Gandaki

The Annapurna Circuit and the trails beyond it

The Annapurna Circuit, threading through eleven districts in a loop that crosses the Thorong La pass at 5,416 metres, remains one of the great long-distance treks on earth, passing through Gurung, Magar, and Thakali villages on its lower reaches before entering the high-altitude desert landscape of Mustang. Upper Mustang, the former kingdom of Lo that maintains a Tibetan Buddhist culture essentially unchanged since the fourteenth century, opened to limited trekking in 1992 and remains one of the most otherworldly destinations in Asia. The Annapurna Sanctuary, a high cirque ringed by ten peaks above seven thousand metres, can be reached in a week from Pokhara. Manang, connected by a new road but still psychologically remote, retains the feel of a medieval trading town caught in slow suspension.

Pokhara: Nepal's second city, and the better holiday

Pokhara divides opinion among experienced Nepal travellers in the best possible way. One camp regards it as the place where trekkers recover, eat pizza, and watch paragliders spiral down from Sarangkot in the golden hour. The other camp takes the opposite view: that Phewa Lake by kayak at dawn, the Devi's Fall waterfall surging through its limestone gorge, the Gurung Museum, the cave complex of Gupteshwor, and the old bazaar streets of Bagar constitute a destination that rewards slowing down rather than passing through. Both camps are right. Pokhara accommodates multiple speeds with unusual grace, and since the opening of Pokhara International Airport in 2023, it has become directly accessible from a handful of regional destinations.

Gorkha, Manakamana, and the province's quieter depths

Away from the Annapurna circuit, Gandaki Province holds a quieter geography that rewards curiosity. Gorkha, the ancestral seat of the Shah dynasty from which Prithvi Narayan Shah unified Nepal, sits above a ridgeline in a palace fort that commands a view across Manaslu and the Himalayan chain with the confidence of something built to survey empires. The Manakamana temple, reached by cable car above the Trisuli gorge, draws Hindu pilgrims in numbers that few mountain shrines can match. And the Dhaulagiri range, accessible from Myagdi district, offers some of the most serious high-mountain trekking in Nepal to those willing to earn the solitude.