Walk the Khumbu valley trail beneath the world's highest peaks to stand at the foot of Everest itself.
This is the trek every mountain walker dreams about: fourteen days through Sherpa country, from the roaring airstrip at Lukla up through pine forest, suspension bridges strung with prayer flags, and the trading town of Namche Bazaar, to the ice and rock of the Khumbu glacier. You gain altitude the way you're supposed to — slowly, with acclimatisation days built in at Namche and Dingboche — so your body has a fair chance to adjust before you sleep at nearly 5,000 metres.
The reward is not one view but a fortnight of them: Ama Dablam's fluted spire, the monastery at Tengboche with its backdrop of Everest and Lhotse, and finally the boulder field at Base Camp itself, tents dwarfed by the Khumbu Icefall. Most trekkers add the dawn climb to Kala Patthar for the classic Everest panorama. You'll sleep in family-run lodges the whole way, eating dal bhat and drinking incredibly sweet milk tea, guided by Sherpa staff who know this trail like their own front yard — because for many of them, it is.
