Trek the Upper Mustang Trek

The Upper Mustang trek leads through Nepal's last forbidden kingdom — 14 days across desert canyons, sky caves, and the walled city of Lo Manthang.

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Day-by-Day Itinerary

Day 1: Kathmandu to Pokhara

• Route: Kathmandu → Pokhara (Prithvi Highway, via the Trishuli River valley)
• Walking time: None (drive day)
• Distance: ~200 km / 124 miles by road (6–7 hrs)
• Starting elevation: Kathmandu, 1,350 m
• Highest point: Kathmandu (departure point); the drive descends overall
• Overnight: Pokhara, 830 m
• Main highlight: First lakeside views of the Annapurna range

The trip begins with the overland drive west out of the Kathmandu Valley, following the Trishuli River through Nepal's mid-hills. It's a long day in a vehicle rather than a trekking day, but it does real work: it gets you to Pokhara, the only practical staging point for the Jomsom flight, and it lets you adjust before the trek itself begins.

Pokhara arrives by late afternoon, and the lakeside setting is an easy way to spend the evening — Phewa Lake, and on a clear day, the fishtail summit of Machhapuchhre rising directly behind it. Travellers who'd rather not spend a full day on the road can fly the Kathmandu–Pokhara sector instead (about 25 minutes); ask about this when booking. Either way, the goal for the evening is simple: pack your daypack and get to bed early, because the Jomsom flight the next morning leaves at dawn.

Day 2: Pokhara to Jomsom (Flight) and Trek to Kagbeni

• Route: Pokhara → Jomsom (flight) → Kagbeni (trek)
• Walking time: ~3 hrs
• Distance: ~10 km / 6.2 miles trek
• Starting elevation: Pokhara, 830 m
• Highest point: Kagbeni, 2,800 m
• Overnight: Kagbeni, 2,800 m
• Main highlight: The Jomsom flight through the Kali Gandaki gorge; arrival at the gateway to the restricted area

The 25-minute flight from Pokhara to Jomsom is one of the more dramatic short hops in the Himalaya, threading the Kali Gandaki gorge with Annapurna on one side and Dhaulagiri on the other — two 8,000 m massifs close enough to feel. Flights run only in the calm early-morning window, before the valley's famous afternoon winds build, which is why this day starts early and the schedule has no flexibility to push it later.

From Jomsom (2,715 m), the trek proper begins with an easy half-day walk up the broad Kali Gandaki riverbed to Kagbeni. It's a gentle introduction — flat, scenic, and short enough to settle into the rhythm of walking at altitude. Kagbeni itself is one of the most atmospheric villages in the whole Annapurna region: narrow mud-brick alleys, a 15th-century monastery, and a checkpoint at the village's northern edge where the restricted kingdom of Upper Mustang officially begins. Your restricted-area permit becomes active the next morning when you pass through it.

Photo: View of Kagbeni Village

Day 3: Kagbeni to Chele

• Route: Kagbeni → Tangbe → Chhusang → Chele
• Walking time: 5–6 hrs
• Distance: ~15 km / 9.3 miles
• Starting elevation: Kagbeni, 2,800 m
• Highest point: Chele, 3,050 m
• Overnight: Chele, 3,050 m
• Main highlight: The landscape shift into desert canyon country; cave-pocked cliffs above Chhusang

This is the first full day inside the restricted zone, and the landscape changes almost immediately. The green river valley around Kagbeni gives way, within an hour or so, to the wind-carved red, ochre, and grey cliffs that define Upper Mustang — many of them honeycombed with the ancient sky caves the region is known for. The whitewashed village of Tangbe, with its barley fields and apple orchards, is an early highlight.

By midday the trail reaches Chhusang, sitting at a river confluence beneath spectacular cave-riddled cliffs, before crossing the Kali Gandaki and climbing steeply — 30 to 40 minutes of real effort — up out of the gorge to Chele. From here, the trek's character shifts for good: the days of riverside walking are behind you, and the route moves onto high passes, plateaus, and wide desert horizons for the rest of the way to Lo Manthang.

