NEPAL

The Everest corridor gets the attention, and it deserves some of it. Standing in the Khumbu Valley with Everest filling the skyline is one of those experiences that earns its reputation. But the trail to Base Camp now moves at the pace of a queue, and the teahouses along it have become a well-worn circuit that delivers a specific and increasingly predictable version of Nepal.

The Annapurna Circuit, the Manaslu Circuit, the remote valleys of Mustang and Dolpo: these are the itineraries that serious trekkers have been quietly pursuing for years, and they deliver a combination of mountain scale and cultural depth that the Everest corridor can no longer match for solitude. Upper Mustang in particular, the ancient walled kingdom that remained closed to outsiders until 1992, carries a Tibetan cultural texture that feels increasingly rare in a region where the border has otherwise homogenized a great deal.

Nepal is also two countries in one, a fact that many trekking-focused itineraries ignore entirely. The Terai lowlands along the Indian border are home to Chitwan and Bardia National Parks, where tiger and greater one-horned rhinoceros populations have recovered to a degree that represents one of conservation's genuine success stories. Moving between the Himalayan high country and the jungle lowlands in a single itinerary gives you a Nepal that very few visitors ever fully encounter, and one that changes the entire frame of what the trip is about.