Travel Blog

Solo Tourist banned in Nepal for trek. It will be implemented from the date April 1, 2023.  The solo trekking will be no longer being allowed in Nepal’s national parks and conservation areas. The Nepal tourism board announced the decision on 03 March 2023. The decision is made by consulting the various tourism stakeholders of the nations. According to the Boards director Mani R Lamichane, the main aim of the decision is to make Trekking in Nepal safer. He also said that it create more job opportunities in the county.

Reason behind Solo Tourist banned in Nepal

According to the board there are many tourist lost and missing in Fiscal year 2019-20.  In 2019-20 around 390 tourists lost or missing this is recorded on the data provided from board. The majority of tourist who were lost or missing were the solo and Fit. Fit (free independent travelers) and solo trekkers do not have professional guide which brings this problems. If you look at the earlier data also, we can see the lost and missing are Solo trekkers and Fit.

TAAN has been pushing for this ban on solo trekking since a long time. TAAN is facing the problems of two to four cases of solo trekkers getting involved deadly incidents. Taking trained trekking guide make safer travel and stay away from possible dangers too. Many popular trails are in remote destinations where human settlements are sparse and cellular connectivity unreliable. There will be sudden weather change which brings natural disasters such as landslides which is unfamiliar for solo trekkers. When Trekkers go missing then there will be big challenge for authorities to conduct search and rescue operations. Due to this lost and missing case, Nepal is taken as Unsafe Destination which is bad things for the Country economy and development. Due to many problems this is one of the reasons for Implementation of banned solo trekkers.

Benefits of Solo Tourist banned in Nepal

There is many Benefits of Solo tourist banned in Nepal, if we can do it properly. The first one is the new job opportunity for many local guides. In 2019-20 46000 were solo trekkers among total 171000 trekkers.  We can imagine from here how much local people can get job because taking guide is mandatory now. There is always an issue of not getting enough work for guide which can be solved easily by this step from tourism board of Nepal.

Process of Hire a trekking guide in Nepal

There is clear from Nepal tourism board that solo and fit need to hire guides through Government authorized Trekking company. Trekkers are allowed to choose the trekking agencies of their choice but they have to make sure that the agency has authority to operate in Nepal. You can check the data base of Nepal tourism board where you can see the list of registered trekking agencies. The minimum pay for guide is us$17 per day. The cost differ from Annapurna trekking to Everest trekking to kanchanjunga trekking and Dolpa. Guide cost can be go up based on guides experience, language and difficulty of trekking route. You can find online the Best trekking company in Nepal.

Trekkers can go solo on these places

After the new rule bars solo trekking in national parks and conservation area there is still plenty of places where solo trekkers can go. The Pikey peak trek in lower parts of Everest region can be visited. It is increasingly popular in last few years. This trek has an outstanding view of mountain including Everest. We can do this trek within a week time. Trek to Melamchi, Panchpokhari are other options we can go solo. We can also do Nagarkot and Champadevi hike. There are also possibilities to go Dhulikhel and Nagarkot without any difficulties. We can also do Everest base camp helicopter tour solo tooo. we can also do other heli tours in Nepal without any guide.