Manaslu Circuit Trek, Nepal

My dad and I went on a trekking trip to Nepal in October/November of 2021. On our trip we spent a few days in Kathmandu and hiked the Manaslu Circuit. Here is our itinerary for the entire trip.

*These miles are an approximation. You’ll find varying mileage on different websites.

The Manaslu Circuit is about 97 miles long, climbing from 2,289 feet up to 16,697 feet and back down to 6,419. In total we probably climbed 20, 000 feet as the route had a ridiculous amount of up and downs. 

Day 1: Arrived in Kathmandu

Day 2: Spent the day in Kathmandu

Day 3: Took a public bus from Kathmandu to Sotikhola 

Day 4: (First day of hiking), Sotikhola to Machakhala, 8.6 miles.

Day 5: Machakhala to Jagan, 13.7 miles

Day 6: Jagan to Deng, 12.3 miles

Day 7: Deng to Namrung, 12 miles 

Day 8: Namrung to Hinang Buddhist Monastery to Lho, 8 miles 

Day 9: Lho to Samaguan, 5 miles

Day 10: Acclimatization day with short day hike 

Day 11: Samaguan to Samdo, 5 miles 

Day 12: Samdo to Dharamsala, 4 miles

Day 13: Dharamsala to Larke Pass to Bimthang, 10.5 

Day 14: Bimthang to Tilje, 13 miles

Day 15: Tilje to Darapani, 4.5 

Day 16: Darapani to Kathmandu, drive

(Days 1 & 2 were spent in Kathmandu. If you would like to read about my time in Kathmandu, please visit my blog post on Kathmandu, Nepal.)

Leaving Kathmandu

On Day 3, we packed our gear into the duffles we borrowed from the trekking company. (I would not recommend using your own duffles as they get dirty and muddy, possibly with donkey poop, from the trail). We were outside and ready to go at 6:00 am. Our guide and porter picked us up in a taxi and took us to the bus depot. Around 6:45 we boarded the bus and our duffles were tied to the roof of the bus, (another reason not to use your own duffles). The bus was very old and dirty and gave me a slight 70’s vibe. 

The bus ride according to the trekking company and our guide was only supposed to be 6-7 hours, but instead took us 11 hours! This bus ride was more grueling than the 20 hour bus ride I took from Panama to Costa Rica a few years ago. Since this bus was a public bus we had to stop fairly frequently to pick up and drop off people. There was also a bit of traffic during the first part of the trip. The trip is only around 90 miles, but goes through some twisty roads.

We had a total of three restroom stops, one of which was also a lunch stop as well. I was sitting next to the window and was able to do a bit of people watching as we drove through different towns and villages. It was definitely a neat experience, but not one that I would necessarily want to repeat. Some of the roads were questionable; they looked like a car shouldn’t be able to go over it, let alone a bus. The roads were filled with holes, so it was very bumpy. During the second half of our bus ride, the roads were on the sides of cliffs, with no guardrails, nothing but air between us and the void, it was very scary. The ride took a long time because the drivers would stop and talk with people in each town for several minutes, after a while, this adds up.

The seats weren’t your standard nice bus seats, they were old and stiff with broken arm rests. At times it was very crowded in the bus. Luckily, there were no animals or awful smells inside, but it was definitely an interesting public transit experience.

Tea houses

After our insanely long bus ride the first day, we stayed in our first tea house. It was a fairly big cement building, at least three stories tall and a mint green color, right next to the river.

On the trek we stayed in lodging that is commonly referred to as “tea houses”. Each one was unique, though most were concrete buildings or cabin style buildings, but they were often very colorful. 

Most of the tea houses did not have heating, a couple of times we filled our water bottles up with hot water and put them in our sleeping bags at night, just to stay warm.

We had shower access most of the trek except for the day or two around the crossing of Larke Pass. Sometimes we had to pay for hot water, though it wasn’t very much, but sometimes the showers were cold showers. My dad didn’t shower as much as I did.

Since we did the trek at the end of the season, WiFi was not available most of the time, and when it was, we had to pay for it. We were able to call my mom a few times, which was nice. At one of the tea houses, up in the mountains, they had cable and during dinner around a yak dung burning stove, we sat with some of the family who lived there and watched Spiderman Homecoming in English. This was a very surreal experience.

