Trek Guide
Western toilets low down, squat toilets from about 3,000m, long-drops at the top. What a hot shower costs (US$2–4), why paper is never provided, and…
By Travel Himalaya Nepal · May 20, 2026
Nobody puts "what are the toilets like?" in the first line of an email, but it is the question we get asked most once someone has actually committed to a trek. The honest answer: facilities on Nepal's teahouse trails are basic, they get more basic the higher…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
There is a reliable pattern to this, and it tracks altitude far more closely than it tracks price. The higher a lodge sits, the harder it is to get water into the building and waste out of it, and the more the plumbing simplifies. Roads reach the lower…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
If you have never used one, the mechanics are worth reading once before you are standing over one at 4,000m with cold hands. Feet go on the two raised pads, facing the door. Squat all the way down — heels flat if your ankles allow it, which most people's do…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Almost everything on this list is cheap, light and impossible to buy once you are three days from a road. Quantities below assume a trek of roughly ten to fourteen days; scale up or down from there. Everything here should also appear on your main Nepal…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
This is the part of the article that actually protects your trek. In our experience running trips since 1998, the trekkers who get ill are overwhelmingly the ones who did not treat their water or did not clean their hands before eating — not the ones who ate…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Teahouse tap water and stream water are not safe to drink untreated, at any altitude — cold, clear and fast-running says nothing about what is upstream, and on a busy trail there is usually a village upstream. Treat everything: chemical tablets, a filter, or…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Hot showers are available at many teahouses on the popular routes for US$2–4 , heated by solar panels or a gas cylinder. Higher up they get scarcer, colder and less reliable, and at the top lodges the offer is often a bucket of hot water rather than a shower…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Bring everything you need with you. Tampons in particular are difficult to buy outside Kathmandu and Pokhara, and effectively impossible on the trail, so pack for your whole trek plus a few days' margin — cycles do shift with altitude, exertion and travel…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Between lodges there is often nothing for two or three hours, so the rules matter. Go at least 50 metres from any water source, trail or building. Dig or scrape a small hole where the ground allows it, cover it afterwards, and never leave paper behind — bag…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Everything above describes teahouse trekking on established routes. Step onto a restricted-area or camping trek — Manaslu's upper valleys, Upper Mustang, Dolpo, Kanchenjunga — and the picture changes. Lodges are fewer and further apart, some sections are…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Trail toilets in Nepal are basic and entirely manageable. Carry your own paper, sanitise your hands before every meal, treat every drop of water, pack out what you brought in, and accept that you will be less than spotless for a few days. Set against standing…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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