There’s surprisingly little information out there on how to find a guide to take you trekking in the mountains of Nepal. Despite heaps of googling, all we could find were expensive, all-inclusive tour packages – when all we wanted was the low-down on how to find one good guide (no porters, no packages), how much it would cost, and whether they could advise us on what trek to do.
Well, we did it, and here’s how we found him.
Why get just a guide over booking a tour?
For the budget-conscious like us, booking a trekking package just doesn’t make sense. The prices we saw were 30-50% more than what we ended up paying – and for a short 5 day trek like the one we did (Ghorepani Poon Hill), spending additional money on porters was unnecessary. The only service we wanted to pay for was a guide (and three rented trekking poles). Everything else, such as food or accomodation on the trek, can be paid directly from you to the guesthouse, at a much lower cost compared to an all-inclusive package option.
We also wanted to be able to meet our guide prior to starting the trek, which you obviously can’t do if you book online. There are literally hundreds of trekking shops to choose from in Pokhara, the vast majority of which have no online presence.
The standard rate for a guide varies from 25-40USD per day. We paid our guide 30USD. For a full breakdown of the costs, check out ‘Ghorepani Poon Hill on a Budget’.
So – wait until you get to Pokhara before booking a guide
Pokhara is a lovely lakeside town at the base of the Annapurna ranges. Most trekkers will pass through here for a few days, both before and after completing their hikes. There’s good food, good accommodation and a great vibe. We booked three nights at Forest Lake Backpackers Hostel (10/10, highly recommend, one of the best hostels we’ve stayed in) and used this time to find our guide and prepare for our trek.
For other control-freaks like me, it might be hard to wait until you get there – but every second shop in Pokhara is a trekking outfitter, letting you literally shop for guides. You can find fancy guides, budget guides, ethical guides, female guides, and guides that speak any language under the sun. Most hostels and hotels also seem to operate their own trekking business.
Browse the trekking shops, google the names, ask for recommendations
The majority of tourists in Pokhara are there to trek, with most preparing to leave or just returning from their hike. You could easily find a great guide by simply asking people at the hostel ‘did you do it with a guide? Would you recommend him?’
That being said, I found our guide by googling the name of his shop. We went for a walk down the road, and as we did, I just plugged a few of the names (things like ‘Alpine Wonder Trekking’, ‘Blue Sky Trekking’…) into Google, to see what came up. ‘Breath Nepal Trekking’ was roughly 15m from our hostel, and came up with five stars, so we ducked inside to meet them.
Breath Nepal Trekking ended up being a cool group of five great guides. We ended up choosing to go with them, and we met our guide Ajit the day prior to starting. This was a little close to our leaving date for me – I would have preferred to meet him a day earlier, but because we went in April, which is the second-highest trekking season, a lot of the guides finish one trek and immediately start another. However, if we had met Ajit and hadn’t liked him, we would have only had to pop next door to find an alternative.
What we ended up paying the trekking company
We paid 30 USD per day for our guide from Breath Nepal – a total of 150USD for the five day trek.
We also got them to organise a taxi to and from Nayapul, the starting/finishing point of the trek. Finally, we rented three trekking poles from them.
If we had wanted, they could have organised porters to carry our gear, or a jeep to shorten the length of the trek. We just opted for neither of these.
Finally, Breath Nepal also organised our trekking permits and TIMS cards, which are necessary for anyone hiking into the mountains. Any outfitter will do these for you.
