The short version
The Thorong La is about 5,416m, higher than Everest Base Camp. ABC is about 4,130m. Annapurna is two insurance decisions, not one.
If you are walking the Annapurna Circuit, your policy must cover the Thorong La at about 5,416m — higher than Everest Base Camp. If you are only walking to Annapurna Base Camp, a band above about 4,130m is enough, and that genuinely is a cheaper policy. Annapurna is not one insurance decision; it is two, and buying the wrong one of them is the most common under-insurance we see in Nepal.
The reason is a misconception with a shape to it. Annapurna reads as the friendly one — lodges, apple pie, a road most of the way to Manang — so people insure it like a walking holiday. Then they cross the highest trekking pass on their itinerary at dawn in February wind.
- The Circuit’s high point is higher than Everest Base Camp. Insure it like a high-altitude trek, because it is one.
- ABC tops out at 4,130m. A policy capped at 5,000m covers it comfortably — and we would not talk you into more.
- The Circuit has a long road section, and road accidents are a bigger statistical risk than altitude on the first three days. Check what your policy says about jeeps, buses and hired motorbikes.
- Sleeping altitude is what insurers care about, and on the Circuit it climbs to about 4,900m at Thorong High Camp the night before the pass.
Annapurna Circuit or Annapurna Base Camp, and why the answer changes your policy
The Circuit needs a band above about 5,416m. ABC needs one above about 4,130m. Everything else about the two policies is the same, and the price difference between those two altitude bands is real.
Look at how insurers actually band this. Every figure below is quoted from the provider’s own published activity or policy pages, checked in August 2026. We sell no insurance and earn nothing whichever you buy.
| Provider | Tier | Published trekking ceiling | ABC (~4,130m) | Thorong La (~5,416m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| True Traveller | Standard | “Trekking up to 3,000 metres” | No | No |
| True Traveller | Adventure Pack | “Trekking up to 4,600 metres” | Yes | No |
| True Traveller | Extreme Pack | “Trekking over 4,600 metres” | Yes | Yes — plus the “Trekking in Nepal” option |
| BMC | Trek | “hill walking, trekking and backpacking up to 5,000m” | Yes | No |
| BMC | Rock | rock climbing, bouldering and graded scrambling up to 5,000m | Yes | No |
| BMC | Alpine & Ski | “trekking above 5,000m”, peaks to 6,500m | Yes | Yes |
| Snowcard | Adventure Plus | “Trekking upto 4000m excluding Nepal” | No — Nepal excluded outright | No |
| Snowcard | Adventure Max | “Trekking below 4000m including Nepal” | No — by about 130m | No |
| Snowcard | Expedition | “Trekking in Nepal (high altitude trekking below 6000m e.g.… Annapurna Circuit, Sanctuary)” | Yes — named | Yes — named |
| World Nomads | Depends where you live | US residents: hikes to 6,000m (Standard), 6,500m (Explorer). Elsewhere, e.g. New Zealand: 2,000m automatically, up to 6,000m if you add trekking to the quote and state your altitude | Yes if you add trekking (or on a US plan) | Yes if you add trekking (or on a US plan) |
Here is the sentence this whole page exists for. The Thorong La at about 5,416m — and Kala Patthar at about 5,545m on the Everest side — both sit above the 5,000m ceiling on the tier the BMC calls “Trek”, and above its Rock tier too. Someone planning a trek, seeing a product called Trek and buying it has behaved perfectly sensibly, and is nonetheless uninsured on the one morning of the trip that is genuinely dangerous: a pre-dawn crossing of the highest point, with no lodge on top and nowhere to shelter. ABC is the happier half of the story — it sits inside the Trek tier with plenty to spare, and we will not pretend otherwise to sell you an upgrade.
Snowcard is worth reading closely for a different reason: it carves Nepal out by name. Its Adventure Plus tier covers trekking to 4,000m but excludes Nepal entirely; its Adventure Max tier covers Nepal only below 4,000m, which misses Annapurna Base Camp by about 130 metres; and the Annapurna Circuit and the Sanctuary appear by name only in its Expedition tier. Two people can hold what looks like the same 4,000m policy and only one of them is covered on the Annapurna side.
