Photo: Benmerdmann · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Api Himal and Naupata
Far Western Himalaya
For travellers ready to go far west, Api Himal combines a serious trek with community hosted beginnings in Naupata.
- Duration
- 10days
- Max altitude
- 4,200m
- Difficulty
Strenuous
- Best seasons
April to May
October to November
[PRICE TBC]
What to expect
Before you go
- Ideal stay
- 10 days on the trek, plus 2 travel days at each end. This is a two-week commitment minimum
- Best time
- May to early June and late September to October. Winter closes the high ground and the monsoon makes the approach roads impassable
- Altitude
- Around 4,200m at the highest camp. High enough that acclimatisation matters and evacuation options are poor
- Permit
- Api Nampa Conservation Area entry, arranged before departure. Fees and rules for the far west change more often than elsewhere
- Getting there
- Fly to Dhangadhi, then 10 to 12 hours by road north to Darchula. The road is the hardest part of the trip
- Best for
- Experienced walkers who want a Himalayan trek with no lodges, no other groups and no phone signal
- Combine with
- Khaptad or Shuklaphanta, since all three are reached through Dhangadhi
- Travel well
- This is a full camping expedition with a local team. Everything carried in comes out again
Prices, fares and opening times last checked September 2026. They change — treat them as a guide and ask us if a figure matters to your plans.
What’s included
Licensed female guide
Experienced and licensed, with all salary, meals and accommodation covered.
All meals on trek
Full board — breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus two servings of tea, coffee or another hot drink each day.
Accommodation
High-rated teahouse stays throughout the trek.
Transport
All transportation related to the trek.
Permits and taxes
All necessary government and local permits, paperwork and taxes.
Trekking essentials
Trekking poles, microspikes or crampons, and seasonal fruit on the trail.
What’s not included
Travel insurance
Strongly recommended for high-altitude treks, and required for helicopter evacuation cover.
Personal expenses
Wi-Fi, laundry, battery charging, bottled or hot water, hot showers.
Alcoholic and personal drinks
Tips for your guide
You can add
A porter
Hired from the region you are walking through, so the work and the money stay in the villages on your route — and you walk with a lighter pack and someone who knows the ground.
[PRICE TBC]
Permits
Api Nampa Conservation Area — arranged for you. Restricted areas require a licensed guide by law.
Safety
Our altitude protocol
Altitude is the thing most people worry about, so here is exactly what we do about it. This is our operating protocol, not medical advice.
A guide trained in mountain safety and first aid
Licensed, and trained specifically for the conditions on these routes.
Daily health monitoring
We record your SpO2 and heart rate each day with a pulse oximeter, alongside an AMS assessment, and keep it in a wellness log you can see.
A first aid kit on every trek
Essential emergency supplies, including altitude sickness medication.
Pre-trek safety briefing
Altitude awareness, pacing, weather and emergency procedures — before you start walking, not on the trail.
Emergency coordination
With local health posts, rescue services and helicopter evacuation. The evacuation itself is covered by your travel insurance.
Api is 7,132 metres and it is the highest mountain in far-western Nepal. Almost nobody has heard of it, including most people who have trekked in Nepal, because it sits in Darchula district in the top-left corner of the country, against the Indian and Tibetan borders, about as far from Kathmandu as it is possible to get.
There are no lodges. There is no trail infrastructure. There is a conservation area established in 2010, a handful of villages, and a route up the Dhauliganga side valleys to a base camp under the north face. This is a camping trek with a full team, and it is the closest thing to a 1970s Nepal expedition that is still available as a holiday.
What the trek is
Ten days of walking from the roadhead above Darchula, through forest, into high valleys, and up to a base camp at around 4,200 metres beneath Api and Nampa.
The ground changes fast: subtropical river gorge, then oak and rhododendron, then birch, then open pasture with shepherds’ huts, then moraine. Snow leopard, musk deer, Himalayan black bear and red panda are all present in the conservation area and you are extremely unlikely to see any of them.
There is no altitude sickness margin built into a short itinerary, which is why ten days is the honest length. The rescue picture is poor — helicopter evacuation from here is difficult, weather-dependent and slow, and the nearest hospital of any consequence is a very long way south.
Naupata
The community stay that grounds the trip. Naupata is a village in Darchula, and starting or ending here rather than driving straight to a trailhead is the difference between a walk in an empty landscape and a visit to a region.
Far-western Nepal has its own culture — languages, dress, music and food that are not the Nepal seen in Kathmandu, and a history of being administratively neglected that people will discuss frankly. Deuda, the circle song-dance of the far west, is done here for local reasons rather than for guests.
The far west is the poorest region of the country by most measures. A trip here brings money into a place with very few other ways of earning it, and that is a real argument for going. It is not an argument for pretending the conditions are better than they are.
What it demands
- Fitness for consecutive long days at altitude with no rest-day infrastructure.
- A full camping setup: tents, kitchen, porters, guide. Nothing can be bought or hired en route.
- Flexibility. The road north from Dhangadhi is 10 to 12 hours in good conditions and can be closed by landslide. The trek is at the mercy of weather that nobody is forecasting locally.
- Comfort with isolation. No phone signal for most of it, no other groups, no shops.
Practical things
- Permits and rules for Api Nampa change, and are administered locally rather than from Kathmandu. Confirm the current position before travelling rather than relying on anything written more than a season ago.
- Water from streams, treated. Filters, not just tablets, at these volumes.
- A sleeping bag rated to well below freezing, even in May.
- Cash from Dhangadhi, all of it.
- Waste comes out. There is no system here at all, and a trek this size generates more than you think.
Not sure this is the right trek?
Book a free call with someone who has walked it. We will tell you honestly if another route suits you better — that happens often, and it is the whole point of talking first.