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Day 4: Chele to Syangboche

• Route: Chele → Taklam La (3,624 m) → Samar → Dajori La (3,735 m) → Syangboche
• Walking time: 5–6 hrs
• Distance: ~14 km / 8.7 miles
• Starting elevation: Chele, 3,050 m
• Highest point: Dajori La, 3,735 m
• Overnight: Syangboche, 3,475 m
• Main highlight: Two named passes; the optional side trip to Chungsi Cave

The pattern of passes-and-canyons that defines Upper Mustang really starts today, with two named crossings: Taklam La (3,624 m) and later Dajori La (3,735 m). Between them lies Samar, a village sheltered in a grove of poplar trees that makes one of the most photogenic lunch stops on the route.

An optional detour from Samar drops into a deep side canyon to Chungsi Cave, a sacred meditation site associated with Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava), who is said to have meditated there in the 8th century on his way to Tibet. It adds time and effort to an already full day, but it's a genuine highlight worth discussing with your guide the evening before. The day ends at Syangboche, a small high settlement where nights start to turn noticeably colder — you're now sleeping consistently above 3,400 m.

Day 5: Syangboche to Ghami

• Route: Syangboche → Yamda La (3,850 m) → Nyi La (4,010 m) → Ghami
• Walking time: 4–5 hrs
• Distance: ~12 km / 7.5 miles
• Starting elevation: Syangboche, 3,475 m
• Highest point: Nyi La, 4,010 m
• Overnight: Ghami, 3,500 m
• Main highlight: The trek's first crossing above 4,000 m

A shorter day on paper, but pass-heavy: Yamda La (3,850 m) and then Nyi La (4,010 m), the first point on the trek that touches 4,000 m. The climb to Nyi La is gradual rather than steep, but it's worth pacing deliberately — it's a natural first checkpoint for how your body is handling the altitude, and it's worth mentioning any headache, unusual fatigue, or loss of appetite to your guide here rather than pushing through it.

The descent to Ghami is long and gentle, dropping into one of Mustang's larger traditional villages, set in a natural amphitheatre of red and ochre cliffs. Ghami's barley fields are still worked with animal teams and hand tools, much as they have been for generations, and the village has some of the better teahouses on the central route.

Photo: View of Ghami Village

Day 6: Ghami to Charang (Tsarang)

• Route: Ghami → the Ghami mani wall → Charang La (3,870 m) → Charang
• Walking time: 4 hrs
• Distance: ~11 km / 6.8 miles
• Starting elevation: Ghami, 3,500 m
• Highest point: Charang La, 3,870 m
• Overnight: Charang, 3,560 m
• Main highlight: Nepal's longest mani wall; Charang's fortress monastery and ruined royal palace

A shorter, culturally dense day. Just beyond Ghami, the trail passes the longest mani wall in Nepal — well over 300 metres of stones carved with Buddhist prayers, accumulated over centuries. Tradition calls for walking it clockwise, keeping it on your right, which is the single most important etiquette rule anywhere in Buddhist Mustang.

Charang (also spelled Tsarang) was the capital of the Kingdom of Lo before Lo Manthang took that role, and it still carries the weight of that history: an imposing red monastery (Charang Gompa) on the village's edge, and the ruins of a five-storey royal palace on the bluff above the fields. Because the walking day is short, there's real time to visit the monastery properly in the late afternoon — its collection of thangkas and statuary is one of the more rewarding stops on the whole route, and it's worth not rushing it.

Day 7: Charang to Lo Manthang

• Route: Charang → Lo La (3,950 m) → Lo Manthang
• Walking time: 4–5 hrs
• Distance: ~13 km / 8 miles
• Starting elevation: Charang, 3,560 m
• Highest point: Lo La, 3,950 m
• Overnight: Lo Manthang, 3,770 m (first of two nights)
• Main highlight: The first view of the walled city from Lo La

This is the day the first week has been building toward. The climb from Charang to Lo La (3,950 m) is steady rather than dramatic, but the pass itself delivers one of the genuinely great "first view" moments in Himalayan trekking: Lo Manthang appears below, a compact white-walled medieval city sitting alone on an immense brown plateau, with the Tibetan border hills behind it.

Founded in 1380 and continuously inhabited since, Lo Manthang was the seat of the Kings of Lo for five centuries and remains one of the best-preserved walled medieval cities anywhere. Inside its single gate: whitewashed alleys, chortens, prayer wheels, the former royal palace, and three major monasteries — Jampa Gompa (1387), Thubchen Gompa (1468), and the still-active Chodey Gompa. You have two nights here, which is what makes the dedicated Chhoser day trip (next) possible without rushing either it or the city itself.