| Point on the trek | Trek | Altitude | Policy capped at 4,000m | Policy capped at 5,000m | Policy to 6,500m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chhomrong | ABC | 2,170m | Covered | Covered | Covered |
| Machhapuchhre Base Camp | ABC | 3,700m | Covered | Covered | Covered |
| Annapurna Base Camp | ABC | about 4,130m | Not covered | Covered | Covered |
| Manang | Circuit | 3,540m | Covered | Covered | Covered |
| Thorong Phedi | Circuit | 4,450m | Not covered | Covered | Covered |
| Thorong High Camp | Circuit | ~4,900m | Not covered | Covered | Covered |
| Thorong La | Circuit | about 5,416m | Not covered | Not covered | Covered |
| Muktinath | Circuit | 3,760m | Covered | Covered | Covered |
Read the ABC rows again, because this is the part that saves you money: a 4,000m cap is 130 metres short of Annapurna Base Camp. One hundred and thirty metres, on the one day of the trek you flew across the world for. That is the whole failure.
People under-insure Annapurna because it feels lower than Everest. It is not. The Thorong La at about 5,416m is higher than Everest Base Camp at about 5,364m, and the pass is a single long push with no lodge on top and nowhere to shelter in bad weather. If a policy would not do for EBC, it will not do for the Circuit either.
What the road section does to your risk, and to your policy
The first days of the Circuit are the statistically dangerous ones, and they have nothing to do with altitude. They are a jeep on a mountain road.
The Besisahar road now runs deep into the valley and most Circuit itineraries use it for part of the approach. The UK Foreign Office is blunt: “Bus accidents are common in Nepal and there are a number of accidents resulting in fatalities every year,” and “road conditions are poor, especially during the monsoon season or in mountain areas.” Flooding and landslides, it adds, “can lead to impassable roads, delays to journeys, or cut off towns and villages for days at a time.”
Three consequences for the policy in your bag:
- A road accident on the approach is an ordinary medical and evacuation claim, and your altitude band has nothing to do with it. It is where a high medical limit earns its keep, because you may end up in a Pokhara or Kathmandu hospital rather than on a helicopter.
- Hired motorbikes and scooters are a separate question. Many policies restrict or exclude riding, and the FCDO states you need “a 1968 international driving permit (IDP) and your UK driving licence to drive in Nepal”. Plenty of people hire a scooter in Pokhara around the trek without ever thinking of it as an insured activity.
- Landslide road closures are a curtailment and delay question, not a rescue one — extra nights, a rerouted jeep, possibly a missed flight home. Those benefits live in different sections of the wording from the one you bought the policy for.
What an Annapurna evacuation actually costs and how it starts
A helicopter off the Annapurna side runs roughly $3,000–5,000, and it usually starts with a doctor rather than a phone call. The full breakdown is in our Everest Base Camp and trekking-peak cover work differently again. helicopter rescue costs guide.
The Annapurna side has an advantage the Khumbu does not: the Himalayan Rescue Association runs a volunteer-staffed aid post at Manang, 3,550m, open through the spring and autumn seasons, sitting exactly where people arrive feeling wrong before the pass. A consultation there plus a rest day or a descent resolves a lot of what would otherwise become a claim.
Whatever happens, the claim needs the same things: a clinical reason recorded, a named diagnosis, the treating clinician’s paperwork, your policy number. Insurers scrutinise Nepal helicopter claims closely, and for good reason — the FCDO warns of “isolated reports of some trekking guides taking inexperienced trekkers to high altitudes too quickly, and then calling in expensive helicopter medivacs from which the guides take a cut”. A documented evacuation is untroubled by that. An undocumented one is not.
Where cheap cover is genuinely fine on Annapurna
If you are doing ABC, Poon Hill, Mardi Himal or Ghandruk and nothing else, a standard policy with a 5,000m band and a named rescue clause is enough. You do not need a mountaineering product, you do not need an alpine club membership, and you should not let anyone upsell you one.
You can also skip: baggage cover beyond the basics, gadget cover, and cancel-for-any-reason. What you should not skip on either trek is helicopter evacuation named as its own benefit rather than assumed, a serious medical and repatriation limit, and every pre-existing condition declared in writing before you travel. Undeclared conditions are the commonest reason a large Nepal claim is cut down.
A word on that medical limit, because “US$100,000” gets repeated as though it were the target. It is not. $100,000 is roughly the floor at which an evacuation stops ruining you, and it is thin for medical treatment and repatriation — a road accident on the Besisahar approach can mean days of intensive care and then a medically escorted flight home. The specialists write far more: True Traveller and the BMC both carry £10 million of emergency medical and repatriation cover, while the BMC and Snowcard cap search and rescue separately at £100,000. Ripcord shows how independent the two numbers are — $1,000,000 of medical evacuation against $100,000 of emergency medical expense. Check both.