The rooms we stayed in generally had some sort of bed frame with a hard mattress. At each place we stayed at, we would lay down our bed sized pieces of tyvek and sometimes used our sleeping pads (if the mattress was too hard). We used tyvek sheets for cleanliness reasons. Some of the mattresses were gross. In these towns fecal matter is everywhere. Between poop from people, donkey, dogs, and chickens, the dust isn’t just plain old dust. Unless it was too hot, we always slept in our sleeping bags. In some of the tea houses we stayed in, there were no sealed windows, just a shutter. So we did see a couple of creepy-crawlies near our beds on several occasions.

As for charging capabilities, we sometimes had them, but they didn’t always work. My dad brought a solar charger but only used it once. In some places you need to pay to charge. Many times, they shut the power off during the day or late at night, so you can’t charge during those times.

As for bathrooms, about half of the tea houses we stayed at had either a toilet or hole in the ground in an adjoining room. If they didn’t, it would be down the hall or in a building nearby. Some of the bathrooms had sinks and some didn’t. Most were very dirty and not cleaned regularly. We stayed at one tea house and ate lunch at another that had very clean bathrooms.

Food we ate while trekking 

Before the trip I had resigned myself to eating Dal Bhat (lentils with rice) and drinking black tea, but in reality, there were more options than I have in my own house. Breakfast would be ordered the night before, to ensure we could get an early start each day. For each meal, we were given a laminated menu with the tea house’s name on it. Most of the tea houses had mac & cheese, pizza, spaghetti, omelets, fried rice, potatoes, and french fries.

Due to a lack of sanitation, we tried to steer clear of eating anything that may have been washed in water. We also steered clear of meat due to uncleanliness and lack of refrigeration. Since we are gluten free, we did not partake in some of the food aforementioned. We did find stuff that we enjoyed though. With every meal we had a cup of tea. We usually picked black tea, but at the end of our trip I also tried the mint tea and the lemon tea. The lemon tea was my favorite. They also usually had bottled soda like Coke or Mountain Dew.

-Vegetable egg fried rice (sometimes just egg fried rice)

-Omelets (I don’t usually like omelets, but these were delicious! They were thin and slightly crispy)

-Dahl Bhat (The lentils can cause gastrointestinal issues, so I would not recommend eating this every night.

-French fries with ketchup (the ketchup tasted like regular ketchup, sometimes we had a fried egg on our fries)

-Fried potatoes (sometimes with vegetables and egg)

-Onion garlic soup

-Buckwheat pancakes (I tried this on one of our last days and it was pretty good with some honey slathered on it.)

The portion sizes were generous, but we still ended up eating some of our own snacks as well. I’d recommend bringing a gallon ziploc of snacks for yourself. Be aware that the temperatures and sun can get pretty hot at times and melt chocolate, etc.

Flora & Fauna

While on the trek we saw a large assortment of different types of animals. As I mentioned before, we saw many teams of donkeys, some horses, and small herds of Yaks almost every day. They use donkey trains to bring most items to the villages up in the mountains. In addition, we also saw a couple of monkeys, goats, lots of dogs (including a really cute puppy at one tea house), and even a ginormous bee hive attached to one of the tea houses. I also saw a small snake, spiders the size of my palm, and a praying mantis. Up in the mountains, the elusive snow leopard lives, but is rarely seen. Unfortunately, we didn’t see one. At the end of our trek I was saddened that we hadn’t seen a Yeti 🙂

During our trek we started out in the jungle but as we gained altitude, the trees thinned out and gave way to low lying bushes. I couldn’t believe my eyes when hiking one day, we came across a poinsettia tree. I didn’t even know poinsettias grew as trees, let alone in Nepal. We also saw cactus plants as well.

A couple days into our trip my dad ended up accidentally touching some stinging nettle. His arm burned and was red for a few days after that.

Weather

We were very surprised by the temperature during the beginning of the trek. It was very hot many days, but we were coming from Alaska, so we weren’t acclimated to hot temperatures. We didn’t have any thermometer, but our guess is that it was in the upper 70s low 80s with the sun glaring down on you (bring some sunscreen). As we climbed higher, it got colder, thankfully. It was nice to sleep in colder temperatures since we had warm sleeping bags. Up near the pass, it was a lot colder, but still tolerable. It didn’t rain or snow on us at all during the trek. There was a light shower one night while we were sleeping.

