Trekking is the largest single activity in this catalogue, and it spans a wide range of trip types. A trek here can mean a lodge-to-lodge walk in Nepal with a daypack, a fourteen-day glacier approach in Pakistan with porters and tents, or four days between mountain huts in the Western Caucasus. What they share is that they are trekking programmes rather than summit-climbing ones. That does not make them undemanding: individual itineraries still cross glacier terrain, rough moraine and remote ground at sustained altitude, in weather that changes fast and far from help, and each one states the skills and equipment it expects. What separates them is altitude, remoteness and how far you are from help.<\/p>\n
Nepal has an unusually well-developed lodge-based trekking network, which is why it carries a large share of the programmes on this page. Everest Base Camp, 14 days<\/a> is the reference route, and the Gokyo Lakes variant, 15 days<\/a> reaches the same region through a parallel valley and a pass rather than by walking the main trail twice. A one-week Everest option<\/a> exists for travellers with a hard calendar limit.<\/p>\n West of Khumbu the character changes. The Annapurna Circuit<\/a> is a long traverse through several climate zones and over a high pass; Annapurna Base Camp<\/a> is a shorter walk into a glacial sanctuary. The Manaslu Circuit<\/a> circles the Manaslu massif east of the Annapurna range. In the far east of the country, Kanchenjunga Base Camp<\/a> and Makalu Base Camp<\/a> are the long, remote options, and Kanchenjunga is also offered as a shorter Kanchenjunga itinerary<\/a> and by the Indian approach to Kanchenjunga<\/a> from Sikkim \u2014 three genuinely different trips to the same massif, from different countries and along different valleys.<\/p>\n K2 Base Camp and Concordia<\/a> is among the most demanding treks on this page. It follows the Baltoro Glacier for days on moraine and ice, sleeps in tents throughout, and finishes at the confluence where four eight-thousanders stand within sight of one another. There is no lodge network and no easy exit. It is not a summit climb, but it is a full expedition in logistics terms, and the days on the Baltoro are glacier travel requiring the equipment and skills the programme specifies.<\/p>\n The Tour du Mont Blanc<\/a> circles the highest massif in western Europe through three countries on a waymarked trail with valley accommodation, which makes it one of the more approachable long treks in the catalogue. The Lycian Way<\/a> follows the Turkish coast between classical ruins and beaches, at low altitude and over a long season.<\/p>\n The Western Caucasus is the forest, meadow, limestone and lake country of this catalogue, with routes that are walked rather than climbed, though they still ask for hill fitness, navigation in changeable weather and several days of self-sufficiency. Arkhyz<\/a> has a network of valleys and passes supporting trips of several lengths, Gwandra<\/a> reaches higher ground, Dombai<\/a> is the classic valley base, and the Lake Kardyvach trek<\/a> and the Oshten and Kardyvach traverse<\/a> are two separate programmes reaching the lake country behind the coastal ridges.<\/p>\n The Rwenzori<\/a> in Uganda is a rainforest-to-glacier trek through vegetation zones that exist almost nowhere else; the Atlas and Toubkal<\/a> is North Africa’s short-format high-altitude walk. In South America, Patagonia<\/a> is wind and granite at low altitude, and the Inca heartland in Peru<\/a> combines high walking with archaeology.<\/p>\n Two programmes are walked for reasons other than the landscape. The Kailash kora<\/a> is a circuit of a mountain that is not climbed at all, and the Druk Path in Bhutan<\/a> crosses the high country between Paro and Thimphu. Both are cultural journeys that happen to involve altitude.<\/p>\n Where you sleep shapes a trek more than the route profile does. A route with existing accommodation along it \u2014 lodges in Nepal, mountain huts in the Alps \u2014 means a bed, a cooked meal and a light pack, because the infrastructure is already in place and someone else maintains it. A camped route means a support crew, a camp that moves with you, and a materially different logistical footprint: on the Baltoro approach to K2 Base Camp, for example, every night is in tents and there is no lodge network at all.<\/p>\n This is worth checking on the programme page before anything else, because it decides what you carry, how remote you actually are, and how quickly a problem can be resolved. A fourteen-day lodge trek at 5,000 m and a fourteen-day camped trek at 5,000 m are not variations on one another, and each itinerary states which kind it is.<\/p>\n Difficulty on a trek is not a single number. It comes from the interaction of altitude and the acclimatisation profile, daily distance and ascent, how many days run consecutively, the terrain underfoot, the load carried, how exposed the route is to weather, how remote it is and how self-sufficient the team has to be. A high route with short days and a low route with long ones can ask for very different things, and a camped route is a different proposition from one with lodges along it. Each programme page states the prerequisites for its own itinerary, and those are what to read.<\/p>\n Consecutive days at altitude are what most trekking preparation is built around, which is the subject of the training guidance<\/a>. If you want the whole catalogue rather than the walking half of it, start from the full catalogue<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trekking is the largest single activity in this catalogue, and it spans a wide range of trip types. A trek here can mean a lodge-to-lodge walk in Nepal with a daypack, a fourteen-day glacier approach in Pakistan with porters and tents, or four days between mountain huts in the Western Caucasus. What they share is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-18026","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Karakoram<\/h2>\n
Europe and the Mediterranean<\/h2>\n
The Caucasus<\/h2>\n
Africa and the Americas<\/h2>\n
Pilgrimage routes<\/h2>\n
Lodge, hut or tent<\/h2>\n
How hard is a trek, really<\/h2>\n