Kathmandu Base for Trekkers
Sleep beside the national park gate. Store your extra luggage free, wash everything when you come down, and start your hike from the front door.
Sleep beside the national park gate. Store your extra luggage free, wash everything when you come down, and start your hike from the front door.
Most trekking itineraries treat Kathmandu as a night either side of the mountains. That is a shame, and it also means most people spend those nights in the noisiest part of the city, exactly when they need sleep most.
House of Forrest sits in Nagarjun, five minutes from the gate of Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park on the quiet northwestern edge of the valley. For anyone heading to Everest, Annapurna, Langtang or Manaslu, it is a more useful base than central Thamel: quieter for sleeping, cleaner air for acclimatising, and a genuine forest trail on the doorstep for testing your legs.
Two things matter in the days before you walk: sleeping properly, and not getting sick. Central Kathmandu is difficult on both counts. The traffic noise runs late, and in the dry season the dust in the tourist districts is heavy enough to leave people with a cough on day one of their trek, which is the last thing you want at altitude.
Nagarjun is residential and backs onto protected forest. It is noticeably quieter, and the air is measurably better because you are upwind of the valley basin and next to several hundred hectares of trees. Guests routinely tell us they slept better here than anywhere else in Nepal.
The climb to Jamacho Peak starts five minutes from the building and gains around 800 metres through oak and rhododendron forest to a stupa at 2,095 metres. It takes most people three to four hours up and two down. That is close to a real trekking day in miniature, and it will tell you whether your boots rub, whether your pack is packed properly, and how your body handles sustained climbing before you are somewhere remote.
Our full day hikes guide covers Jamacho along with Shivapuri Peak at 2,732 metres, Champa Devi and Chandragiri, all reachable from here as day trips.
Store what you do not need on the trail with us, free, for as long as you are gone.
Lukla flights and trailhead jeeps leave before dawn. Tell us the time and a taxi will be waiting.
After two weeks of dal bhat, cooking your own food is a genuine luxury. Every apartment has a full kitchen.
Reserve before and after in one message and we will hold the same apartment for your return.
Apartments from $16 a night, five minutes from the national park gate.
See the ApartmentsYes, free of charge. Most guests leave a bag of city clothes and valuables with us while they are on the trail, then collect it when they come back. There is no time limit and no fee, whether you are gone five days or three weeks.
Usually yes, if you tell us both sets of dates when you book. Guests often stay two nights before heading out and two or three nights after, and we try to put you back in the same apartment so it feels like coming home.
You are five minutes from the Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park gate. Jamacho Peak at 2,095 metres is a solid half-day climb straight from the door, which is a genuinely useful shakedown hike for boots, poles and lungs before you fly to Lukla or drive to Besisahar.
Yes. Domestic flights to Lukla and Pokhara leave very early, and jeep departures to trailheads are often before dawn. Tell us your departure time and we will have the gate open and a taxi waiting.
Every apartment has a washing machine, which most trekkers consider the single best feature after two weeks on a trail. There is also a laundry service five minutes away if you would rather hand it over.
No, but Thamel is ten minutes away and has the largest concentration of gear shops in Nepal, for both rental and purchase. We are happy to tell you which shops guests have had good experiences with.