Everyone has to buy a Sagamartha National Park Permit – 3,390 Nepalese Rupees ($33) – and a TIMS card – US$20 paid in Nepalese rupees if independent, or US$10 in NPR if trekking with a guide. As of October 2017, you will also need to pay an additional 2,000 NPR ($20) fee to enter the Solokhumbu region.

What you pay above that depends on the route you’re doing, the season and your requirements for porters, food and comfort. Travel insurance is essential but far from cheap.

WHAT THE EBC TREK COSTS FOR SHOESTRINGERS

The Everest Base Camp trek can cost under $500 for shoestringers who walk in from Jiri, then straight in and straight out to Everest Base Camp, unguided, over 24 days or so, assuming you already have appropriate travel insurance, Nepal visas (which start at $25 for 15 days), and all the gear you’ll need for the Everest Base Camp trek.

Note that sleeping bags and warm clothing can be hired in Kathmandu: Shona’s Alpine on Amrit Marg in Thamel rents sleeping bags and down jackets for NPR 80-100 per item per day, though you should go a season warmer than they recommend. Wear boots you have already broken in.

The cheapest way to do the Everest Base Camp Trek is to walk in to Lukla from Sriwalajaya, near Jiri, which takes six days: accommodation and food costs along this section of the route will be well under $10 a day for most, but you’ll cover an elevation equivalent to scaling Everest from sea level as you trudge up and down the valleys. Returning, you can either take the same route or walk out to Phaplu or elsewhere and pick up a jeep. (For more detail on this, see my Everest Base Camp Trek FAQ.)

EVEREST BASE CAMP TREK COSTS – INDIE STYLE

Most people choose to fly into Lukla, which costs $177 each way for foreigners and under $50 for Nepalese nationals, such as guides and porters who are travelling with you from Kathmandu (there are some small discounts for other South Asian nationals). You are best off booking through an agent in Nepal who can help rescheduling flights if planes get backed up at Lukla or you are delayed in the mountains.

Do note that flights routinely get backed up as the planes will only fly when the weather is clear in both Lukla and Kathmandu so you should allow several days’ leeway before your international flight, or, if timing is tight, ensure your travel insurance covers you for helicopter evac in this situation.

A porter-guide, who knows the route and speaks some English, should cost in the region of $20 per day, and porters in the region of $10 per day. Guides cost from $40 per day, depending on their skills and experience, and will manage recruitment of other team members if required, although if they’re managing a team as well as guiding, you’ll need to pay them more ($60 and up).

The standard tip is about 25%, and many agencies are happy to arrange guides, porters or porter-guides, giving you an additional layer of protection. A reasonable load for a porter is 15kg: they have to carry their own gear as well. Guides might help you out if you’re struggling with a bag, but will not carry for you. Please be sure to pay porters well: their need is considerably greater than yours.

Most basic lodges lower down on the Everest Base Camp trek cost 200 NPR ($2) for a room, or 500 NPR ($5) where en suites are available, although you have to eat your meals in the lodge, and food becomes more expensive the higher up the trail you go, as everything has to be brought in. Higher up and during busy season a room can cost 600NPR ($6), or 1000NPR ($10) at Gorak Shep.

There are a surprising number of extras. Water has to be heated over yak dung fires so a hot “shower” (a bucket of water) generally costs around 300NPR ($3); charging devices can cost from 200PR to 600NPR ($2-6); where wifi is available and the 3G signal has failed, this can cost you several dollars an hour. It’s worth buying an Ncell SIM with data in Kathmandu or Pokhara – a SIM with 5Gb will cost around $25.

Purifying your own water makes sense economically and environmentally – at higher elevations, a bottle of mineral water can cost almost $5. During cold times of year at higher elevations, you will need to buy hot drinking water from your lodge to ensure it lasts through a day’s trekking without freezing solid: this can cost several hundred rupees.

As a rule of thumb, shoestringers should be able to fill their daily calorific requirements, which increase, like costs, with altitude, for $15 per day on average on the Everest Base Camp trek proper. Allowing $25 per head will give you a broader range of options, including niceties such as meat, lots of hot drinks and the odd beer, apple pie or bucket of hot water to wash in: if you need candy while you trek, carry it with you from Pokhara or KTM, as a Snickers bar can cost $4 higher up the trail. (For more on food on the EBC trek, read this.)

HOW MUCH THE EBC TREK COSTS – IN “LUXURY”

People who book luxury treks overseas over routes such as the Three Passes often pay ten times, and sometimes twenty times, what shoestringers do for a 19 or 20 day trek. “Luxury” lodges charge from $150-$300 per day, with food prices to match, although there is no such thing as luxury higher up the trail.

If comfort is important to you, this is the primary instance where booking an organised tour can save money, as operators can get discounts on this price. If you have the money, Adventure Consultants’ top end tour includes helicopter transport, while Mountain Madness’ $5,000 trek includes a night camping at EBC among the climbers.)

Camping treks to Everest Base Camp cost much, much more than teahouse trekking as you have to cover the costs of yaks and porters. As these tend to put you up in villages full of trekking lodges rather than, say, at Everest Base Camp, there is very little point in doing one of these on this route: it’s so far from wilderness trekking that you’ll often camp in a lodge’s grounds and use their toilets.

