The world's deepest gorge isn't the Grand Canyon, and trekkers walk its floor

Records & People Between two 8,000-metre peaks, the Kali Gandaki has carved a gorge over three times the depth of the Grand Canyon, and a trekking trail runs along… By Dawa Sherpa · Aug 21, 2026 Read the full story

By one measure the deepest gorge on Earth is in Nepal, and an ordinary trekking trail runs along its floor. The Kali Gandaki river cuts between two 8,000-metre peaks, Dhaulagiri and Annapurna I, and the drop from their summits to the water is more than 5,500… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

How a river ends up 5,500 metres below two 8,000-metre peaks

The river is older than the mountains. The Kali Gandaki is what geologists call an antecedent river: it was flowing along its course before India began colliding with Asia roughly 50 million years ago, and as the Himalaya rose around it, it kept cutting down… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Which gorge is really the deepest

It depends what you measure, and it is worth being straight about that. Measured as vertical relief — the drop from the highest adjacent summit to the river — the Kali Gandaki beats every other gorge on the planet. Measured as continuous, walled canyon depth… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The fossils in the riverbed

Between Damodar Kund and Kagbeni, the river washes out black, coiled fossils that Hindus and Buddhists have venerated for more than 2,000 years. They are shaligrams, the remains of ammonites — spiral-shelled sea creatures that lived in the Tethys Sea about… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Walking it, and driving it

This is not a gorge you look at from a fenced overlook; it is one of Nepal's most walked trekking corridors. The Annapurna Circuit and the Jomsom—Muktinath trek follow it upstream through Tatopani, Ghasa, Lete, Marpha and Jomsom before climbing toward… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Annapurna Circuit Trek — 14 Days

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