EBC via Gokyo & Cho La

Elevation profile

Your trip, day by day — all 18 days, travel included

Every day of the 18-day trip in the order it happens, including the flights, drives and rest days that have no walking stage. These are trip day numbers. The next section numbers walking days instead, starting again at 1, so a day number here and a walking day number there are not the same day.

1. Day 1 of 18

   Fly to Lukla — Trek to Phakding (2,610m)

   The flight from Kathmandu lands at Lukla (2,840m), the Tenzing–Hillary airstrip. From there the trail drops through pine forest along the Dudh Kosi to Phakding — a net descent for the day, even though the trail itself rises and falls along the way.

2. Day 2 of 18

   Phakding to Namche Bazaar (3,440m)

   The trail climbs above the confluence of the Dudh Kosi and Bhote Kosi rivers into Namche Bazaar, the Khumbu's trading hub, set into a natural amphitheater on the hillside — an 830m gain over the day.

3. Day 3 of 18

   Acclimatization Day in Namche Bazaar

   A rest day before the trail leaves the main Everest corridor for its own anticlockwise variant. The pace stays deliberately easy here, ahead of the longer climbs to come.

4. Day 4 of 18

   Namche Bazaar to Phortse (3,840m)

   This is where the anticlockwise loop leaves the standard Tengboche trail for a quieter path to Phortse instead. Off the main circuit, Phortse is a working Sherpa village rather than a waypoint built around passing trekkers.

5. Day 5 of 18

   Phortse to Dingboche (4,410m)

   The trail climbs back onto the standard Everest Base Camp route, entering the drier, more open landscape of the upper Khumbu, where Dingboche sits in a wide valley walled in by high ridgelines well above the last of the forest.

6. Day 6 of 18

   Acclimatization Day in Dingboche

   A second rest day, at higher altitude and thinner air than the one in Namche. The valley's scale is different here too — bare ridgelines and glacial moraine in place of forest.

7. Day 7 of 18

   Dingboche to Lobuche (4,910m)

   The trail crosses Thukla pass, where stone cairns memorialize climbers who died in the Everest region, then follows the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier into Lobuche.

8. Day 8 of 18

   Lobuche to Gorak Shep — Everest Base Camp

   The trail continues up the moraine to Gorak Shep (5,164m), the highest night on the route, on a former glacial lake bed. From there, a day trip continues to Everest Base Camp (5,364m) — nobody sleeps at Base Camp itself; the return is to Gorak Shep for the night.

9. Day 9 of 18

   Climb Kala Patthar (5,545m) — Trek to Dzonglha (4,830m)

   A pre-dawn climb to Kala Patthar, the highest point touched on the route and the classic sunrise viewpoint over Everest — nobody sleeps at the top. Rather than returning to Lobuche, this itinerary continues straight over toward Cho La's eastern approach, making for a long day into Dzonglha.

10. Day 10 of 18

    Cross Cho La (5,420m) — Descend to Dragnag (4,700m)

    A glacier crossing, with crampons often needed underfoot — nobody sleeps at the pass itself. The descent on the western side drops to Dragnag, at the edge of the Ngozumpa Glacier.

11. Day 11 of 18

    Dragnag to Gokyo (4,750m)

    The trail crosses the Ngozumpa Glacier, the largest in Nepal, to reach Gokyo on the far side, strung along its chain of lakes.

12. Day 12 of 18

    Climb Gokyo Ri (5,357m) — Descend to Ḍole (4,038m)

    A morning climb up Gokyo Ri for a view across four 8,000m peaks — Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu — nobody sleeps at the summit. What follows is a long descent past Machhermo, dropping back down the valley to Ḍole.

13. Day 13 of 18

    Ḍole to Namche Bazaar (3,440m)

    The return route follows the main Dudh Kosi valley back down to Namche Bazaar, rejoining the standard Everest trail.

14. Day 14 of 18

    Namche Bazaar to Lukla (2,840m)

    The final trekking day retraces the route down to Lukla, closing the loop at the same airstrip the trip began from two weeks earlier.

15. Day 15 of 18

    First Reserve Day for the Return Flight

    Flights out of Lukla are delayed often enough that this itinerary holds four days in reserve rather than one. Day 15 is the earliest the return flight might go.

16. Day 16 of 18

    Second Reserve Day

    Used only if day 15's flight did not go. Otherwise this is unclaimed time, either still in Lukla or already back in Kathmandu.

17. Day 17 of 18

    Third Reserve Day

    A third reserve day, held for the same reason — of everything on this itinerary, the Lukla flight is the one leg the schedule cannot fix a date to in advance.

18. Day 18 of 18

    Departure

    By the third reserve day the flight has gone out, whichever day it landed on, and day 18 is departure from Kathmandu.

Walking days on the mapped route — 14 days of sourced altitudes

Numbered by walking day: walking day 1 is the first day with a mapped stage. Every altitude below is a waypoint from this route's own sources, listed at the foot of the page.

The remaining 4 days of this 18-day trip cover travel to and from the trailhead, and buffer time for delays en route — the specifics vary by route.

When to go

Month-by-month fit for EBC via Gokyo & Cho La, based on this route's own best-months window.

• Jan avoid
• Feb shoulder
• Mar best
• Apr best
• May best
• Jun shoulder
• Jul avoid
• Aug avoid
• Sep shoulder
• Oct best
• Nov best
• Dec shoulder