Every trek worth the boots. Priced, paced, walked.
How many days Everest Base Camp really takes. What a gorilla permit costs before the guiding does. Whether Batur at 4am beats Rinjani over two. Reviews of the guided treks you can actually book.
A volcano at dawn, a Himalayan pass, a village kitchen: the four treks to start with.
Four treks that between them cover most of what people come looking for. What each one costs, how hard it walks, and what the people who did it say.
01The 4am startMount Batur Sunrise Trek With Guide and BreakfastUp Batur in the dark, breakfast cooked on the crater rim at sunrise. Two hours of climbing, and the single most-walked trek on the site.
02The one with a liftTrek to 3000m with cable car and 4×4Cable car and 4x4 to 2,900m, then boots on lava for the last stretch of Etna. The summit without the six-hour approach.
03The night in a villageSapa 2 Days 1 Night Overnight At HomestayTwo days walking the Muong Hoa valley out of Sapa, sleeping in a Hmong homestay. The trek people book for the dinner as much as the walking.
04The permit trek3 Day Gorilla Trek at Bwindi National Park via KigaliOne hour with a habituated gorilla family in Bwindi. Book it before the flights: the permits, not the beds, are what run out.
Six countries that carry most of the world’s guided trekking.
Teahouse trails out of Kathmandu, rice-terrace valleys in the far north of Vietnam, volcanoes you climb before dawn in Java and Bali, mule tracks into the High Atlas, lava fields on Etna, and the Andean passes above Cusco.
Base camp, a circuit, or four days to a viewpoint: which Nepali trek fits your fortnight.
The difference between these is days and altitude, not scenery: every one of them walks the same range. Pick by how long you can be away and how high you are willing to sleep.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Everest Base Camp Trek – 14 Days
Everest Base CampTwelve to sixteen days, a flight into Lukla, 5,364m at the top.
Annapurna Base CampA week to ten days from Pokhara, sleeping at 4,130m in a bowl of peaks.
Poon HillThree or four days, 3,210m, and the whole Annapurna wall at sunrise.
Mardi HimalThe quiet ridge alternative, four or five days above the Modi valley.
All 588 treks in Nepal →
The treks more walkers book than any others.
Every trek we have reviewed →Volcano sunrises, gorge crossings and the two-day summits that keep selling out, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Trek to 3000m with cable car and 4×4
Review of Mount Etna’s 3,000-meter trek, with cable car, 4x4, lava channels, expert guides, costs, gear, and practical tips.
From · $65
Read our review →
2
Mount Batur Sunrise Trek With Guide and Breakfast
from $27
3
Full-Day Samaria Gorge Trek Excursion & Guide
from $41
4
Summit Crater Trek with Cable Car
from $77
5
Tajogaite Volcano Guided Trek
from $45
6
summit craters trekking with volcano guide 3350mt
from $77
7
Samaria Gorge Full-Day Trek, Pickup & Guide
from $37
8
Mount Etna Trekking Tour Beyond the Tourist Trails
from $81
Half the world’s best treks start on a volcano at 3am.
Batur and Agung in Bali, Rinjani’s crater lake over two days, Etna and Stromboli still throwing rock, Pacaya close enough to feel. Short walks with enormous payoffs, and almost all of them leave in the dark.
- 1Trek to 3000m with cable car and 4×4from $65
- 2Mount Batur Sunrise Trek With Guide and Breakfastfrom $27
- 3Summit Crater Trek with Cable Carfrom $77
What a trek actually costs, from a morning walk to a fortnight at altitude.
Every trek on the site, grouped by what you pay. The gap between a volcano sunrise and an expedition is bigger than most people expect.
Volcano sunrises, gorge walks, waterfall days and the guided mornings out of a trailhead town.
Two-day summits, village homestay treks and the short Himalayan viewpoints with meals and a guide.
Base camp itineraries, crater-rim expeditions, gorilla permits and everything with a support crew.
- 1Everest Base Camp Trek – 14 Daysfrom $1,800
- 2Everest Base Camp Trekfrom $1,790
- 3Perito Moreno Glacier Trekking Tour and Cruisefrom $396
Three places only a trek can get you to.
Viewpoints have car parks and cable cars all over the world. A gorilla family, a terraced valley with no road through it and a glacier pass do not.
Gorilla Trekking
A ranger team tracks one habituated family through the forest each morning and you follow, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes for five hours. Eight visitors per family per day, one hour once you find them, and a permit that costs more than the rest of the trip. Rwanda charges the most, Uganda less, and the walking is steep and wet in both.
- 13 Days gorilla trekking Safari tour in Uganda★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 121 reviews
- 28-Day Murchison Falls, Chimp and Epic Gorilla Trekking Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 72 reviews
- 35-Day Pearl of Africa Chimps and Gorilla Trekking Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 52 reviews
The Terrace Valleys
The Muong Hoa valley below Sapa is farmed in steps from the river to the ridge, and the paths between the villages are the only way through. September turns the whole staircase gold before the harvest; the spring flooding turns it into a mirror. Guides here are usually from the villages you walk into, and the walking is long rather than hard.
- 1Muong Hoa Valley Trek and Local Ethnic Villages★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 864 reviews
- 2Explore Sapa by TrekkingAdventures, Mountain,Rice fields★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 229 reviews
- 3Selogriyo Temple and Trekking Java Rice Terraces, hidden waterfall -Nature Java★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 179 reviews
Walking to Machu Picchu
Three routes reach the same ruin. The Inca Trail itself is capped at a few hundred permits a day and closes every February for repair; Salkantay swings higher and colder past a glacier; Choquequirao takes four days to a site almost nobody else is standing in. All three cross a pass above 4,000m, which is why nobody sensible starts the day they land in Cusco.
- 1Salkantay Trek Challenge – 3 Days / 2 Nights★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 101 reviews
- 2Choquequirao Trek 4 days and 3 nights★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 81 reviews
- 3Machu Picchu: 5-Day Salkantay Trek with Panoramic Train★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 79 reviews
Four treks that run out long before the flights do.
Most of the walking on this site can be arranged from a guesthouse the night before. These four are gated by permits, quotas and closed seasons, and none of them care what date your flight lands.
- 01Everest Base Camp Trek – 14 DaysSagarmatha park entry plus the Khumbu municipality permit, and a Lukla flight with a handful of seats a day that weather cancels without notice.
- 023 Days gorilla trekking Safari tour in UgandaEight permits per habituated family per day, priced in the hundreds and sold months out. No permit, no forest.
- 03Sucre: 1-Day Trek in the Crater of Maragua and Inca TrailsInca Trail permits are capped daily, including porters, and released for the whole year at once. The trail closes every February.
- 04Mount Rinjani Trek 3D-2N To Summit – Lake – HotspringThe mountain shuts for the rainy season, roughly January to March, and the crater-rim route reopens only when the park says so.
What a big trek asks of you before it lets you up.
Three things stop most treks, and none of them is money. Sleeping above 3,500m needs days of acclimatising you may not have. The high passes are shut under snow for months. And a fortnight of six-hour days is a training plan, not a holiday. All three have the same answer: walk lower, walk warmer, walk shorter.
By country — where the trekking guides are
By kind of trek — a morning, a night out, or a fortnight
From a morning on a volcano to a fortnight at 5,364m: the trekking ladder in six steps.
A day out
A long weekendThe newest trek reviews.
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6 Days Bukit Lawang – Berastagi Tour (2D1N Jungle Treking + Sunrise Hiking)
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3 Days Orangutan Sumatra Jungle Trekking with Rafting
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3D2N Jungle Trek | 2 Night accommodation | Pick up and drop off
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