Nepal 2025 - Manaslu Cicuit Planning

 The Plan & Recruitment

During our research of the circuit, one of the biggest challenges we came across forums was the mandatory rule of hiring a guide for your journey. We always thought that this rule might be only applicable to nationals outside the SAARC countries. The permit fees was definitely cheaper for SAARC nationals so we made that presumption as well. On further research, Nepal now has a mandatory policy of guide assisted treks for all regions except the Khumbu region around Everest. The region of Manaslu comes under a Restricted Area so definitely, no exceptions here. My wife and I hadn't been on guided treks in a long time and always preferred to explore on our own so this was definitely a spanner in the works. We understood the importance of the guide from a safety perspective, however, looking at my solo journey from 2019, I wanted that freedom on this trip as well.

That didn't look like a possibility after various consultations with friends in Nepal, Trekking companies and other forums. Eventually, we decided to take the guide option. Then the second roadblock arose, the cost of the guide/day. Manaslu is anyway an area which has a special permit which costs over $100/person plus other Municipal permits making it a lot more expensive that the Everest area. Both of us are used to travel frugally so these costs were definitely a lot to consider for us. 



Trekking companies quoted anything between $700-$1200/trekker for this circuit. This was way out of our budget and we decided to cancel the plan for now and concentrate on exploring some valleys in India for the dates we had planned as our leaves were already approved at work. 

After a couple of weeks dwelling in disappointment, at a whim, I decided to post about this plan in a couple of trekking groups I was part of hoping for others to join and share the guide costs etc. I was surprised that I got immediate responses and for the dates I had proffered. This got me excited again as adding people to our trip would significantly reduce our expenses. Even though these were unknown people, one thing I was took solace in was the fact that they were all seasoned trekkers, at least on paper.
We got a WhatsApp group together and had more than 9 people in it who showed their interest. A lot of dropouts and additions happened, however, at the end, we had 6 people ready to go!

Now the challenge was to find the cheapest company with basic support as a guide as we were pretty well versed with hiking and safety procedures. After a lot of research for a couple of weeks, we finalised on a company called Maya Trekking and Tours (www.mayatrekking.com). Their rates were the most reasonable and the communication with the Owner (Sid) was exceptional from Day 1. Sid was ok to customize the itinerary as per our needs, got us the cheapest commute from Kathmandu and back. Overall, it all worked out as per our initial budget.

We collaborated for our air tickets, things to carry, permit documents, hotels and essential gear. 
Things were not shaping up really well!

My gear for this trip - https://lighterpack.com/r/0z33zt




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