Gokyo Lakes and Gokyo Ri Trek

Kathmandu or Ramechhap, depending on the month

Out of the two busiest stretches of the year the flight leaves Kathmandu and takes about 35 minutes. Through most of March to May and late September to November, air traffic control moves Lukla departures to Manthali airport at Ramechhap to take the pressure off Kathmandu. That means a four to five hour drive leaving Kathmandu around two in the morning, then a twenty minute flight. It is the same trek and a considerably worse night. We tell you which one applies to your dates before you book, not after.

Fifteen kilos, and it is weighed

The allowance is 15 kg in total: 10 kg checked and 5 kg of hand baggage. Excess is charged at roughly $1.50 a kilo and it is enforced, because the aircraft is a nineteen-seat Twin Otter or Dornier and the runway is 527 metres long on a slope. Anything you are not taking up the hill is stored free at our office in Kathmandu.

Delays, and what we do about them

Lukla is closed by cloud several times a month in every season. A day lost is common, two is not rare, and that is exactly what the slack built into days 11 and 12, which can be walked as one long day is for. If the flight is cancelled for more than three days we change the itinerary to an equally good trek at a lower altitude rather than compress this one, and we do not charge you for the change. If you would rather fly out by helicopter on the day, that is around $500 a seat and we can usually arrange it within a few hours.

Book your flight home with a day to spare

Whatever your itinerary says, book an international ticket that leaves at least one clear day after your scheduled return to Kathmandu. It is the cheapest insurance on the whole trip and the thing we most often wish people had done.

14 nights, and what each one is

Heat, hot water, power and signal

Heating

One stove in the dining room, lit at dusk. Bedrooms are not heated at any altitude.

Hot shower

Up to Gokyo, $5–8, gas or solar. Nothing above Gokyo.

Charging

$3–5 a device in the dining room. Gokyo runs on solar and a cloudy day means no sockets, so take a power bank and keep it in your sleeping bag overnight.

Wifi

Everest Link cards, about $10 for 10 GB, working as far as Gokyo, badly.

Phone signal

Ncell and NTC cover most of the route to Machhermo, and Gokyo has patchy coverage from the ridge above the village.

Water

Boiled water $1–4 a litre depending on altitude. Do not drink from the lakes: they are a Ramsar site and a sacred one, and you should not be washing in them either.

Sleeping bag

Provided, rated to −15°C. Yours to use, ours to keep.

Bedding

A mattress, a pillow and a blanket. The bag goes on top of that, not instead of it.

If you eat differently

Twelve weeks, and what to do in each of them

Written for somebody who walks a bit and does not train. If you already run or cycle regularly, start at the eight-week block. Nothing here needs a gym.

1. 1

   Twelve weeks out

   Build the base

   Three cardio sessions a week, 45 minutes each, at a pace where you can still hold a conversation. Walking, cycling, swimming, rowing, it does not matter which. If you do nothing else on this list, do this.

2. 2

   Ten weeks out

   Add the hills

   Replace one session with a hill walk, an hour, with 300 m of ascent. Add a second strength session: squats, step-ups, lunges, calf raises. Your quads take more punishment coming down than going up.

3. 3

   Eight weeks out

   Put the pack on

   Start walking with the daypack you will actually carry, loaded to 6 kg. Wear the boots you will trek in on every one of these walks. Blisters are the second most common reason people struggle and they are entirely preventable.

4. 4

   Six weeks out

   Back-to-back days

   One long day at the weekend, four to five hours, then a second walk of two to three hours the next morning on tired legs. This is the single most useful thing on the list, because consecutive days are what the trek actually is.

5. 5

   Four weeks out

   Longest day

   Six to seven hours with 800 m of ascent and the same coming down. If you finish that able to eat a meal and sleep normally, you are ready.

6. 6

   Two weeks out

   Taper

   Halve the volume, keep the frequency. Nothing you do in the last fortnight makes you fitter and quite a lot of it can injure you. Sleep instead.

What we do about it, in order

1. 1

   Twice a day above Namche, we measure

   Your guide carries a pulse oximeter and takes your oxygen saturation and pulse every evening and again on any morning you are not right. Written down, so a slide across the three Gokyo nights is visible rather than a matter of opinion.

2. 2

   There is a doctor at Machhermo

   The Himalayan Rescue Association aid post at Machhermo, 4,470 m, is staffed by volunteer doctors through both trekking seasons and sits on our route on day 7 and again on the way down. This trek has better medical cover on the way up than the Base Camp route does.

3. 3

   If it is mild, we drop to Machhermo

   Three hundred and twenty metres down, to the aid post. Most cases end here and go back up the next day, and the itinerary has enough slack to allow it.

