Food Everest Base Camp Trek

Food and Accommodation in Everest Region choices shrink once you leave glittering and resourceful cities to trek into the mountains. But that does not mean that your comfort won’t be taken care of during different level trekking in Nepal. The stays, teahouse, or lodges are okay, nothing fancy, but it is comfortable and warm. It is well facilitated with the basic facilities. Rooms you get in mountainous regions are twin sharing rooms, and you need to use a shared bathroom. Some lodge during the trek has attached bathroom, and upgrade will cost you extra.

Beds come with mattresses and pillows, and blankets to use. Mainly, these lodges highlight a large standard dining cum living room heated during mealtime with a pot stove. The most exciting thing to look forward to in these lodges is your chance of socialising with travellers worldwide. You can read books that you carry, charge your devices and do some talking. When trekkers usually stop for rest and sleepovers, they prefer a hot shower, and hot showers in these mountains are usually gas heated and will cost you extra bucks, but they are not super expensive.

While doing Everest Trek, the Khumbu region has access to WIFI with decent speed, and you need to acquire an Everest WIFI card for a smooth internet experience. So, do make sure that background processes are turned off so that you can save that valuable MB quota in the mountains of Nepal. As you gain more altitude during the trek, a WIFI network is available between villages where you can refill your MB quota and continue with your journey. You do need to charge your devices, and charging your devices up in the mountains will cost you extra and are usually paid hourly. It is very advisable to carry a power bank. If you have opted for a more extended trekking experience, you can charge your devices with a solar panel.

Let us inform you that there are no fancy offerings here in the lodge, so television is out of the question. So, please entertain yourselves with books, mobile, kindle readers, or you can even carry board games if you are travelling in groups. You can watch movies, listen to podcasts, and do more on mobile devices.

While you are on a trek, the available time for breakfast is 8 am. To carry your load, you need to pace up for porters, so have everything packed and ready before sitting for breakfast. Lunch is usually served en route to today’s destination. Throughout the trek, depending on trekking areas, the most common food includes Dal Bhat Tarkari, Pulses, Veg curry and Boiled Rice combination. Dinner time during the tour is usually 7 pm.

Different lodge during the trek offers snacks that are averagely priced  and boiled water is charged per litre.

Please look at the following table to get a simple idea of the pricing of different amenities available in other areas of Everest. Snacks here refers to a regular snickers bar.

Trekking Chart of Everest

The only payment method is cash in Nepalese Rupees during your trek, and some even accept dollars and euros. Foreign currency exchange is possible in Namche Bazaar and Lukla.

Room choice-Single Room or upgrade

If you are looking for a room with an attached bathroom, it is very natural for you to spend extra bucks for the upgrade. And if you are not in the mood to share the room with any, please inform of your preferences to your guide in the early morning.  Porter will move early for confirming your booking in the lodge of the day.  As a nice gesture, you can pay the porter and you enjoying solo room ultimately depends on availability at last.  In Namche Bazaar, upgrading the room may cost you an extra Rs. 750, and a single room upgrade would cost you additional 1000 rupees.

 What about toilets on the trekking trail?

During your trek in lower elevation, you will find clean western-style commode toilets, but as you gain altitude, long drop toilets get more common, which are holes in the ground to take a dump. Toilet Paper comes in handy here in these toilets. Plus, while trekking, it is okay to use restrooms in the human settlement area to reach the day’s destination.  Don’t hide into the bushes to do your thing. Toilets have buckets to keep toilet papers that are usually burnt.

What about rubbish management on the trek?

Recycling in the mountains is not an option yet; hence heaps of garbage pollute the hills. But in the Everest region, there is a recycling unit in Namche Bazaar. Around 20,000 travelers go to Everest Base Camp each year, creating mass waste. Some are more responsible and collect the waste and dispose of them in lodges, and some don’t care and leave it on the trail.

In the tours we organize, we discourage littering on the track.  We organize socially responsible tours and treks and encourage you to carry waste and dispose of it in an appropriate place or take it back to Kathmandu. On average, one person generates less than 1 Kg of waste from wrappers and other materials during the trek. So, it is not tedious to carry the waste back to the city and dispose of it.

