Rara Lake Trek

Welcome to Nepal. You land at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu (1,400 m), where our representative meets you in the arrivals hall and drives you to your hotel in Thamel.

Your guide joins you in the afternoon for the briefing. Rara needs more explaining than most treks: the two flights in and two out, what happens if the weather closes Jumla or Talcha, how basic the accommodation is, and why you need to bring eight days of water treatment rather than expecting to buy bottles.

We check your kit. A warm sleeping bag, a full first aid kit and a large power bank are the three things people most often under-pack for this route, and all three can be sorted a few streets away.

Overnight in Kathmandu.

A short day, and a strange one — you leave the mountains to get to the mountains.

The one-hour flight west to Nepalgunj (150 m) crosses the hills and drops onto the Terai, the flat belt of farmland along the Indian border that produces most of Nepal's rice. It is hot, humid and entirely unlike anywhere else on the trip.

Nepalgunj is a working border city rather than a destination: rickshaws, mosques, a large bazaar and a great deal of traffic. If there is time in the afternoon your guide can take you to the Bageshwari temple or through the market, which is a genuine slice of Terai life.

The practical reason for the night is that the Jumla flight leaves early and only flies in clear morning air. Overnight in a hotel in Nepalgunj.

An early transfer to the airport for the 35-minute mountain sector to Jumla (2,370 m). The small aircraft climbs off the plains and threads north up the Karnali valleys, landing on a grass and gravel strip beside the Tila river.

Jumla is the administrative centre of the Karnali and the largest town for a hundred kilometres, which in this region means a bazaar, a hospital and a few hundred houses.

After tea and a permit check the walking starts. The trail climbs south-east out of town through apple orchards and terraced fields of the local red rice, then into blue pine forest on a steady ridge climb.

Around 4 to 5 hours brings you to the meadows at Chere Chaur (3,055 m), an open grazing shelf with the Karnali ranges opening up behind. Overnight in a simple lodge at Chere Chaur.

A day of forest walking with the character of the far west settling in.

The trail contours north through mixed blue pine, spruce and oak, crossing several streams and passing summer grazing huts. There are long stretches where you walk in deep forest with no view at all, then a clearing opens and the ridges run away in every direction.

The villages here are Khas rather than Tibetan or Gurung — stacked two- and three-storey wooden houses with slate roofs and open verandas where maize and chillies dry, built in terraces up the hillside so that one family's roof is another's yard.

You descend gradually to Bumra (2,850 m), a small village in a clearing, around 5 to 6 hours. The reception is curious rather than practised: very few foreigners come through. Overnight in a homestay at Bumra.

The high point of the trek and the watershed between the Jumla and Mugu districts.

The morning climbs steadily through forest to the Ghurchi Lagna (3,450 m), a broad pass marked with cairns and prayer flags and hung with strips of cloth left by pilgrims. It takes three to four hours at an easy pace.

From the top the view runs south over the Karnali ranges you have walked through and north into the Mugu valleys and, on a clear day, to the snow peaks on the Tibetan border.

The descent on the northern side is longer and steeper, dropping through pine forest and open pasture, with mani walls and the occasional trader's mule train on the trail.

You reach Chautha (2,770 m) in the valley after around 6 to 7 hours in total. Overnight in a simple lodge at Chautha.

A descending day through the most cultivated country of the trek.

The trail follows the valley north-west, dropping steadily through pine forest that gives way to terraced fields of millet, barley and buckwheat as the altitude falls. Water mills turn on the side streams and the villages are larger and closer together here.

This is the old Sinja country, seat of the Khasa Malla kingdom that ruled the western Himalaya in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and where the Nepali language has its roots. The dialect spoken in these villages is recognisably the ancestor of modern Nepali.

The walking is easy — around 5 hours, mostly downhill and on good village trails — and there is time in the afternoon to sit in Pina (2,380 m) and watch a farming village get on with its day.

Overnight in a homestay at Pina.

The day you arrive at the lake, and the trek's payoff.

The trail climbs steadily north out of Pina through forest, gaining 600 m over three to four hours, crossing a low ridge and entering Rara National Park — at 106 square kilometres the smallest national park in Nepal and the only one built around a lake.

The forest changes as you climb into blue pine, black juniper, spruce and West Himalayan fir, and there is a real chance of birdlife: Himalayan monal, snow cock and, if you are extremely lucky, a red panda.

Then the trees open and Rara Lake (2,990 m) is below you — ten square kilometres of deep blue water, five kilometres long, with forested slopes running down to the shore on every side and the snow line on the northern horizon.

Around 5 to 6 hours. Overnight at the park guesthouse or a lodge at Murma, a short walk back from the water.

A full day at the lake, and the reason the trek is eleven days rather than ten.

The classic outing is the circuit of the lake, around four hours on a good trail through pine forest and lakeside meadow, with the water changing colour through the day from steel grey at dawn to deep blue at noon.

For the wider view, the climb to Murma Top (3,650 m) on the ridge south of the lake takes two to three hours and gives the whole basin from above, with the Himalaya running along the northern skyline.

Boating on the lake can be arranged through the park office and is the best way to see the reflections that make the classic Rara photographs.

Dawn and dusk are the times to be by the water — still, silent and, in October, with frost on the meadow. Overnight at Rara Lake.

A short and easy last walking day out to the airstrip.

The trail follows the northern shore of the lake for the first hour — a last chance at the water in the morning light — then climbs gently away east through forest and open pasture.

There are good views back over the whole lake basin from the shoulder above Gamgadhi, the district headquarters of Mugu, before the final short climb onto the ridge.

Around 3 to 4 hours brings you to Talcha (2,700 m), which is little more than an airstrip, a few teahouses and a great deal of weather.

You arrive around lunchtime, which leaves the afternoon free. Your guide confirms the morning flight and, if the forecast looks poor, discusses the alternatives now rather than at dawn. Overnight in a lodge at Talcha.

An early start for the flight out, which goes when the air is clear and does not go at all when it is not.

The 35-minute sector to Nepalgunj drops out of the Karnali hills onto the plains, with a good last look north at the country you have walked through.

After a wait at Nepalgunj you connect onto the hour-long flight east to Kathmandu (1,400 m), arriving in the afternoon.

Transfer to your hotel in Thamel, where a hot shower after eight days of bucket washing is the immediate priority. The evening is free and most groups meet for a farewell dinner.

If Talcha is closed by weather, this is the day the buffer absorbs — which is why we ask you not to book an international flight for tomorrow. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A slow morning in Kathmandu. If your flight is late in the day there is time for last shopping in Thamel, a walk around Durbar Square or Boudhanath, or a long breakfast.

Our representative collects you from the hotel and drives you to Tribhuvan International Airport around three hours before departure.

If you are staying on in Nepal we are happy to arrange onward travel, a Bardia extension on the way back through Nepalgunj, a Pokhara flight or extra hotel nights — just let us know while you are still on the trail so we can book it.

Thank you for trekking with us. Very few people make it to Rara, and we hope the far west earns the two flights it takes to get there.