Pack Your Bags, Book Your Trip
5 September 2026
Nepal is waiting for you. Here is the practical sequence, in the order it is worth doing it.
1. Pick the season
Autumn and spring are the reliable windows. October and November give the clearest skies of the year and the best mountain views, and take in Dashain and Tihar, the two biggest festivals in the calendar. March to May is warmer, with rhododendron in flower through the middle hills. December to February is cold at altitude but bright and quiet in the valley. June to September is the monsoon: green, humid, cheap, and not the time for Himalayan views unless you head for Mustang or Dolpo.
2. Sort the paperwork
Most nationalities can get a visa on arrival at Kathmandu airport for 15, 30 or 90 days — confirm the current rules for your own passport before you book, and carry passport photos and the fee. Get travel insurance that names trekking, the altitude you intend to reach, and helicopter evacuation. Read that clause rather than assuming.
3. Book the first nights before anything else
Whatever else your trip becomes, it starts with a few days in the valley. Book those first and build around them. Arriving with somewhere to go, at the end of a long flight, is worth a surprising amount.
4. Pack for three climates
Layers, because you will likely see 30°C in the Terai and below freezing at altitude in the same fortnight. Broken-in boots. A filter bottle. A power bank. Sunscreen that actually works at 4,000 metres, where the sun is fierce regardless of the temperature.
5. Leave room
The best days of most trips here were not on the itinerary. Pick your dates, pick a neighbourhood, book the stay. The rest builds itself around that.
Photo: Nepal 2018-03-25 (27817173148) by Guillaume Baviere from Uppsala, Sweden, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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