Annapurna Circuit

The Annapurna Circuit is a complete circumnavigation of the Annapurna massif: 160 km on foot, fifteen walking days, and roughly 8,000 m of cumulative ascent. Inside the Annapurna Conservation Area, it is the only trek in Nepal that takes you from subtropical paddy at 820 m to a 5,416 m pass and back down again, crossing three climate zones and two distinct cultural worlds on the way. Walked counter-clockwise from Besisahar up the Marsyangdi and down the Kali Gandaki, it remains one of the finest long walks anywhere — and, since the roads arrived, one of the most misunderstood.

Quick answer

Fifteen days of walking, plus travel from Pokhara at each end and one buffer day, so budget 17–18 days door to door. Go in October–November or March–April. Permits are an ACAP entry permit (NPR 3,000) and a TIMS card (NPR 2,000) — about USD 40 per person. You need no technical skill and no rope, but you do need to be genuinely fit and to respect the altitude: the crux day climbs to 5,416 m and descends 1,616 m before dark.

The route, day by day

Day	Stage	Sleep at	Altitude	Hours
1	Besisahar → Bahundanda	Bahundanda	1,310 m	5–6
2	Bahundanda → Chamje	Chamje	1,430 m	5–6
3	Chamje → Bagarchhap	Bagarchhap	2,160 m	6–7
4	Bagarchhap → Chame	Chame	2,710 m	5–6
5	Chame → Pisang	Pisang	3,300 m	5–6
6	Pisang → Manang	Manang	3,540 m	6–7
7	Acclimatization day	Manang	3,540 m	—
8	Manang → Yak Kharka	Yak Kharka	4,050 m	4–5
9	Yak Kharka → Thorong Phedi	Thorong Phedi	4,450 m	4–5
10	Thorong Phedi → Muktinath	Muktinath	3,800 m	8–10
11	Muktinath → Kagbeni	Kagbeni	2,810 m	3–4
12	Kagbeni → Marpha	Marpha	2,670 m	5–6
13	Marpha → Kalopani	Kalopani	2,530 m	5–6
14	Kalopani → Tatopani	Tatopani	1,190 m	6–7
15	Tatopani → Nayapul	Nayapul	1,070 m	6–8

Those are overnight altitudes, which is the number that governs how you feel. Note the shape of it: eight days climbing at a manageable rate, one acclimatization day at Manang, then a single hard push over the pass — and then a very long descent that most write-ups skip over in a sentence.

The road question

This is the part of the circuit that has genuinely changed, and the part most pages handle badly. Motor roads now reach up both sides — as far as Manang on the east, and all the way to Muktinath and beyond on the west. The classic fifteen-day walk described above still exists on the ground, but on the lower sections you will be walking on or beside a jeep track rather than a footpath.

Most trekkers now compress the ends. The common shape is to jeep from Besisahar to Chame or Dharapani, cutting three or four of the least rewarding days, and to finish by jeep from Muktinath or Jomsom rather than walking the Kali Gandaki road down to Tatopani. That turns a fifteen-day trek into nine or ten days, all of them good ones. The NATT trails — the marked walking alternatives that leave the road for river banks and old village paths — exist for much of the corridor and are worth taking wherever they are signed.

None of this is a reason to skip the circuit. The high half, from Chame to Muktinath, is untouched by road building and is the reason people come.

The Thorong La crossing

Day 10 is the whole trek in miniature. From Thorong Phedi at 4,450 m you climb 966 m to the pass and drop 1,616 m to Muktinath at 3,800 m — eight to ten hours, on the highest ground of the trip, with wind that reliably gets up by late morning.

The standard advice is to leave between 4 and 5 a.m. Some parties sleep at High Camp, 400 m above Phedi, to shorten the climb; others argue that sleeping that high after an already-hard day costs more than it saves. Both are defensible. What is not optional is the acclimatization day at Manang and an easy afternoon at Phedi — the two things the itinerary above builds in and the two things a compressed schedule takes out first.

Two sides, two cultures

The eastern approach is Gurung country: terraced hillsides, river gorges, pine and rhododendron forest climbing toward the broad, dry basin of Manang, where the architecture and the Buddhism are Tibetan. The western descent is Thakali country — Kagbeni with its ruined fort and mud-brick lanes, Marpha with its apple orchards and whitewashed alleys — in the deepest gorge in the world, walled by Dhaulagiri at 8,167 m and Annapurna I at 8,091 m. Muktinath, where the descent lands, is sacred to Hindus and Buddhists alike and is one of Nepal's most visited pilgrimage sites.

Side trips worth the days

• Tilicho Lake — three extra days from Manang to one of the highest large lakes in the world at 4,919 m. The best acclimatization on the trek and the finest single side trip in the Annapurnas.
• Ice Lake and Praken Gompa — the two standard day walks from Manang on the acclimatization day. Take one; the altitude gain is the point.
• Muktinath to Kagbeni on foot — the short version of the descent, if you are jeeping out of Jomsom.
• Upper Mustang — a separate restricted-area trek beginning where the circuit's western half passes through. Different permit, different world.

Shorter and different ways to see the Annapurnas

If fifteen days is more than you have, the massif offers better-scaled alternatives than a truncated circuit. Annapurna Base Camp reaches the sanctuary in seven to twelve days and puts you inside the ring of peaks rather than around it. Ghorepani Poon Hill delivers the classic Dhaulagiri-to-Annapurna sunrise in four or five. Mardi Himal is the quiet high ridge most people have not heard of. And the circuit road that trekkers complain about is exactly what makes the Annapurna Circuit by mountain bike one of the great high-altitude rides.

Choosing between the Annapurnas and the Khumbu is the other common question — Everest vs Annapurna sets the two regions side by side.

Practical notes

Teahouse infrastructure runs the whole route; you do not need a tent and you do not need to carry food. Beds are plentiful outside the October peak, when Manang and Thorong Phedi fill early — start walking early on those days. A guide is not legally required on the circuit but is worth having above Manang, and porters are widely available in Besisahar and Pokhara.

Permit and fee rules in the Annapurna Conservation Area have changed more than once in recent years. Treat the figures above as the planning baseline and confirm the current requirement in Kathmandu or Pokhara when you collect the permits.