1 year in the planning and 22 days walking! It was brilliant and I would say if you are thinking about it, go and do it but do it soon.
It was Snowbuck's wish to go trekking in the Himalayas and after a great deal of thought we decided on the Manaslu Circuit with the Tsum Valley added on. We chose this because we didn't want to walk with lots of people. The Manaslu circuit gets about 8000 trekkers a year compared with 30000 for Everest Base Camp. A friend had done the Annapurna circuit on a motorcycle and we knew we didn't want that. The Manaslu Circuit had been growing in popularity until it was severely affected in the 2015 earthquake when it was closed and there is still rebuilding going on.
The Tsum Valley has been opened for trekking for only 10 or 11 years. It too was affected by the earthquake and is also rebuilding.
Both areas are restricted so you have to have a registered guide apply for all the permits which also keeps the numbers of trekkers down.
The people are absolutely lovely, friendly and welcoming. Both areas are quite different and amazing.
We chose to trek in April as I really wanted to see the rhododendrons in flower and it's a quieter time.
We used Sherpaland for the trek but you could easily turn up in Kathmandu and organise your trek there.
I would highly recommended Sherpaland and in fact we are looking at doing a different trek next year and will use them again. Lobsang is a Sherpa from the Everest area and all his guides are family or friends and all are Sherpas and proud of it.
You could join a group trek but we went with just us, Sange Sherpa our guide and Rakesh our porter. This gave us the flexibility to change things if we needed.
The walk is not easy. It's rated medium to hard and I would say that a few days are medium but most are hard! The altitude goes from a few 100m to 5100m crossing the Larkya La pass but there is plenty of opportunity to acclimatise.
Our original plan looked like this.
It was Snowbuck's wish to go trekking in the Himalayas and after a great deal of thought we decided on the Manaslu Circuit with the Tsum Valley added on. We chose this because we didn't want to walk with lots of people. The Manaslu circuit gets about 8000 trekkers a year compared with 30000 for Everest Base Camp. A friend had done the Annapurna circuit on a motorcycle and we knew we didn't want that. The Manaslu Circuit had been growing in popularity until it was severely affected in the 2015 earthquake when it was closed and there is still rebuilding going on.
The Tsum Valley has been opened for trekking for only 10 or 11 years. It too was affected by the earthquake and is also rebuilding.
Both areas are restricted so you have to have a registered guide apply for all the permits which also keeps the numbers of trekkers down.
The people are absolutely lovely, friendly and welcoming. Both areas are quite different and amazing.
We chose to trek in April as I really wanted to see the rhododendrons in flower and it's a quieter time.
We used Sherpaland for the trek but you could easily turn up in Kathmandu and organise your trek there.
I would highly recommended Sherpaland and in fact we are looking at doing a different trek next year and will use them again. Lobsang is a Sherpa from the Everest area and all his guides are family or friends and all are Sherpas and proud of it.
You could join a group trek but we went with just us, Sange Sherpa our guide and Rakesh our porter. This gave us the flexibility to change things if we needed.
The walk is not easy. It's rated medium to hard and I would say that a few days are medium but most are hard! The altitude goes from a few 100m to 5100m crossing the Larkya La pass but there is plenty of opportunity to acclimatise.
Our original plan looked like this.
