Rara Lake Trek

You are met at Tribhuvan International and transferred to your hotel in Kathmandu. The afternoon is given over to a trek briefing: we go through the route day by day, check that your permits and the Rara National Park paperwork are in order, and look over your kit. The far west is not the Annapurna or Everest trail and the logistics are less forgiving - flights are fewer, lodges are basic, and a missing item cannot be replaced once you leave Nepalgunj. If anything is short there is time for a run into Thamel, where hiring is usually cheaper than buying. The rest of the evening is yours.

A flight of about an hour takes us west to Nepalgunj, on the Terai plain close to the Indian border. It is hot, flat and low - a complete contrast to where you are going - and it exists on this itinerary for one reason: the onward flight into the Karnali leaves from here early in the morning, before the mountain weather builds. The afternoon is free, and there is enough of a bazaar to be worth an hour of wandering. We stay overnight in Nepalgunj and get an early night, because tomorrow starts before dawn.

The morning flight into Jumla at 2,540m is short and genuinely spectacular, crossing from the plain into the Karnali hills in under half an hour. Jumla is the administrative centre of the region and one of the more remote district headquarters in Nepal - there is an airstrip, a bazaar and very little else. From here we walk, and the first afternoon is deliberately short: a gentle climb through blue pine forest to Chere Chaur at about 3,050m, two or three hours at most. That five hundred metres is the altitude gain that matters on this trek, and taking it slowly on day one is what makes the rest of the week comfortable. Camp is in an open meadow with the forest behind it.

We cross the ridge above Chere Chaur and drop into the Padmara valley, walking through Thakuri villages and past terraced barley and buckwheat fields that are worked much as they have been for centuries. This is farming country at three thousand metres, and the houses are flat-roofed stone with wooden shingles, quite unlike the middle hills further east. The trail undulates rather than climbs, so it is a comfortable five to six hours with time to stop. You will meet almost no other trekkers - the Karnali sees a tiny fraction of Nepal's visitors - and a good deal of interest from the people whose villages you are walking through. We camp near Chalachaur.

A long descent today, dropping steadily to Sinja at 2,440m along the river of the same name. Sinja was the winter capital of the Khasa Malla kingdom, which ruled a large part of the western Himalaya between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and there is more history here than the present-day village suggests: the Kanaka Sundari temple, stone inscriptions in the Nepali script at its earliest stage, and the remains of the old settlement. It takes five to six hours, mostly downhill, through pine and walnut. We camp by the river, and there is usually time in the afternoon to walk up to the temple.

From Sinja we turn north and climb gently up the Sinja Khola, following the river through forest and past the temporary settlements used for summer grazing. The gradient is easy and the day is about five hours, which makes it one of the more relaxed on this trek. Blue pine gives way to spruce and fir as we gain height, and there is a reasonable chance of seeing Himalayan monal - the national bird - along this stretch. Ghorosingha is a clearing with water and little else, at around 3,050m. Camp is set up early enough to have the afternoon free.

The big day of the walk in. We climb steadily to the Ghurchi Lagna pass at 3,450m, which is hung with prayer flags and cairns and marks the boundary of the Rara basin. From the top the trail drops through blue pine, spruce and juniper forest, and then, quite suddenly, the lake appears below - nearly five kilometres of deep blue water held in a bowl of dark forested hills, with the Karnali peaks behind. That first sight from the ridge is what people come this far to see. The descent to the shore takes another couple of hours and brings us to camp at 2,990m, on the flat ground near the park headquarters at Rara.

A full day at the lake, and the reason for the whole journey. The shoreline circuit is about thirteen kilometres of easy walking through blue pine, spruce and juniper, with the water changing colour through the day from steel grey to deep blue to almost black as the light moves. Those who want more can climb Murma Top on the northern ridge for the view over the entire lake and north to the Api and Saipal peaks on the Tibetan border. Rara National Park is the smallest in Nepal and among the least visited anywhere in the Himalaya - musk deer, Himalayan black bear and red panda live in this forest, and migratory birds use the water through the winter. What you will mostly notice is the silence, and that there is nobody else standing beside it.

We leave the lake by the eastern shore, with a last view back across the water from the ridge above it, and drop through forest towards Pina at about 2,400m. The descent is steady and the forest thins into terraced farmland as we lose height, so the day is a gradual return to inhabited country after two days of almost none. Five to six hours of walking. Pina is a Thakuri village with a school and a few shops, and camp is set on the flat ground below it. The evening is noticeably warmer than at the lake.

Today follows the Chautha Khola down through a string of villages in the middle Karnali - Bumra, Chautha and the settlements between them - in a part of Nepal that sees essentially no tourism at all. The walking is easy, along the river with some ups and downs, and takes five hours or so. What makes the day is the ordinary life you walk through: mills on the river, children coming back from school, mule trains carrying supplies up from the road head. Camp is near Bumra, on a terrace above the water.

The last walking day, back over the Danphe Lagna pass and down into Jumla, five to six hours in total. The climb to the pass is the final effort of the trek and the view from the top looks back over the country you have crossed. From there it is a long descent through pine forest to the Tila valley and the town. Jumla feels almost metropolitan after ten days in the Karnali, and there is time in the afternoon to walk round the bazaar. Camp or a simple lodge, and a last night with the crew.

Weather permitting, the morning flight takes us from Jumla back down to Nepalgunj, and a second flight from there returns us to Kathmandu in the early afternoon. Both legs are weather-dependent in a way that flights between larger airports are not, which is why we keep a spare day in reserve at the end of any far-western itinerary. Once in Kathmandu the afternoon is free, and there is a farewell dinner with the crew in the evening.