Nepal's Newest Trekking Trail Was Built to Escape the Road That Ruined Part of the Annapurna Circuit

Twenty years ago, the Annapurna Circuit was Nepal's most famous walk. Then a road was blasted straight through one of its most scenic stretches, and trekkers stopped walking that section altogether. Now a new community trail bypasses the road completely — and it's already busier than almost anyone expected.

The route was built and is maintained largely by the villages along it, which is part of why it feels different from the paved-over sections of the old Circuit. Starting from the Ghandruk and Landruk area familiar to Annapurna Base Camp trekkers, it climbs through Mohare Danda and the classic Ghorepani–Poon Hill sunrise viewpoint, then pushes further off the beaten path through Swanta, the dramatic Khopra ridge, Khaire Barahi Lake and Mulde Viewpoint, before dropping to link up with Dhampus via Ulleri in Kaski district. None of it touches a road.

"Its quiet, off-road environment and closeness to Pokhara have made it a favorite among tourists," local guide Dinesh Kumar Ghimire told Khabarhub. Lok Bahadur Purja, who runs a hotel in the trailside village of Baili, says the route works for both lodge-based trekking and camping, but recommends hiring a guide given the natural hazards of the terrain. Rajesh Tilija Pun, chair of Annapurna Rural Municipality-5, says local authorities are actively working to expand community lodge capacity to keep pace with demand.

The trail's rise mirrors a wider pattern across the Annapurna region: as roads reach further into once-remote valleys, trekkers and local operators alike have gone looking for the parts of the map roads haven't reached yet. What makes this route notable is the local economic effect it's already having — residents who had left Myagdi, Kaski and Parbat for city work are returning to open teahouses and restaurants along the new path, according to reporting from the region. It's the kind of grassroots tourism corridor that took the original Annapurna Circuit decades to build, compressed into less than a year of word-of-mouth growth.

For visiting trekkers, the appeal is straightforward: many of the individual legs of this new trail — Ghorepani–Poon Hill, Mohare Danda, Khopra Ridge, Mulde Viewpoint — are already established, bookable treks in their own right, each running 3 to 9 days and each reachable from Pokhara without the long road transfers that eat into an Everest or Annapurna Circuit itinerary. Strung together, they form the kind of extended, low-traffic alternative that used to require weeks of local knowledge to piece together.

What this means for trekkers

Source: Khabarhub.

Cover photo: Arijit Dey via Pexels (Pexels License).