And check who is allowed to say yes. True Traveller covers helicopter rescue “when it is medically necessary and authorised by the Emergency Medical Assistance Service”, and most wordings work the same way — Nepali operators want a guarantee of payment before the rotors turn. If you are the one who is ill, you will not be making that call, so lodge your insurance certificate and your insurer’s 24-hour number with your trekking company before you leave home, and carry both on paper. It costs nothing and it is the difference between a helicopter at nine in the morning and one at three in the afternoon.
And you do not have to buy through us. We do not sell insurance, we do not take a commission on it, and we have no favourite provider. What we will do is tell you the exact maximum altitude of the itinerary you have booked, in writing, so you can match a policy to it — ask any operator for that and treat a vague answer as a warning.
What we would actually buy for the Circuit
A policy naming trekking above 5,416m, plus a Nepal endorsement if your insurer sells one separately; medical and repatriation cover well above the US$100,000 floor; helicopter evacuation named with its own limit; road-accident cover you have actually read; and pre-existing conditions declared and confirmed by email. For ABC only, the same list with about 4,130m in place of 5,416m — and a 5,000m band covers that comfortably.
The wider framework sits in our Nepal trekking insurance guide. Permits are a separate, small cost and unrelated to insurance: Annapurna needs ACAP and TIMS, about US$38 together — and unlike the Khumbu, the TIMS card here is still required.
We run the full Annapurna Circuit over 14 days, with the acclimatisation nights at Manang kept in and the pass day walked from High Camp — $1,600 solo, from $1,150 per person in a group of eight. The Thorong La is only reliably crossable outside deep winter, so the season you pick decides the itinerary. Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly whether they work.
See the itinerary & price →Annapurna insurance questions we actually get
Is the Annapurna Circuit higher than Everest Base Camp?
Yes, at its high point. The Thorong La is about 5,416m and Everest Base Camp about 5,364m. EBC trekkers who also walk up Kala Patthar reach about 5,545m, which is higher again — but a Circuit policy still has to cover more altitude than a Base Camp policy does.
What altitude cover do I need for Annapurna Base Camp?
About 4,130m. A policy banded to 5,000m — the BMC’s Trek tier, for example — covers it with room to spare. A policy banded to 4,000m does not cover the final day, which is the day you came for.
Do I need special insurance for the Thorong La?
You need an altitude band above about 5,416m, which in practice means the tier above the one called “Trek”. You do not need technical mountaineering cover — the pass is a walk on a trail, with no ropes, crampons or ice axe in normal conditions. It is a high walk, not a climb.
Does travel insurance cover a jeep or bus accident in Nepal?
Ordinarily yes, as a standard medical and evacuation claim, provided you were a passenger in a licensed vehicle. Riding a hired motorbike or scooter is the exception most people miss: many policies restrict it, and doing it without the correct licence and an international driving permit can void the claim.
Is insurance required to get an ACAP permit?
No. ACAP and TIMS are issued without proof of a policy — neither the Nepal Tourism Board’s nor TAAN’s published permit pages list insurance as a requirement anywhere, including the restricted areas. You will see it claimed that insurance became a legal condition of a restricted-area permit in 2026; we can find no primary source for that, and the operator blogs asserting it contradict each other, so treat any insurance requirement as an operator requirement rather than law. The rule that is confirmed is the guide one: the UK Foreign Office states that foreign independent trekkers must use a local guide or porter in Nepal’s national parks and protected areas, and the Annapurna Conservation Area is one. Reputable operators, us included, ask for proof of insurance everywhere regardless.
What happens if I turn back before the pass — does that affect my claim?
No, and it should never be a consideration. Turning around is the correct decision far more often than people make it. Your policy responds to what happened to you, not to whether you completed the route, and no benefit is forfeited by descending early.
Keep reading
Limits, exclusions and how a claim actually gets assembled and paid.
The 5,416m pass day in detail — timings, conditions and when to turn back.
Two different treks that share a name, and which one suits you.
How an evacuation gets called, flown and billed on the Annapurna side.
Ready to plan it? Contact us and we will send the day-by-day maximum altitudes in writing, so you can buy a policy that matches the route rather than the brochure.
Written by
Bishnu AdhikariPokhara-based, NMA-certified trekking guides. We’ve led 5,000+ treks across the Annapurna and Everest regions since 1998 — every word here comes from the trail. More from this author →
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