Final Budget
(vero;2017-March-12)
The times are long gone when trekking in Nepal was cheap. Of course, cost of living and inflation are driving prices up and one cannot expect to pay the same amount for a dhal bhat in 2016 as in 1995. But it is much more complex than that. Nepal has become a victim of its success and the ever increasing number of tourists in the mountains have changed the character of trekking very much.
When we say tourists, we mean specifically the sort of tourists we described after our last visit in 2013, many coming with a group, who consider their trek in Nepal as just another “holiday” and expect a treat of a life time. In the case of groups, they have paid everything upfront and come loaded with pocket money, ready to spend it whatever the cost, and if they come on their own, they budget as they would for a trip to Thailand or any other destination. Most (nearly all) of them will hire a guide and porters and develop a sort of dependency on them: they are led to certain lodges, where guide and porters have a deal with the lodge owner, they are shielded from the environment, ordering food through them and oblivious to the reality of prices in the Nepalese economy.
They live in a bubble, expect comfort, showers everyday, attached toilets and ridiculous amenities such as a pizza cooked on a wood-fired oven, bottled mineral water, imported beer or a wifi connection at 4500m altitude. They come to the mountains with a total disregard and lack of knowledge of the impact of such demands on the environment and the local everyday life. For them, it all seems normal and still “sooo much cheaper” as at home…
We discussed this with our host in Braga, who told us how there is a constant pressure for lodge owners to become more “sophisticated”, whatever the cost. That is something only bigger lodges can (more or less) manage, pushing the smaller basic family-run lodges out of business. This is not made better by the appearance of fixed priced “community menus” dictating all lodges to charge the same prices, which diminishes the incentive for trekkers to go to smaller lodges. These community menus are often significantly overpriced, which is usually justified with the supposed cost of transport, a logic defied by the dhal bhat prices in the Annapurna lowlands (Ghandruk and surroundings) where a dhal bhat actually gets more expensive the nearer you get to the road head.
So, it is not a surprise that prices are going up. All those investments have to be amortised and Nepalis are quick learners: they know that money is not an issue for most of their customers.
This is a very unwelcome development for independent trekkers like us. The evolution of the price of tea is a good example: every trekker who has spent some time in a small lodge will know that there is always a kettle on the stove and that thermos flasks are being filled during the day as the water gets ready. Which is why Nepalis, locals and visitors alike, hardly ever pay for their tea and if they do, they pay a very nominal sum, say five rupees. This is not the case with trekkers though: a cup of tea that costs 10 Rs in the lowlands rapidly rises to 60-80 Rs, with the highest price we have seen being 120 Rs in Dharamsala on the Manaslu trek (yes, for a single small cup of black tea). To put this in perspective, 1 US$ gets you around 100 Rs and a school teacher in Nepal earns around 16-20,000 Rs per month (less for rural postings). The Prime Minister gets around 100,000 Rs per month (no need to worry about his financial health though, there are other perks).
Given these price levels it is no wonder that we (and quite a few other trekkers) have stopped drinking tea. So you now see situations such as in Yak Kharka, where we were sharing the lodge with a Spanish couple with one porter and a guide. Like us, they found prices unexpectedly high and were watching their pennies, limiting the amount of food and drink they were consuming, while both porter and guide, who benefit from “local” pricing were indulging with snacks and beer.
This is something which is unfortunately not likely to get better. However, we managed our trek on a very frugal budget as shown below.
Food & Lodging on Trek: be aware that those numbers (for two persons) are very low and utterly budget. When possible, we only go to basic and small lodges and keep a strict diet: one cup of tea in the morning, locally bought biscuits and dried noodle soups during the day and a huge dhal bhat in the evening. No hot shower either. A “normal” trekker would normally look at something more like 20 US$ per person (!) including breakfast and two meals a day in a bigger lodge.
Trek Red Tape: we paid nothing for the Everest foothills as we stayed below the Lukla trek and the cost for Annapurna was the usual 2000 Rs for the TIMS and 2000 Rs for the Annapurna Conservation Area per person. Manaslu was an other proposition as we paid per person in addition to our porter/guide 70 US$ for a 7 days permit and 2000 Rs for the Manaslu Conservation Area (no TIMS though for Manaslu).
Non Trek Hotel: we stayed at friends for the first eight days of our trip in Kathmandu which had of course a very favorable impact on the budget. Later on, we had a very good value guest house in Kathmandu for 5 US$ a night with clean common bathroom (Papaya House), the slight inconvenience being that it was quite far off Thamel on the way to Budhanilkantha just before the ring road. It was OK for a few days but we opted for a guest house in Thamel for our next stay (King's Land Hotel - nothing to write home about) where we paid 8 US$ per night with bathroom. The room was a bit shabby and dark but it did the job and the location was perfect. Finding a very good guest house for 400 Rs with attached bathroom is not at all difficult in Pokhara. Off the beaten track we paid 400 Rs for a very dusty and noisy room with not so clean bathroom in Tansen (Hotel Bajra, to be avoided), 300 Rs in Hetauda (clean, common bathroom, near the bus station), 400 Rs in Daman (common bathroom) and 500 Rs in Janakpur (attached bathroom).
Transport: this turned out to be quite expensive but we covered a lot of ground. All prices per person.
Having finished our Manaslu/Annapurna trek, we made an interesting loop before returning to Kathmandu: from Pokhara we left for Tansen (325 Rs), continued to Hetauda (430 Rs) and Daman (125 Rs) to watch the Himalayan mountains from this view point. The bus back to Kathmandu was 110 Rs.
We also had an unusual trip back from the Everest foothills: we ended our trek in Phaplu and decided to spend a few days in Janakpur in the Terai. This meant taking a bus from Phaplu to Gurmie (700 Rs) where we found a connecting bus to Katari (250 Rs) where we stopped for the night and took a bus the next morning for Janakpur (150 Rs). We eventually ended up in Pokhara (680 Rs night bus) and back to Kathmandu (600 Rs).
Go back to Solukhumbu Foothills or go on to Email Updates
$updated from: Blog.htxt Mon 04 Mar 2024 16:04:40 trvl2 (By Vero and Thomas Lauer)$