Altitude

At the beginning of our trip we started at an altitude of 4,593 feet in Kathmandu. On Day 13 we summited Larke Pass at 16,752 feet. After that we descended to around 6,440 feet by Day 15 and lost the rest of our altitude gain on the drive back to Kathmandu on Day 16.

Starting on around 8-9000ft in altitude my dad and I started taking the altitude medication, acetazolamide (Diamox). We took it twice a day and stopped after the morning of Day 13. I definitely started feeling the altitude around Day 8. By the time we got up to Dharamsala, walking would get me easily winded and I had frequent headaches. When we got up to Larke Pass I started feeling slightly nauseated and had a pounding headache. This culminated at the pass, but thankfully I was still able to enjoy the pass and these symptoms disappeared after a bit of descending.

Trekking day schedule

Most mornings we got up around 6:00 am, sometimes earlier sometimes later depending on how far we needed to hike that day. After packing up our gear we would head to the dining area, where we would eat breakfast, (ordered the night before).

Around the middle of the day, we would stop at a tea house and have lunch and tea. In the evenings we would order dinner and either read or play card games with our porter and guide. We taught them how to play “Golf” and they taught us how to play “Dumbal”, a Nepalese card game. (Click here for a link on how to play Dumbal) Usually after dinner we would go back to our room and watch something on the iPad my dad had brought traveling or we’d read. If you do bring an ipad on your trek I would recommend downloading movies or shows ahead of time as the WiFi will usually be non existent and will be reserved for texting or emails.

On the trek we had a lot of down time after we had finished hiking for the day. I brought my kindle on the trip and ended up reading 5 books.

While there weren’t lots of people trekking, we did end up playing leap frog with a few groups of other people along the way. The pandemic helped thin the tourist herds, so we rarely encountered other travelers and many times the other trekkers were Nepalese folks doing the circuit themselves.

Trekking days

For our trek, we had a guide and a porter.

The first couple of days our guide and porter hiked fairly slow. At one point a group of men carrying an old lady on a stretcher (they were taking her to the nearest place with medical help) passed us twice, as we were going so slow.

At the beginning of the trek, we hiked on dirt roads and were passed by cars several times. Later on, the road narrowed, but was still large enough to let trains of donkeys carrying goods pass us. One thing that definitely annoyed me a bit was the trails. Whoever created the trails did not use common sense, they made sure to go over every single hill. We would walk up a hill, only to go right back down it again, even though there was a clear way around said hill that could’ve been used. This was especially frustrating on Day 12 when we were hiking up to Larke Pass. Our path looked like a seismograph during a big earthquake, the path makers went out of their way to go over every hill in sight.

On the trek we crossed a lot of suspension bridges. Some only 20 feet up, with others being at least 100 feet high. If you have a fear of heights, like my dad, it will take some getting used to. By the end though, the suspension bridge heights therapy was working and he felt a lot more comfortable.

Our trek was originally planned to be 18 days long, but around Day 8, my dad was worried that we might not make it to the pass in time before it snowed so much we couldn’t go over it. If that happened, we’d have to turn around which we really didn’t want to do, because that would take several more days that we hadn’t budgeted for. Our guide however wasn’t really concerned and assured us that we could always turn around.

We really didn’t want to have to do that though, so we shaved two days off the trek. Not only were we worried about snow on the pass, but we also altered our plan a bit. We were originally supposed to take a side trip to the Tibet/China border, but after further talking with our guide we opted not to. Apparently it wasn’t legal to cross the border, China had supposedly recently set up CCTV cameras along the border, and our guide had never been there himself. We had wanted to hike up and just step across the border to say we did it, but having no wish to be taken to a Chinese prison, we decided against it. We ended up combining two short days of hiking with the side trip to the monastery visit and took an acclimatization day instead, once we got to a higher altitude village.

On Day 8 we hiked up to the Hinang Buddhist Monastery. It was really incredible, everything was decorated in reds, golds, blues, yellows, and greens. The details on the buildings were very elaborate for being in the middle of nowhere. We did have to wait for one of the monks to come back from a river ceremony to let us in to one of the temples, but it was worth it. While we were waiting, we saw this little kid with a cell phone, it was very surprising to us because we were literally in the middle of nowhere. During our trek, most of the people we saw along the way had smartphones. Many were constantly on their phone. The addiction to technology is far reaching 🙂

On Day 10, we took an acclimatization day. We walked around the town a bit, did a day hike to a nearby lake, and built a rock cairn on the edge with our porter and guide for good luck.

