Everest Base Camp: The Days That Matter

The Everest Base Camp trek is the most famous walk in the world and, in its standard form, twelve days from Lukla to Base Camp and back. Almost every itinerary published online is the same itinerary, and most of them are wrong in one specific way: they treat the rest days as optional.

The shape of the route

The trail runs from Lukla (2,860 m) north along the Dudh Koshi, past Phakding and Monjo into the national park, up the long climb to Namche Bazaar (3,440 m), on to Tengboche, Pangboche, Dingboche (4,410 m), Thukla, Lobuche and Gorak Shep (5,164 m), from which Base Camp (5,364 m) and Kala Patthar (5,644 m) are day trips.

The first two days are forest and river, warm and easy. The last three are high, cold, slow and spectacular.

The two days that decide the trek

Namche Bazaar is where most people first feel altitude: a headache, poor sleep, breathlessness on the stairs. The standard itinerary gives one rest day here, and it should be taken. Walk up to the Everest View Hotel and back down to sleep — climb high, sleep low.

Dingboche, at 4,410 metres, is the second decision point and the one more often skipped. A second night here, with a short walk up the Imja valley and back down to sleep, is the difference between a hard day to Lobuche and an impossible one.

No one has ever regretted a rest day. Plenty have regretted skipping one.

What Base Camp is actually like

Base Camp in the trekking seasons is a small tented city on the Khumbu glacier — expeditions, kitchens, communications domes and the icefall doctors compound. It is not a place of solitude.

Between expeditions, in winter, there is almost nothing there. Both are worth seeing; they are not the same place. The view of Everest itself is better from Kala Patthar, and most people who trek to Base Camp go up Kala Patthar at dawn the following morning, which means a 4am start and a slow, cold hour and a half.

Costs, for real

A twelve-day tea house trek with a licensed guide varies enormously with what you include. As a working guide, budget separately for: the Lukla flight, often the largest single line item and heavily seasonal; permits and park fees; guide and porter wages plus their insurance and food; accommodation and meals on the trail; and your own insurance that explicitly covers trekking above 5,000 metres.

That last point is the one people get wrong. Most standard travel policies exclude trekking above 3,000 or 4,000 metres, and a helicopter evacuation from Gorak Shep is expensive.

When to go

Late March to May, and late September to November. December and January are cold, clear and quiet. The monsoon brings cloud, delays and a much higher chance of a cancelled flight.

Build in a buffer day at each end for the Lukla flight. Weather cancellations are common and the standby queue can cost you two days.