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The Chhoser Caves (Jhong Cave)

Day 8 is built entirely around this: a day trip north from Lo Manthang into the Chhoser Valley, toward the Tibetan border, to visit the sky caves of Mustang's most accessible — and most dramatic — cave complex.

• Route: Lo Manthang → Chhoser Valley → Jhong Cave → Nyphu & Garphu cave monasteries → return to Lo Manthang
• Walking time: 5–6 hrs round trip (jeep or horse option available for those who'd rather rest their legs)
• Distance: ~14 km / 8.7 miles round trip
• Starting elevation: Lo Manthang, 3,770 m
• Highest point: ~4,000 m, within the Chhoser Valley
• Overnight: Lo Manthang, 3,770 m (second night)
• Main highlight: Climbing through the multi-level Jhong Cave on internal ladders

How old is it, really? This is a point worth being careful about, because sources vary considerably and the honest answer is that archaeologists have not settled it. Some tourism material markets the complex with a confident single figure— "2,500 years old," or "800 BC" — but the underlying archaeological picture is more layered than that. Excavations across the wider Mustang cave network (not exclusively Chhoser) have produced a genuine range of findings: partially mummified remains described as "at least 2,000 years old" from mid-1990s digs, a 2010 excavation near Samdzong dating remains to roughly the 3rd–8th centuries AD, and Buddhist murals and manuscripts elsewhere in the cave network dated to the 12th–14th centuries.

Scholarly sources, including the Wikipedia overview of the Mustang cave network, state plainly that researchers have not reached consensus on who built the earliest caves or precisely why — proposed uses include burial chambers (one strand of research links some remains to Bon-Buddhist sky-burial practice), refuge during periods of conflict, meditation retreats, storage, and military lookout posts, with different chambers likely serving different purposes at different times. In short: the caves are genuinely ancient and the subject of real ongoing research, but a single confident age and a single confident explanation for why they were built should both be treated as the current best estimate of one theory, not settled fact.

Beyond the cave itself, the Chhoser Valley also holds two cave monasteries — Nyphu, built directly into the rock face, and Garphu, surrounded by chortens and village houses — both still active places of worship, which underline how unbroken the valley's connection to Tibetan Buddhist practice remains this close to the border.

Practically: the round trip can be walked, or done by jeep or horse for those who'd rather save their legs for the following days — worth arranging with your guide the evening before. The internal ladders are steep and the passages tight; grippy footwear helps, and the climb is not recommended for anyone with significant claustrophobia. Photography rules inside the monasteries (not the cave itself) typically require asking first.

Photo: Historically significant Chhoser Caves

Day 9: Lo Manthang to Dhakmar

• Route: Lo Manthang → Chogo La (4,230 m) → Ghar Gompa → Dhakmar — the return route begins, and it differs from the way in
• Walking time: 6–7 hrs (the longest day of the trek)
• Distance: ~17 km / 10.5 miles
• Starting elevation: Lo Manthang, 3,770 m
• Highest point: Chogo La, 4,230 m — the highest point of the entire trek
• Overnight: Dhakmar, 3,800 m
• Main highlight: Crossing the trek's highest pass; Ghar Gompa, Mustang's oldest monastery

This is the day the itinerary turns for home — and onto a genuinely different route than the one that led in. Rather than retracing the outbound path back through Charang and Ghami, the standard itinerary heads west, over Chogo La at 4,230 m, the literal high point of the whole 14-day trip. The climb is long but gradual, with expanding views back across the Lo Manthang plateau for what is, on this itinerary, the last sight of the walled city.

Midway down the far side sits Ghar Gompa, which tradition holds was founded in the 8th century by Guru Rinpoche himself — before he travelled on to Tibet to establish Samye, Tibet's first monastery — making it the oldest monastery in Mustang by a wide margin. The day ends at Dhakmar, arguably the most dramatically situated overnight on the whole route: a village sitting directly beneath a wall of blood-red, cave-riddled cliffs that glow in the evening light. It's also, by most measures on this itinerary, the longest and hardest single day — start early, pace the Chogo La climb, and carry more water than you think you'll need, since there are long stretches without a reliable refill.

