Through this 13-day journey, you can discover lesser-known communities and the more untamed areas of the lower Everest region. You travel well off the usual road to see the holy “Dudh Kunda” lake, spending nights in local tea houses at lower altitudes and part of the time camping in the woods.
Your journey passes through genuine Sherpa villages where you stay with local hosts, gorgeous forests where there’s a good chance you’ll see wildlife, and up into the breathtaking Himalayan scenery around the holy lake.
Your hike starts with a quick flight to Phaplu, where you ascend to Pikey Peak, possibly Nepal’s best vantage point for the Himalayas. On a clear day, you can see the Annapurnas in the west and Mt. Kanchenjunga in the east! Naturally, Mt. Everest is front and center in this.
You can visit the Thubten Choling Monastery, which serves as a first point of contact for many Tibetan refugees and is still home to a sizable population of Tibetan Buddhists, by making the trek from Pikey Peak to the sizable Sherpa village of Junbesi. On your trek’s camping leg, you continue climbing to Dudh Kunda and return to Phaplu via Chiwong Gompa.