Everest Base Camp Trek Map Poster

The Everest Base Camp Trek is a 130 km (81 mi) round trip through the Khumbu, the Sherpa homeland on the Nepali side of Mount Everest. It starts and ends at Lukla, a mountain airstrip at 2,860 m (9,380 ft), and follows the Dudh Kosi up to Namche Bazaar, past the monastery at Tengboche and into the high valleys below Ama Dablam, Lhotse and Nuptse. The turning point is base camp, at about 5,364 m (17,600 ft) beside the Khumbu Icefall. Most trekkers also climb Kala Patthar, the dark hill above Gorak Shep, for the view of Everest's summit that base camp does not give.

The walk usually takes twelve to fourteen days, with nights in family-run teahouses and rest days at Namche and Dingboche to adjust to the thin air. Nothing on the trail is technical; the altitude is the hard part, and the ups and downs add up to about 6,000 m (19,700 ft) of climbing there and back. The return retraces the valley in three long days.

Edmund Hillary had the airstrip at Lukla built in 1964, eleven years after he and Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent of Everest, and the airport now carries both their names. The municipality the trek passes through honors Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, who in 1993 became the first Nepali woman to reach the summit. From the uphill runway at Lukla to the prayer flags on Kala Patthar, the whole climb becomes an Everest Base Camp Trek map poster.