Day 10: Dhakmar to Ghiling

• Route: Dhakmar → Mui La (4,170 m) → Ghiling
• Walking time: 5–6 hrs
• Distance: ~14 km / 8.7 miles
• Starting elevation: Dhakmar, 3,800 m
• Highest point: Mui La, 4,170 m
• Overnight: Ghiling, 3,860 m (the highest sleeping altitude of the entire trek)
• Main highlight: The last pass above 4,000 m; Ghiling's barley fields and twin monasteries

The return route continues on its own high western line, crossing Mui La at 4,170 m — the last point on the trip above 4,000 m — before dropping to Ghiling. This is a substantial, deeply traditional village: wide barley fields, long mani walls, and two hilltop monasteries worth the short climb up to them in the late afternoon.

Ghiling, at 3,860 m, is technically the highest place you sleep on the entire itinerary — a detail worth knowing, since it's easy to assume the "hardest" night would be the one closest to Chogo La rather than the one after it. The afternoon wind is at your back heading south from here, which helps, though it's still strong enough that a buff or light face covering is worth having out on exposed stretches.

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Day 11: Ghiling to Chhusang

• Route: Ghiling → Samar → Chele → Chhusang
• Walking time: 5–6 hrs
• Distance: ~16 km / 10 miles
• Starting elevation: Ghiling, 3,860 m
• Highest point: Ghiling (departure); the day is a long net descent
• Overnight: Chhusang, 3,050 m
• Main highlight: Re-entering the Kali Gandaki valley after days in the high desert

A long descending day — over 800 metres of net elevation loss — retracing the high canyon route back through Samar and Chele (both now familiar from the outbound leg, though the return perspective makes them feel different) to Chhusang on the Kali Gandaki. The sound of running water again, after days in the silent high desert, is its own small landmark on the trip.

The descent itself is steep in sections and genuinely hard on the knees after this many consecutive trekking days; trekking poles earn their place today more than almost any other.

Day 12: Chhusang to Jomsom

• Route: Chhusang → Kagbeni (exit checkpoint) → Jomsom
• Walking time: 6–7 hrs
• Distance: ~19 km / 11.8 miles
• Starting elevation: Chhusang, 3,050 m
• Highest point: Chhusang (departure); the day is a net descent
• Overnight: Jomsom, 2,715 m
• Main highlight: Closing the loop at the Kagbeni checkpoint

The final trekking day follows the Kali Gandaki south through Kagbeni — the same checkpoint where the restricted area began ten trekking days earlier — formally closing the permit, before the broad riverbed walk continues down to Jomsom, Mustang's district headquarters. It's worth building in time to reach Jomsom by early afternoon rather than later: the valley's gales intensify through the afternoon, and the last riverbed kilometres are considerably less pleasant after about 2 PM.

Jomsom means hot showers, proper lodges, and the region's famous apples in every form — including the local apple brandy — which makes for a fitting last-night celebration with your guide and crew before the early flight out.

Day 13: Jomsom to Pokhara (Flight)

• Route: Jomsom → Pokhara (flight)
• Walking time: None (25-minute flight)
• Distance: N/A (flight)
• Starting elevation: Jomsom, 2,715 m
• Highest point: N/A
• Overnight: Pokhara, 830 m
• Main highlight: A free afternoon at lakeside altitude after 11 trekking days

The dawn flight back through the Kali Gandaki gorge is, if anything, more spectacular southbound, with early light on Dhaulagiri's enormous east face (a left-side seat is worth requesting). The rest of the day is unstructured — Phewa Lake, the World Peace Pagoda, or simply the pleasure of thicker, warmer, oxygen-rich air after nearly two weeks above 2,700 m. As with the outbound flight, Jomsom departures are wind-dependent and scheduled in the calm early-morning window; a road transfer is the standard fallback if weather delays the flight, which is also why international departures shouldn't be booked for the same day as Day 14.

Day 14: Pokhara to Kathmandu

• Route: Pokhara → Kathmandu (drive)
• Walking time: None (drive day)
• Distance: ~200 km / 124 miles (6–8 hrs)
• Starting elevation: Pokhara, 830 m
• Highest point: N/A
• Overnight: Kathmandu
• Main highlight: Trip closes with hotel drop-off in Kathmandu

The itinerary closes the way it opened, with the Prithvi Highway drive back to Kathmandu (a flight upgrade is available here too). Hotel drop-off is included. Book any international departure for Day 15 or later — both the Jomsom flight earlier in the trip and this road leg can run long, and an evening buffer in Kathmandu is the realistic minimum safety margin, not a worst-case one.

Elevation and Difficulty Overview