect.
First, it helps to understand how the crowding happens, because it is not random.
Almost all Everest trekking begins with a flight to Lukla. That runway is 527 metres long and slopes at 11.7 per cent, ending against a mountain wall. And there is no instrument approach. Pilots need to see it to land on it.
So the entire region has one narrow door. Everyone arrives through it, on the same weather windows, and walks the same corridor. Meanwhile the rest of Nepal, which is most of Nepal, sits largely empty.
Langtang is the valley closest to Kathmandu, and it has no airstrip at all. Instead you drive to the trailhead at Syabrubesi, roughly seven to eight hours on a rough road.
That single difference changes the character of the trip. In practice, a road can be waited out or driven around. A weather-closed airstrip cannot, which is why Everest itineraries carry a risk that Langtang simply does not have.
The valley also carries a difficult recent history, and it deserves stating plainly. On 25 April 2015 the Gorkha earthquake brought a hanging glacier down on the village of Langtang. The official death toll is 306, including 49 foreign trekkers, and local people put the real figure higher. The survivors did not rebuild on the same ground. They built higher, above the debris field, and the teahouses are full again.
Ultimately that is why the valley feels different from a resort. You are walking through somewhere people chose to return to.
The Langtang Valley trek runs ten days from Kathmandu. For a solo traveller the cost is US$800, or US$750 each for two to four people. Guiding is private throughout.
Meanwhile, the more common constraint is not crowds. It is time.
Most Himalayan itineraries assume you have three spare weeks. Very few people do. And the people with money to travel well usually have the least room in the calendar.
Mardi Himal solves that. The ridge sits above the Annapurna Sanctuary. Also, the walking tops out below 4,000 metres at high camp. And you look straight across at Machhapuchhre. Crucially, it starts from Pokhara, so there is no long approach to absorb.
Panoramic view of the snow-capped Mardi Himal mountain range rising above lush green forested hills in Nepal.
The short Mardi Himal trek is five days on the trail. Prices are US$550 solo, or US$510 each for two to four. Add a couple of nights in Pokhara and one in Kathmandu. Then it still fits inside a single week away from work.
By contrast, an Everest Base Camp trek needs fourteen days minimum. And that is before you build in any margin for the flight.
Of course, the helicopter is the part most readers of this magazine will want to know about. So let us be specific about what it does and does not do.
A one-day Everest Base Camp helicopter tour leaves Kathmandu at first light. Then it flies the length of the Khumbu, lands high for the views, and has you back for lunch. On a shared basis that is US$1,950 for one seat, or US$1,800 each for two to four. A private charter, with no other passengers and a flexible schedule, is US$7,000.
Even so, it is worth being honest about the trade. You get the geography in a morning. You do not get the acclimatisation, the lodges, the villages, or the slow accumulation that makes people emotional at the end of a trek. It is a different product, not a shortcut to the same one.
For many travellers the right answer is both. Walk a shorter route where the walking is good, then fly the section that is mostly about the view.
Admittedly, the trekking prices above will look low next to almost anything else in this magazine. That deserves an explanation rather than a discount code.
The reason is simple. Above 3,000 metres there is very little to buy. There is no spa, no cellar, no tasting menu, and no amount of money changes the fact that the shower is heated by a solar bag. Nepal's mountain economy is not withholding luxury from you. It genuinely does not exist up there.
So what you are actually paying for, and what separates a good operator from a cheap one, is narrower than people assume:
Therefore the useful question to ask any operator, ours included, is not what the trip costs. It is how many buffer days are in it, who makes the call when the weather turns, and what happens if the flight does not go. Vague answers to those three are the warning sign.
In the end, the luxury on offer in the Nepali Himalaya is not thread count. It is space, privacy, competent people and a schedule with slack in it.
Everest will still be there in a decade, and it will still be busy. The quieter valleys are quieter now.
Pawan Bhattarai is a Co-Founder of Spade Himalaya, a trekking and tour company based in Kathmandu. Operational detail comes from the company's licensed Nepali guides, who lead departures across the Langtang, Annapurna and Everest regions through the trekking season.
