Travel in Pokhara & Annapurna

Pokhara is a valley of lakes with the Annapurna wall standing behind it. It appears on all six of our Nepal itineraries, usually for two or three nights, and four of them use it as the base for a trek. Every trip is private and guided, built around your own dates — we run no fixed group departures.

Three itineraries reach Pokhara along the road west through Bandipur, the ridge town at 1,000 m; two of those offer an optional white-water run on the Trishuli on the way, at extra cost. Two more come up from Chitwan in the lowlands, and one comes straight from Kathmandu with a village stop en route. No domestic flight appears anywhere in the six itineraries — the journeys between Kathmandu, Chitwan and Pokhara are by road.

The town days follow a pattern. Five itineraries put a boat on Phewa Lake. Four run the same circuit of the valley's set pieces — Devi's Falls and the Seti River gorge; the Bindhyabasini Temple on its hill above town, dedicated to Pokhara's guardian goddess Bhagwati; and the Gupteshwar Mahadev Cave, one of the longest in South Asia. Three take in the Shanti Stupa, the white stupa on the ridge above the Phewa valley at about 1,115 m, where four Buddha statues face the cardinal directions; on one of the three it is an hour uphill on foot. Two set a 5 a.m. alarm for Sarangkot at about 1,592 m, where Dhaulagiri and Annapurna come up in the first light. The smaller variations matter too: one adds Begnas Lake, away from the crowds; two visit a Tibetan settlement outside town; one rides a mountain bike out to the surrounding villages with a picnic on the riverbank; one spends an afternoon in the International Mountain Museum.

The treks start a short drive out of the valley. Two itineraries run a five-stage loop from Nayapul at 1,070 m — up the Modi and Bhurundi river valleys to Ghorepani at 2,850 m, an early start for sunrise on Poon Hill at 3,210 m, then down through Tadapani at 2,590 m and Ghandruk at 1,940 m and back to Nayapul. A third walks six stages the other way round, from Kande at 1,700 m over the Australian Camp viewpoint at 2,200 m, reaching Ghorepani at 2,750 m the day before Poon Hill. Rhododendron and oak forest, terraced fields, suspension bridges, small villages.

One itinerary keeps going. Majestic Himalayas takes eleven stages from Nayapul: over Poon Hill like the others, then north up the Modi Khola to Machapuchare Base Camp at 3,700 m and on to Annapurna Base Camp at 4,130 m, back down by Jhinu Danda — hot springs nearby, optional — and Pothana, for a last look at Machapuchare, the double-peaked mountain known as Fishtail. Two things to know before you commit to it: conservation rules in the Annapurna region cap the available beds, so from Dovan at 2,500 m onward several nights are in a shared room, and the last stretch up to Deurali at 3,200 m is a rough track rather than a path after winter landslides.

Every trek ends back in Pokhara. One itinerary gives the valley a full sightseeing day before the drive to Kathmandu; two drive back the morning after coming down; the fourth carries on to Lumbini and Chitwan. Of the two trips without a trek, one continues to Chitwan and one drives back into the Kathmandu Valley to overnight at Dhulikhel. If your legs have had enough by then, one day note points at Pokhara's spas and massage parlours — not included.