Tiji Festival Trekking

In accordance with your flight schedule, we will be at the Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu to extend a warm welcome to you in our beautiful country for the beautiful trip. After exchanging warm welcome greetings at the arrival section, we will lead you to our vehicle to transfer you to our trip hotel. It’s a day at complete leisure on your own to relax the jetlag. But we definitely help you with the information to go around in case you’d like to do so.

We spend a full day in Kathmandu today which will be a necessary acclimatization day as well. Early in the morning after breakfast, we will meet for trip briefing where we will talk about this amazing trip in details and answer your questions should you have any. After the brief meeting is over, we are taking you for an amazing cultural sightseeing tour of heritage sites in Kathmandu valley. The sites we take you for the sightseeing today include Swoyambhunath - the oldest monument in Kathmandu valley, Kathmandu Durbar Square – to see the temple of Living Goddess and other medieval architectural wonders, Pashupatinath – to immerse into Hindu death rites on the bank of a holy river, and Boudhanath – a massive Buddhist shrine considered as the biggest in the world.

We are heading to Pokhara today on an overland journey. The road journey of about 6 hours starts after breakfasts and heads towards the west of Kathmandu valley past Swoyambhunath aka monkey temple. As soon as we get outside Kathmandu valley from the western ridge, we can immediately experience the charm of rural Nepal. The drive has some beautiful view of Himalayan peaks and countryside hills. The highway runs through small towns, river bank and winding curl exposing rural Nepalese wonders to us. We reach Pokhara just to feel the welcome of this beautiful lake city. We are going to stay overnight at Lakeside. We will have free time to wander around lakeside on our own once we check in to the hotel.

We set off on the first day of trekking today but only after a scenic flight to Jomsom. We drive to airport for our morning flight to the beautiful headquarters of Mustang, Jomsom. We fly closely past the spectacular Annapurna range and enter the Kali Gandaki valley overlooking Dhaulagiri range in the Himalaya. A memorable twenty minutes of flight lands at Jomsom where we meet our complete trekking crew. We prepare for the walk of the day to Kagbeni, a beautiful village on the bank of Kali Gandaki River. The sandy trail goes along the river bank and gets windy in the afternoon. Despite the windy condition on the trail, the stretch is scenic that we enjoy walking on it.

Our trek continues on the deserted, sandy trail up towards the Upper Mustang. The destination of our walk today is Chaile, a beautiful village in the region. We continue our trek along the Kali Gandaki River and enjoy the charm that the river valley has to offer. After a while our trail ascends to Tangbe, a local village that comes along the trail today. The uniqueness of the village in its formation is so wonderful that we keep admiring its beauty. We walk further towards the destination and eventually reach Chaile after about 6 hours of walk. Chaile is another wonderful village that bears unique cultural riches of the region.

We are going to walk over two passes on our trek today. We cross Taklam La 3,624m and Dorje La 3,735m before reaching the destination today. As the stretch today involves lots of uphill and downhill walking at the high altitude, it’s going to be challenging day for us. But the challenge is well worth it as we can enjoy a spectacular view that is unlike from anywhere. We walk past Samar village and continue the trek to Syangboche village for overnight stay.

The stretch of walk today has another high pass for us to cross. We cross Yamda La at the elevation of 3,850 meters and Nyi La at the elevation of 4,010 meters above sea level on our trek to Ghami today. These two passes bring some spectacular views of the mountains and a uniquely different landscape. We walk up and down the passes and eventually reach Ghami village after about six hours of challenging walk. Ghami village is a village with fascinating culture and surrounding to explore and enjoy.

We are slowly gaining elevation for our overnight places each day although we have walked past high passes on our walk on the previous days. The challenging day involves a walk over another pass called Charang La at the elevation of 3,870 meters above sea level. The ascents and descents on the stretch today bring some majestic views, mani walls and wonderful landscapes to our sight. Beautiful Charang village offers a rich cultural and spiritual immersion that we can explore as soon as we reach there.

We reach Lo Manthang today. Lo Manthang is the destination area of the trip to explore a uniquely beautiful Buddhist culture and lifestyle that is untouched by the modern civilization. The walk today involves challenging trails and high pass walk. Breathtaking views that the stretch brings make us forget about the challenging toughness of the trek. Beautiful mountain sights keep us calm and comfortable even at this high altitude challenging walk. Although the walk is challenging, it is shorter than other days. We reach Lo Manthang in about 4 hours and will have enough time to go for an exploration of the area.

We spend three days here at Lo Manthang observing the Tiji Festival rituals and exploring the wonders this place has to offer to the modern world. The simplicity in life style and devotion in their faith is what people in this walled city have been living for ages. We go to explore beautiful monasteries and other areas in Lo Manthang. A full day is well spent exploring the wonders of Upper Mustang that brought us here. These three days bring us beautiful and inspiring experiences.

We set off on our return trip early today and trek to Drakmar. Drakmar will be the highest overnight place of the trip. On the trail to the destination today, we can explore an ancient Buddhist monastery and rock paintings. We can make a wish here as people believe that the wish made here comes true. After making our wish at the monastery, we trek further to Drakmar, our destination of the day.

The walk today starts really early to make it easier for the day as the trail can get as windy as anything in the afternoon. The sooner we start the better for us. Although the walk itself is not that challenging, the atmospheric condition can create a little trouble. Sandy terrain and strong gust of wind doesn’t go well along. Traversing the dry trail down the sandy landscape, we finally reach Geling for our overnight stay.

We start early today and walk to Chhuksang. We are covering a huge drop on the elevation so the trail will mostly descend towards the destination. The stretch today brings fabulous views of the snow-capped mountains in addition to the wonderful landscape that the region has. We reach Chhuksang after about six hours of trekking.Chhuksang is a small village in the region with great cultural wonders.

It’s the final day of walk today. We trek all the way down to Jomsom today and finish the walking part of Upper Mustang trip. The trail descends to Kagbeni and goes along the Kali Gandaki River to Jomsom. We celebrate the end of trekking part; express our hearty thanks to the crew members who made this trip possible by being with us throughout to help.

A short but overwhelming flight to Pokhara across the mountains is due this morning. We board the plane and fly southward from Jomsom passing through several gigantic snow-capped mountains. It’s in incredible mountain flight experience of about 20 minutes. Once in Pokhara, we have leisurely time on our own to go explore the town. We can find massage to relieve the tiredness of trekking or simply walk around the lakeside. There are options of going for some adventure activities like paragliding, zip flying, bungee jumping and ultra-light flight etc.