Why Wilderness Travel?
There are piles of Khumbu Valley hikes available, at all kinds of price points. You can go very expensive. You can go super cheap, like this Indian couple who traveled on $11 a day. Prices have gone up since Nepal instituted a guide requirement in 2025, although Bala told us that guides are still optional in the Khumbu.
The most bare-bones travelers just wing it, picking up a guide in Thamel or even Lukla and trusting that there will be space in teahouses on the way. At the end of the second-day walk to Namche, just the prospect of walking from the bottom of town to a booked hotel at the top is a daunting prospect; the thought of wandering from inn to inn like Joseph and Mary doesn’t bear consideration.
They might carry all their own gear, though porters don’t charge much for their labor. Cheaper tours come with big groups, with all that entails. Cheaper modes of travel also can involve more uncertainty about flights in and out of Lukla–one hears horror stories of folks being stuck in Lukla for three days, just waiting for a flight back to Kathmandu.
The most expensive tours can come with luxuries like helicopter tours of Everest itself, or helicopter transfers from one place to another. Helicopters really add to the price, but there’s no discounting the convenience of instantaneous transfers; lots of folks are happy to pay for a flight from EBC to Lukla when the only alternative is at least three days of (hard) walking.
Mountain Lodges of Nepal, which provided most of our accommodation, runs its own version of the Everest Base Camp trek with lots of helicopter transfers. Mountain Lodges also offers some thoughtful alternate options like the Everest Sherpa Trail that hikes as far as Deboche and includes a helicopter excursion to Kala Patthar and heli ride back to Lukla. This is not a terrible itinerary if your time is short.
We didn’t want that level of luxury–we were there to walk in the mountains, after all. On the other hand, we did have a tight schedule, we needed to be back in Kathmandu on a specific date, and we do relish our privacy and our comfort.
Wilderness Travel hit the sweet spot for us. The Lodge-to-Lodge itinerary is all walking, there and back. We had a private guide who devoted himself exclusively to us, making sure we always had water and working his connections at the airport to make sure we got back to Kathmandu on time. He was one of the most experienced and smartest local guides, so we learned tremendous amounts just by listening to his lectures on culture and natural history. They also hooked us up with a local contact in Kathmandu; Pankaj got us through the visa process in mere minutes, ushered various family members to and from the (chaotic and mildly terrifying) Kathmandu airport, arranged multiple drivers with large vehicles, and even hooked us up with a dress shop on a Saturday. Wilderness Travel really did nail the balance between furnishing us the services we could actually benefit from and letting us handle ourselves as much as possible. No complaints there.