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What I meant (and wrote) was that there are no lodges in EVERY village you might end up for the night. There were lodges in Meta, Phugaon and Nar when we visited the valley in 2009. We were on a...

This trek should be doable as a barebones teahouse/homestay trek now, but there have been some earthquake damage and the facilities might be poor in places. In Naar-Pho there are no lodges or even...

True. Paradigm has changed, though. Now solo trekker = stingy fella, who likes to haggle the room price. Big group = clueless wealthy tourists who have paid big amount of money to an agency which has...

I visited Amdo and Kham regions of Tibet in 2013, now Luminous Landscape photography forum has published my reportage from that trip with 20 photographs and a 2900 word essay.
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Professional filming and video work in Nepal requires permits, liaison officers and at least in theory all material is censored by the relevant government department. Costs: huge. This was easy to...

It certainly is an experience few trekkers get, listening the groans of the slowly flowing glacier while lying awake thanks to slight AMS. I spent 3 nights up there long time ago, with my own tent...

Your itinerary is dangerously tight. You can make it to the foot of the mountain, but summiting is iffy as there simply is not enough time for proper acclimatization. Visiting EBC first would help....

Jomsom-Kagbeni area is within the "Advise against all but essential travel" area (Tukuche is south of Jomsom).

At least some UK insurance companies* do give travel insurances to Nepal, but do not...

16 days is tight, just barely not enough time to visit Gorak Shep for acclimatization. You would have to go straight to Chukhung and make acclimatization climbs from there. Performance vise this...

I suspect that Larkya La is likely to be closed by snow during the monsoon season. For that reason alone AC would be a safer bet.

Sagarmatha was also invented by the Government in early sixties. Before that there was no Nepalese name for the peak, as it was not, and still is not, in ethnic Nepal. Nepalese did not see it and did...

I would take a gas stove using standard Lindal valve cartridges available in every trekking store and even in most lodges. Clean and convenient. Got rid of my Trangia alcohol stove decades ago. If a...

I suppose it could be done in a day, but it would be like hiking from Tatopani to Ghorepani and back in one day… Camping up there (behind a big boulder for safety) admiring the sunset and sunrise...

If one has a tent, side trip to the Dhaulagiri Icafall (middle of the picture) is a nice 2 day affair. Quite a climb, over 1700m, but th views across to Annapurna are tremendous. The foot of the...

About the Tilicho Route to Jomsom: Here is my Google Map of the route we took to Jomsom in...

Slightly off-topic, but the agency owner I know and use told me about problems with a group he had. They were a bunch of very fit climbers and athletes doing a fairly long (3 weeks planned?) camping...

Naar-Pho might be interesting in June-July, when they collect yarchagumba and collectively kill all outsiders...

If you go far enough from the villages and main trails and out of sight you can camp.

It is perfectly fine to camp there. During the spring season April-May it is quite full and you should stay out of the way a bit, expeditions do not like campers all that much. At other times you...

Not advocationg fast trekking, but did you know that by sleeping in Ghyaru or Ngawal along the high route you can skip the extra Manang acclimatization day, as both of those villages are already...

This is of course perfectly true, but finding and walking small side trails trying to avoid a road is not exactly the same as hiking along the main trails where all local long distance traffic also...

As the Thame - Renjo La is still (officially) restricted area, Renjo La is still "closed"*. Apparently people have just started to cross it, first from Gokyo side, and the officials do not care,...

Correct, at least the 1953 Hunt Expedition part. They started the approach hike from Bhaktapur only to find out that there was a road all the way to the edge of the Valley, would have saved a day a...

Landruk / Ghandruk / Chomrong / Poon Hill / certainly are associated with the real, original AC, as there was no road to the west from Pokhara, as late as -86 we drove from somewhere east of Phedi on...

In theory you should not go up the trail form Ngawal towards Kang La without a permit, but in practice nobody is there to check. Also if caught with a daypack you can certainly claim innocence with...