We have done a couple of treks in Nepal now, and based on our experience we thought to compose a write up of what we wish we knew before trekking.
My husband did the Langtang trek in 2012 and together we did the Annapurna Base Camp Trek in 2018 and the Gokyo and EBC trek in 2023. He used a guide for Langtang, but we did both of the other treks without a guide or porter, but these tips can really help anyone.
12 Best Tips for the EBC Trek
- All of your devices die quickly in the cold, so keep them in your sleeping bag at night
- Bring a power bank- charging ranges from 300-800 rupees an hour in teahouses
- The sun is strong and the air is dry! We saw so many burnt people and cracked lips and skin. Bring a hat, sunscreen, chapstick and lotion.
- Bring Toilet paper- it is expensive on the trail and no bathrooms have it!
- Almost all teahouses provide slides (sandals) so make sure to bring thick socks that you only wear at night to keep your feet warm.
- Buy aquatabs or drops to treat water on the trail and in the teahouses, as it is expensive and bad for the environment to buy bottled water. You can buy boiled water but it also gets up to 600 rupees a liter as you get higher on the trail. You can buy aquatabs anywhere in Thamel in the trekking stores for about 400 rupees for 50 litres worth.
- Weather is unpredictable, so make sure that you add in flex days if there is a view you really want to see or if you get stuck in a town due to fog or snow
- If you are trekking up to 5000m it is cold! We went in mid March and there was snowstorms and -20 conditions. Make sure you pack appropriate clothing. Also, pack some heat pads, they saved my feet and hands on some days, especially over the passes.
- Bring a water bottle that you can heat up on the woodstove or put boiled water in! It helps keep you warm if you put it in your sleeping bag at night.
- Make sure to bring a face buff. They are super cheap in Kathmandu (200 rupees). They help with sun protection, warmth, dust and yak poo smoke in the tea houses. It was invaluable.
- Bring cough syrup and throat lozenges. The air is dry and the smoke in the teahouses is rough. We had to go down to a pharmacy during the hike and wish we had this with us. Everyone seems to get the “Khumbu cough.”
- Make sure to download all of your maps before the trek! The one we used was Maps.me, but Peakvisor, and Wikiloc are great too. Maps.me is free and we found it to be accurate except the hiking time. It always over estimated the time. Peakvisor is the best but there is a monthly rate. Googlemaps doesn’t work that well, but it was helpful in Kathmandu.
What to Bring
Make sure to bring all of your travel hiking basics, but remember if you forget you can buy or rent pretty much anything.. This is another post on the getting hiking gear in Nepal.
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12, maps: why not just get a paper map in Kathmandu? Works without electricity, gives a good overview of the whole route and is more detailed than any electronic map.
Yes we had a paper map as well. But for easy access to look at the trail we like to use online maps too.
Trekkers should note that there are interesting route variations which are ignored by guides and unknown to 98{05563ee440b8691600683906a6c3c3b7991e5ec3c24fb480a28e674e62e87cf8} of trekkers. Like the original old inter-village high trail Namche – Mong La – Phortse – Pangpoche which gives vastly better views high across the valley compared to the standard twice though Tengboche itinerary (Tengboche can be visited on the way down if doing only EBC).
For Gokyo only trek the “Cultural Gokyo” route Namche – Tengboche – Phortse – Thore – Nha – Gokyo – Renjo La – Thame – Namche is again greatly superior in many ways to the normal up-and-down via Dole – Machermo trail and does not take any more time either if acclimatisation is done properly. People just tend to follow some cursed heatmaps instead of studying real paper maps for interesting things to see, causing everybody just doing the same thing as everybody else.
Yes that inter village itinerary is what we did:)