HOW MUCH THE EBC TREK COSTS – ON A BUDGET WESTERN TOUR

I am not a fan of group tours, but the comments here have shown me that many people value the security of a well-known Western operator and the companionship of a small tour group. G Adventures has some reasonably well-priced trips – usually around $1600 for 15 days out of Kathmandu. upcoming discounted slots include 9 and 16 February for $1,319 and 13 and 15 April for $1317.

You can read their full trip schedule here, which is also a good guide to the basic, in-and-out Everest Base Camp trek route.

WHAT WE PAID FOR THE GOKYO EBC TREK

We spent $1100 per head all-in for nineteen days in the mountain, including flights, food, drink, porter-guide’s fee and tips. We stopped when we wanted to stop, and climbed when we wanted to climb, and only had to get up early when we did the Cho-La Pass.

The total cost of our Everest Base Camp trek, which we did via the much more interesting Gokyo route, was much, much less than the cheapest Western operators charge for tours EXCLUDING food, which was our largest single item of expenditure, and we stayed in the same lodges they did.

BUT PLEASE DON’T SKIMP ON THIS

You will need adventure travel insurance to cover the Everest Base Camp trek. World Nomads offers cover for trekking up to 6,000m to many nationalities, but if you are mountaineering, you’ll need to arrange cover through the mountaineering organisation in your home country. As always, be sure to read the Ts & Cs (here’s why).

For more on Everest Base Camp see my Everest Base Camp Trek FAQ, or to read my account of doing Everest Base Camp by way of Gokyo start here. We arranged our flights and porter-guide through Trek Around Nepal: they also offer full-service treks.

The post How Much Does the Everest Base Camp Trek Cost? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

The boat was late. Terminally late. Clearly an hour or more late, rather than a few minutes late.

So I was relaxed when I got off it to buy snacks at the port side, leaving Z perusing 1066 and All That in the cabin.

Rather less relaxed when I turned round, in the throes of making change, to see the boat pulling out to sea.

Z is on it. I am not. It is three and a half hours to the Indonesian side of the border, over deep sea.

“Bye!” yell the porters jocularly, stowing the ropes.

“My baby is on that boat,” I yell, forgetting about change and chucking a largish note at the snack seller.

Then I realise I can’t jump the boat. It is eight feet off the floating pier by now and heading out to sea.

“We come back,” they yell back, making hand gestures which communicate to me that they are clearing the pier so the boats which are due to leave after them can load up and depart, before they come back.

This makes sense to me. But, watching the boat pull out to sea, with my baby on board, I can only think that he will not get the finer points of this.

In fact, I’m terrified. Firstly, I envisage him battling his way past porters and jumping off the side. Then I realise he can swim, and, even if he couldn’t, they wouldn’t let him off.

Then I start to imagine how it must feel to be nine years old and without your mother on a boat heading out into the ocean.

I hope the porters will be more sensitive to his feelings about this separation than they have been to mine. As the boat with Z on pulls out off the shore I make frantic full-body diving signs for OK (as in “Don’t worry! It’s OK!”).

I know he can’t see me. But I carry on doing it.

The boat pulls out further. I begin to doubt whether anything the porters can say will reassure him. He knows it’s three and a half hours to Indonesia and I’m on the pier. My heart is breaking for him.

One of the porters tries to be funny. I nearly hit him. The others go into the mode we British recognise as “Calm down, luv, it may never happen!”

I’m hoping their colleagues are being more sensitive with Z but am not optimistic.

Two different boats pull in and load up with everything from mattresses to longans. It’s an agonisingly slow process. And all the while I am trying to communicate with Z, a hundred metres out to sea on the departed boat.

The second boat leaves. Our original boat backs in, agonisingly slowly, to its new spot.

I notice anxious porters on the shallow, rail-less deck edge which fringes the boat and doubles as a bumper for piers and a transition spot from boat to boat. “Quick!” they say.

The boat is more than 2 metres off shore. “Quick,” they say, again. Showing more sensitivity than I would ever have credited them with. (And more, according to Z, than they showed him…)

I think about jumping.

Once the boat is four feet off the pier, but before the ropes come out, I jump. I race through the companion-hold.

A woman in a headscarf gets in my way. “There is a problem with the baby,” she says, accusingly.

Did I say “gets in my way”? I mean, I think, “gets in my face”.

“I KNOW THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE BABY,” I say, trying not to hit her. I realise I am hopping from foot to foot, as though marking her in netball, in an attempt to get round her broadish beam.

She moves. This is very wise.

Z is, thank god, where I have left him.

Albeit in floods of tears. He is sitting under his hat, and behind his book, very much as camouflage.

We have a large hug. “I thought I was going all the way to Indonesia,” he says. “So I thought I’d read my book to take my mind off it.”

Our hug lasts for the big end of an hour.

And the sniffer dogs on the Indonesian side of the border? We rock ’em. Both of us.

The post Welcome to Indonesia! appeared first on EscapeArtistes.