Notes From the Hinku Valley — A Diary of Getting to 6,476 Meters

Author : Places Nepal | Published On : 06 Aug 2026

Day 1 — Kathmandu Landed this morning into the usual chaos — horns, prayer flags, a city that never quite settles. Met the rest of the group over dinner. Everyone's nervous in that polite way where nobody says it out loud. One guy, an accountant from Leeds, has never slept above 3,000 meters in his life. I like him already.

Day 3 — Lukla to Paiya The flight into Lukla is the kind of thing you don't get used to no matter how many times someone tells you it's routine. Short runway, mountainside drop, then suddenly you're just... there. We walked for maybe five hours through pine forest, dropping and climbing along ridgelines. My legs are fine. My head is somewhere else entirely — still half in the airport, still adjusting to the idea that home is fourteen days away.

Day 6 — Ningsow to Chhatra Khola Entered Makalu Barun National Park today. Nobody told me how wild this stretch would feel — no lodges with wifi signs, no bakeries selling apple pie to trekkers. Just forest, river crossings, and the first real glimpse of the mountain we're all here for, catching the last light from a ridge called Ramailo Danda. Someone in the group actually gasped out loud. I didn't blame them.

Day 9 — Kothe This is the entry that started all this scribbling. My feet are wrecked, in a good way. The Hinku Khola has been running alongside the trail for two days now, and the sound of it is the only thing keeping me company on the slower stretches. I keep thinking about how few people actually come through here compared to the trail up toward Everest Base Camp — it's strange to be somewhere in the Himalayas and see maybe six other trekkers a day.

Day 10 — Khare Arrived at basecamp. This is where things get real. Spent the afternoon in a training session — crampons, ice axe grip, how to self-arrest if you slip on the glacier. My hands were shaking a little, and not from the cold. Slept badly. The altitude here is over 5,000 meters and my body knows it, even lying still.

Day 12 — High Camp Crossed Mera La this morning and climbed to High Camp at 5,780 meters. The view from the tent door tonight is something I don't think I can describe properly — five 8,000-meter peaks lined up like they're posing for a photograph: Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Kangchenjunga. Nobody's talking much. Everyone's saving their energy, mentally and otherwise, for 2 a.m.

Day 13 — Summit Day Started climbing in the dark, headlamp beams bouncing off snow. The last hour was the hardest hour of my life — steep, roped, thin air making every step feel borrowed. And then, somehow, we were up there. 6,476 meters. I cried a little, which surprised nobody more than me. Coming back down to Khare that afternoon, exhausted and half-frozen, I kept thinking: I'd do this again in a heartbeat, and I never want to do this again. Both true.

Day 17 — Kathmandu, again Showered for the first time in what feels like a decade. Sat with the group for a farewell dinner and everyone told the same stories from different angles, the way people do after something hard together. The accountant from Leeds cried too, for what it's worth.

Looking back over these notes now, a few things stand out that I wish someone had told me before I signed up. The altitude is the real opponent here, not the climbing itself — the actual summit push barely qualifies as technical, and the operator we went with, Places Nepal, built in enough acclimatization time at Khare that most of the group summited without serious issues. That extra day at basecamp, which felt frustrating at the time, was clearly the difference for a couple of people in our group who'd been struggling.

I also underestimated how remote the Hinku Valley actually is. If you've done the walk to Everest Base Camp and want something quieter, this route through Makalu Barun feels like a completely different country. And for anyone weighing up options before committing to something this demanding, it's worth reading up on shorter, less committing peaks first — a friend who joined a later group did Island Peak instead and said it was a gentler introduction to the same kind of climbing.

Would I recommend a mera peak climbing trip to just anyone? Only to people who actually want to be uncomfortable for two weeks in exchange for something they'll remember for the rest of their lives. If that's you, start training now. Your legs will thank you later, even if they hate you at the time.