On Day 12, we hiked up to Dharamsala. Since we were at the tail end of the trekking season there weren’t many people and they were able to give us a room, so we didn’t end up needing to stay in a tent which they have set up for trekkers. I am very thankful for this, because it was freezing cold and the winds were very strong. The room that we stayed in looked like a meat locker in my opinion, but it was one of the warmer lodgings we stayed in during the cold days of the trek.

The next morning we woke up around 3:15 in the morning, packed up our gear and had breakfast. Before we left, we got some extra fried rice to take with us for lunch. We left around 4:30 and started the ascent to Larke Pass. We woke so early in an attempt to avoid the winds that hit the pass later in the day. It was pitch black at this time in morning, so we hiked with headlamps and were able to see the second best stars I have ever seen. (The only place that beats it, were the stars we saw in the Empty Quarter in Oman.)

It took us just over 5 hours to reach the top of the pass. Several other groups of people also got up to hike the pass when we did. On the way up, we wore our down jackets, hats, and mittens, it was very cold, likely in the teens (Fahrenheit), but with wind chill, likely a bit colder.

Larke Pass is 5,106 meters or 16,697 feet high. Once we got to the top, we took a couple of photos, then began our decent down the other side. We descended about 4,000 feet that afternoon. The hike that day took us almost 9 hours. The pass was gorgeous! Beautiful mountains were on all sides of us.

On Day 15, we hiked for a couple of hours, (we had to take a detour because one of the suspension bridges had collapsed). We then had to wait around in order to hitchhike on a jeep back to Darapani. My dad and I squeezed into the front seat with the driver, sans seatbelts. In Nepal they drive on the left side of the road. The road we took was definitely a little nerve racking, narrow dirt trails on the side of cliffs all while descending a mountain. It was so bumpy, I ended up getting bruises from slamming against the side of the car. It was a semi-scary ride at times but this driver, likely in his 30s, was really good at what he does. Nepal has a high road traffic mortality rate. The lack of seatbelts, overcrowded vehicles, and motorcycles adds to this high rate.

During the drive two little boys pulled a rope across the road, then music started coming from who knows where, and two little girls came out and started dancing in front of the jeep. They gave the driver of our jeep a marigold and he gave them some money. Pretty good imagination compared to a standard lemonade stand. (This was all because of the upcoming festival.) As we drove, the tea houses and homes we passed were decorated for the festival. *If you would like to read more about the festival, read my post about Kathmandu, Nepal.

We stopped in Darapani for the night and our guide gave us our trekking permits so we could keep them as souvenirs.

We opted to get a taxi back to Kathmandu instead of taking the public bus back, it was more expensive, but we were able to get back within 5 hours.

Packing

Click here to view my packing list I used for the trek!

Things I would do differently

When talking to the tour company we were not made aware of the fact that we would have to buy our own water along the trip. We knew we couldn’t drink the local water without treating it. My dad had brought Chlorine tablets, but almost not enough. The cost of buying bottled water up there increased as we got higher and more remote, which could be expected. No mention of needing to bring a fair amount of extra money along with us to purchase water was made or to bring enough chlorine tablets to last us the trip though. We thought that water was included because food was as well. My dad had many days of chlorine tablets and one can of gas for the gas stove for emergencies. Thankfully we were able to make do with the cash, chorine and gas stove that we had, but it did require a bit of strategic planning on our part as to where we would fill up our water bottles while hiking. You want to drink a lot of water and stay hydrated as you get up to that altitude, so plan accordingly.

Make sure your guide speaks good english. While our guide was able to communicate with us, we weren’t able to ask him very many questions about the area and history because he did not understand what we were asking. He’d correctly answer our questions a quarter of the time. This was one of the negatives with our Nepali tour company. Being able to learn about cultures, life and history of the area is a great plus of traveling. When your guide doesn’t understand your questions, it makes it very hard.

Overall I really enjoyed the trip and am very grateful that I was able to share this experience with my dad.