Food choice during the tour in Nepal

In Nepal, what is expected are the fresh food you get during the trek. An essential staple here of every Nepalese is Dal, Bhat and Tarkari, which is lentil soup, stewed veggies, mostly potatoes or meat and boiled rice. You can have chilli sauce and even order the Sherpa Stew, which is made of beef, potatoes and vegetables in a rich sauce and served with rice. Every lodge has this important Dal Bhat meal with a choice of western meals.

Expect the following items in your meal;

Breakfast – Omelets, toasted bread, Tibetan bread, Eggs both fried and boiled, pancakes, muesli, porridge, tea, coffee, chocolates.

Lunch/Dinner- Soups (garlic, mushroom, tomato, vegetable etc.), Fried rice (veg), Dal Bhat, Curry with or without rice, noodles available with mix fried, veg, egg and cheese, Veg or Meat MO: MO(fried or boiled chopper pasties), pizza of different types, chips, water buffalo and sometimes yak steak, and some even some Italian delicacies such as Lasagna.

You also get some choice in the dessert section of the menu, and the items we will see in the menu in Everest region trekking is rice pudding, apple pie, snickers pie, chocolate cake and even fruit cocktail.

Raconteur Adventure will provide three meals a day with the food served as your choice and one hot drink per meal. And if you want to add more, the average price is Rs 150 per cup of tea, coffee, hot lemon and will cost you Nrs. 1500 for a flask of hot drinks. If you wish to have a beer, one can is 600- 800 Rs.

But in Kathmandu, the food is more expensive as Overhead and choice increase.

Nrs. 600 – Breakfast in Hotel at Thamel

A meal in town – Nrs 1200/-

Mineral water, 1 Litre-  Nrs 150 in hotels and Nrs 25 in local shops

Soft drinks/beer – Nrs 350 or more in the hotels.

Drinking water facility during the trek in Nepal

In cities, normal mineral water is Nrs 25, but up in the mountains, as everything has to be carried, the cost of all amenities goes up.

While you are in the mountainous region in the trek, you can fill up the boiled water or even tap water. River water is a no as it is full of glacial silt and could  be contaminated with animal urine and even toilet waste.

On the other hand, tap water in lodges is piped from high up rivers and clean glaciers, making it safe to drink with little treatment.

You can purify the water with the following methods:

Iodine drops, 03  per litre, available in Kathmandu, locally known as Lugols solution

Flavour- Tang Powder

Chlorine-based tablets

Steripen, which uses UV  to kill the bacteria but is fragile to carry

Aqyaprove is a water purification tablet that is light and has no aftertaste.

Everest Base Camp Temperature.

Other trekking regions in Nepal

Nepal is the home of trekking paradise. The Himalayan range on the northern side speaks tall and the highest mountains in the world. There are more than five trekking regions in Nepal, out of which Everest is more heard.  Everest Base Camp Trek is in the Khumbu region of Nepal. Nepal’s other most popular trekking region, the Annapurna Circuit, like Everest Base Camp Trek, is facilitated with friendly lodges. The waste management system is not that advanced as rubbish is kept in large pits and burnt.

In the Annapurna region, you can do more remote treks like Kanchenjunga Base Camp Trek, Upper Mustang Trek and Manaslu Circuit Trek. In these treks, you will see far fewer people, and the facilities get more basic with long-drop toilets in the lodge.

Most importantly, the environment you are visiting is fragile and needs longing protection works. So, please minimize the rubbish and carry possible garbage in your bag.

For trekking experiences near Kathmandu, Langtang Valley Trek, Ama Yangri Trek are some famous trekking here in the Langtang region. Food and accommodation during the trek in the Langtang region are also essential, with no waste management system.

Raconteur Adventure tries giving as much information on different trekking trails, food and accommodation of varying trekking regions of Nepal. This blog provides detailed information on nutrition, waste management, drinking water and accommodation, mainly of the Everest region.