Manaslu Circuit Trek

This was a great trip, first and formost due to the very professional and experienced support team lead by Kumar.

I last trekked in Nepal 35 years ago, when there were no roads in the mountains and everything was carried on the backs of humans or mules. In the intervening years I had become increasingly reluctant to return, watching the gradual encroachment of the car into these pristine areas, but the Exodus PR for this trip was too good to resist. I was not disappointed. Once we had left the "railhead" end of the road behind, we were back into a land of mule trains, farming and herding, in a chaotic wilderness of gorges, waterfalls, landslides and suspension bridges leading to the wild uplands at the snow line, a slow but remarkable change in geology, architecture, religion and culture as we climbed further and further away from the lowlands. I can't imagine a better insight than this trip into the differences in lived experience of those of us who live in the northern hemisphere (or even between those who live in Kathmandu and the mountains).

A beautiful journey with a great variety of culture and landscape from agricultural to forest and mountain scenery. It’s a peaceful trek away from crowded routes but get there as soon as you can before the road that is being built changes everything. The route is occasionally just a little exposed due to landslides caused by the recent long monsoon. A gentle acclimatisation schedule leads up to highest point at Larkya La just a little over 5000m. There are wonderful mountain views of Manaslu from a number of various aspects and distances.

This is an amazing trip which, unlike the Annapurna Circuit (which I did in 2019) brings you far closer to the big mountains including the 8,000 metre massif of Manaslu. Due to the recent hard monsoon on 2022 the trail had been recently modified and included a number of narrow paths across landslides (think traversing high screes in rthe UK) which wouldn't be to everyone's tastes but were necessary in the circumstances. The Manaslu Circuit is much quieter than the Annapurna Circuit, takes in a lot more villages and general culture of Nepal and doesn't include the dusty main roads that seem a feature of the Annapurna Circuit nowadays. As such, the whole group found it more authentic, the scenery a lot more spectacular and a thoroughly enjoyable trip from start to finish. In teh Exodus brochure it has teh same difficulty rating as the Annapurna Circuit but our group thought it was a few grades harder and because of the time of the year we were wearing crampons for 4-5 hours on the 'pass day' due to amount of compacted snow on the ground. A thoroughly memorable trip in an amazing region.

A challenging and adventurous trip which I thoroughly enjoyed