Can you trek to Everest Base Camp without the Lukla flight? Yes — the classic Jiri route

You can reach base camp entirely overland, the way Hillary and Tenzing walked in 1953, before Lukla's airstrip existed. It adds about 5–7 days and skips the flight completely — here is the trade-off.

LR By Laxman Rawal · Aug 4, 2026 · 3 min read · ▶ Web Story

Can you trek to Everest Base Camp without the Lukla flight? Yes — the classic Jiri route

The short answer

Yes. You can reach Everest Base Camp entirely overland by starting from Jiri or Salleri/Phaplu — the classic route Hillary and Tenzing walked in 1953, before Lukla’s airstrip existed.
It removes the notorious Lukla flight completely.
It adds roughly 5–7 extra days of walking (plus a long drive) over the fly-in trek.
The pay-off: superb natural acclimatisation and days of quiet, traffic-free lowland trail.

Every Everest trekker has heard the stories about Lukla, the world’s most dangerous airport — the cliff-edge runway, the weather delays, the white knuckles. So here is a question we get more and more: can you skip the flight altogether and simply walk to Everest Base Camp? The answer is yes, and it is the oldest answer there is. Before 1964 there was no airstrip at Lukla; everyone walked in from the road, and you still can.

The classic 1953 approach

When the British expedition put Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the summit in 1953, they did not fly anywhere near the mountain. The party left Kathmandu on foot on 10 March with 150 porters and reached Tengboche, deep in the Khumbu, around 26–27 March — roughly a two-and-a-half-week march through the middle hills. Lukla’s Tenzing–Hillary Airport (2,846m) was only built in 1964, under Hillary’s own supervision, to speed people and materials into the region. The trail the 1953 team used is still walkable today, and it is the reason the Jiri route exists.

Two overland starts: Jiri and Salleri

There are two common ways in. From Jiri (a 7–8 hour drive east of Kathmandu, and the historic road-head nicknamed the Switzerland of Nepal), you walk 6–8 days through terraced farmland, rhododendron forest and Rai and Sherpa villages before joining the standard trail near Lukla. From Salleri / Phaplu, further along the road, you cut a couple of days off the walk-in. Both then follow the familiar path through Namche, Tengboche and up to base camp. Either way, you reach Namche already acclimatised and trail-hardened, well ahead of the trekkers who have just stepped off the plane.

Fly-in vs overland to Everest Base Camp
	Standard (fly Lukla)	Overland (Jiri/Salleri)
Total trip length	12–14 days	~19–23 days
Lukla flight	Yes — both ways	None
Getting there	~35-min flight	7–9 hr drive, then walk
Acclimatisation	Good, needs rest days	Excellent — gradual by design
Lower-trail crowds	Busy from Lukla	Near-empty until Namche

Why choose the long way

Three reasons people pick the overland route. The obvious one is avoiding the Lukla flight — its cancellations, its peak-season shuffle out to Manthali, and its reputation. The second is acclimatisation: starting low and walking up over many days is the gentlest possible way to gain altitude, and the extra days show at Gorak Shep. The third is the walk itself — the lower Solu country is warm, green, farmed and almost empty of trekkers, a completely different Nepal from the busy Khumbu highway above Namche.

The trade-off, honestly

The overland route costs you time, not comfort — budget about a week more of holiday, and expect long walking days through the hills. If your leave is tight, the fly-in trek is the sensible choice. If you have three weeks, hate flying, or simply want the full historical journey to base camp, the Jiri route is one of the great long walks in the Himalaya.

We run the standard fly-in Everest Base Camp trek from $1,850 per person solo (down to $1,500pp in a group of four to seven), and the 12-day version from $1,700 solo. Prefer the historic overland approach, or want a custom Jiri itinerary? Just ask — we have walked both, and 25+ years and 5,000+ treks in, we will tell you straight which one fits your dates and your legs.

Sources: Tenzing–Hillary (Lukla) Airport build year and elevation, and the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition’s overland approach from Kathmandu, per Wikipedia; Jiri road-head drive time and route stages from our own operations in the region.

Cover photo: Abdul Kayum via Pexels (Pexels License).

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