4. 4

   If it is not, we go down properly

   Dole at 4,110 m is a long day from Gokyo and Namche at 3,440 m is two. Descent is the only treatment that works and it is not a decision we put to a vote.

5. 5

   If we have to, we fly

   Helicopters land at Gokyo, Machhermo and Dole and reach Kathmandu in about an hour. This is what your insurance is for: the bill is $3,000 to $5,000 and the aircraft will not lift without a guarantee.

Who walks with you

A government-licensed guide with wilderness first aid training leads every departure, and one porter carries for every two trekkers. From 9 trekkers a second guide joins, so nobody is ever at the back of a long line on their own. Our guides are from the hills they take you into.

What a porter carries, and what they do not

Twenty kilos, which is your duffel and one other. That is below the 25 kg the trekking association permits and well below what you will see on the trail. If your bag is over, it is split rather than piled on. Porters carry loads, not daypacks: your water, camera, jacket and the day's snacks stay with you.

How they are paid and insured

Salary, insurance, food and lodging for every guide and porter are inside the price you pay, not something raised on the trail. Every one of them is insured for altitude and for helicopter evacuation on the same terms we ask of you. There is a long history in this industry of porters carrying too much in the wrong boots for money nobody would take at home, and the only way not to be part of it is to pay for it in the package price.

Tipping

Customary, not compulsory, and never a substitute for the wage. What is usual for this trip is $150 to $250 per traveller for the whole team, handed over together on the last evening rather than daily. Your guide will not ask and will be embarrassed if you do it in front of the group.

How the Gokyo Ri morning works

A dawn climb: out of the lodge at half past four with a headtorch, two to three hours of steep switchbacks straight up the hill behind the village, and the sun comes over Everest while you are standing on the top at 5,357 m. It is cold and there is no shelter up there, so your down jacket goes up in the pack and comes out when you stop. Back at the lodge for a second breakfast by nine.

And the fifth lake, which is the underrated day

Day 10 is longer, gentler and higher for more of the day: north along the edge of the Ngozumpa to the fourth and fifth lakes, then up onto the moraine at Scoundrel's Viewpoint for the north face of Everest and the full 36 kilometres of the glacier. Hardly anybody walks it, which after a fortnight in the Khumbu is something you notice.

Water, and the bottles we do not sell you

A traveller drinking bottled water gets through around 35 plastic bottles on this trip, every one of which was carried in and has to be carried out again. Boiled water is available at every lodge for a dollar or two a litre and we would rather you bought that. Take purification as a backup, not as your plan.

What we carry out

Everything we carry in that is not food. The Khumbu has a rubbish problem it did not create and cannot solve on its own, and the least any operator can do is not add to it.

Where the money stays

The lodges are family businesses in the villages you pass through. The guides and porters live in this district. The permits fund Sagarmatha National Park and the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality. Almost all of what you pay is spent within a few days' walk of the trail, which is the argument for using a Nepali operator rather than a foreign one that subcontracts to us anyway.

It is a place people live

Ask before photographing anybody. Walk on the mountain side of a mule train, not the drop side, and let it pass. Monasteries welcome visitors and they are not attractions; take your hat off and your shoes off, and if a service is happening, wait.

The lakes are not a swimming pool

The Gokyo lakes are a Ramsar wetland site and they are sacred to Hindus and Buddhists alike; there is a shrine at the third one and people bathe there in August as an act of worship. Do not wash in them, do not wash anything in them, and do not take water from them. It costs you a dollar for boiled water at the lodge and it is the single clearest instance on any of our treks of a rule that exists for somebody else's reasons rather than yours.

How to start

Write to us, or send a message on WhatsApp, and tell us roughly when. You will get a reply from somebody who has been on this trip, not a form. Nothing is owed at that stage and there is no obligation at any point before you pay a deposit.

The deposit

Thirty per cent to hold your dates, and the balance when you arrive in Kathmandu, in cash or by card. We ask for a passport copy, your insurance certificate and any dietary or medical notes at the same time.

Paying

Bank transfer, or card through a secure link. Card payments carry the bank's fee of about 4 per cent, which we show you before you pay rather than after. The balance in Kathmandu can be US dollars, pounds, euros or Nepali rupees.

If you cancel

More than 30 days out, the deposit transfers to any other date or trip we run, with no time limit. Inside 30 days the deposit is retained, because the permits, the flights and the crew are booked by then. If we cancel for any reason other than weather, you get everything back.

Private, or with a group

Both cost the same for a party of five or more. A private departure runs on your dates at your pace and can be arranged for one person; a group departure runs on the dates in the table above. Most people book privately and are surprised it costs no more.

Booking late

Two weeks is comfortable outside October. For October we want two months, and the constraint is Gokyo rather than the flights: it is a small village with a handful of lodges, there is no second village to fall back on, and parties arriving late in the day in peak season have slept in dining rooms.