Peak of Kyanjin Ri (4773m)

Trekking Nepal (Part 1)

From Kathmandu to the Langtang Region

Edwin Toh
Travel Logs
Published in
5 min readNov 16, 2013

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Second post on Medium and yet another travel journal. This time, I’m going to be writing about my trip to Nepal.

I decided to write this because I realised that there was a lot of information like this which I couldn’t find before my trip. Hopefully, this will help out someone who’s thinking of going to Nepal as well.

Trekking in Nepal has always been one of the things I wanted to do and I finally did it recently with a good friend from New York.

Planning

Before the trip, I actually always thought that trekking was just another word for hiking and since I’ve hiked a few mountains and volcanoes in Bali, Cambodia and New Zealand, I thought this trip will be similar as well. This was one of the reasons why I was really unprepared for the trip.

Tickets and the Tour Agency

Prior to the trip, both Phil and me were really busy with work and so we left it quite late to book our flights. I had to arrive 1 day earlier as we realised that the flight timings into Kathmandu are quite fixed and Phil’s flight in was only in the morning.

I went with Malaysia Airlines with a transit at Kuala Lumpur (from Singapore) for around SGD$600. (A straight flight would have cost double that).

Due to our limited time off (2 weeks) we couldn’t do the more popular Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) or Everest Base Camp (EBC) treks. However, we later learnt that it was possible to still do it, but with a different starting location. If you are really keen to do these treks, you should email a tour agency to get them to plan an itinerary for you.

While chatting with our guide and other trekkers on the route, we also realised that the 2 treks are very crowded and busy during October and November (which is the best time to go).

It is also worth noting that the trails in the 2 treks are more “well built” than the Langtang trek, which is what we chose in the end.

Due to our limited time, we decided to find a tour agency online first instead of hunting around Kathmandu for one the day we fly in. This was a good thing as we were told that there are often better rates that way.

After some searching, I found a local tour agency which listed an itinerary for a trek for 12 days. It was exactly what we were looking for and we went with them.

(You can skip this section if you don’t want to read a rant.)

The local tour agency “Char**t Travels” was listed on a popular travel tour search engine and I sent them an email to book a trip for both Phil and me. Initially, I was pretty grateful that they were able to accommodate 2 different flight arrival timings, however I later realised that the local agency was only the middleman. Everything was arranged and planned by the Nepal agency. It also took a lot of e-mails before I could confirm the trip and I had to ask and wait for about 2 weeks before I could get an official receipt of some kind to confirm the trip.

We were also not provided with ample information about what to bring and what to look out for.

In short, avoid going through a middle man, try finding a Nepali tour agency directly online.

Things to Bring

  • At least 3 Passport sized Photos (different countries seem to have different “passport sizes” but they don’t really seem to care about the difference)
  • US$25 cash for the Visa on Arrival
  • some cash to exchange for Nepali Rupees if you need to buy a prepaid sim card at the airport.
  • Toilet Paper (You can buy this in supermarkets in the city for about 15 rupees each as well)
  • Sleeping Bag (It gets really cold at night in the mountains and a sleeping bag that is rated to keep you warm at least to -3 degrees celcius will be a godsend)
  • Poncho (For bad weather)
  • Waterproof Jacket/Coat (Kathmandu is filled with North Face knockoffs that sells for about 3,500 RPs., they do keep you warm, so if you don’t have one, you can get one in the city. Remember to bargain!)
  • Gloves
  • Camera
  • Torchlight (It gets really dark at night and some hotels don’t have lights in the toilet)
  • Wool socks (Keeping your feet warm is essential!)
  • Good Trekking Shoes that are waterproof. (Remember that you’re going to be walking a lot in them for quite a few days, so try to break them in before you wear them on the trek.)
  • Altitude Sickness Pills (we took them so we won’t know how it feels if you don’t have it. we did see a few trekkers head back down due to painful migraines)
  • Change of clothes and toiletries
  • Water bottle that allows you to keep hot water. (This is a life saver, you can buy hot water in the guest houses and drinking hot water is a lot better than cold water in the cold weather.)

Currency

Nepal uses the Nepali Rupees (Exchange rate is about 1USD to 100 Rupees). Most Singapore money exchange do not carry the Nepali rupees. I managed to find one near by which was offering a really bad exchange rate of 55 rupees to 1 Singapore dollar. There is no need to get Nepali rupees before you reach Nepal. The money exchangers in the KTM airport offer a better rate than that. (although do take note that in Kathmandu city itself, the rates are better)

My advice is to exchange about 2000 rupees at the airport to get yourself a NCell prepaid sim card with data plan (it was about 1200 rupees for the SIM card + 1 GB data for 30 days), and also to tip your driver once he drops you off at the hotel.

Visa

Most visitors require a visa to enter Nepal. However, Visa on Arrival is available at the airport. Once you have disembarked from your flight, head to one of the counters and fill in the Visa form. Prepare a passport photo in advance and make sure you have US$25 in cash. I think the visa cost more if you are going to spend more than 15 days in Nepal, but I’m not sure how much it is.

The planning portion took a lot more to write than I imagined. I also don’t have a lot of pictures to share for this. Hopefully, the information will help someone who is preparing to go to Nepal though.

I’ll be writing the next part which shares the actual trek itself as this is getting a bit too long.

Again, sorry for my bad writing, but I do hope the information shared in this post helped someone!

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