Janai Purnima Shaman Trek to Gosainkunda

Someone from our office meets you at Tribhuvan International Airport and drives you to the hotel. Nothing is scheduled for the rest of the day. If you land early and want to move, Boudhanath is twenty minutes away and worth the evening.

Morning briefing with your guide: the route, the pass, what the fair is actually like, and what we do if the weather turns. We check your kit properly rather than glancing at it, because once we leave Sundarijal there is no road to send anything back down.

In the afternoon we visit the cremation ghats and the forest shrines at Pashupatinath, where healers and ascetics have worked for centuries, and where the practice you will see at the lake makes a good deal more sense once you have stood here first.

A short drive to Sundarijal at the northeast corner of the valley, and then the walking starts immediately, up a concrete stairway beside the water pipeline into Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park. The stairs are steep and relentless for the first hour and then the trail softens into oak and rhododendron forest.

In August this forest is wet, green and full of leeches. Your guide will show you how to deal with them in the first ten minutes, and after that they stop being interesting. We cross the park boundary at Mulkharka and reach the ridge at Chisapani in the afternoon.

A long undulating day along the ridge through Pati Bhanjyang, Chipling and Gul Bhanjyang. The profile looks gentle on paper and is not: the trail drops and climbs through a string of Tamang villages, and the cumulative ascent adds up.

These villages are the home ground of the tradition we have come to see. Many of the shamans walking the same ridge this week set out from settlements like these. If the cloud lifts, and in monsoon it does so suddenly and briefly, the Langtang wall shows to the north.

The biggest climbing day so far, gaining more than 1,200 metres through Mangengoth to the open ridge at Tharepati. The forest thins into fir and birch, then into juniper and low scrub, and the air starts to feel thinner in a way you will notice on the last hour.

We take this day slowly on purpose. Tharepati at 3,690 metres is the first night high enough to matter, and how you sleep here tells your guide a great deal about how you will handle the pass.

A deliberately short day. The trail contours northwest across landslide-scarred slopes and through stands of old rhododendron, losing height overall to Ghopte at 3,430 metres.

Walking less than five hours and sleeping lower than you woke is exactly what you want the day before a 4,610 metre pass. The afternoon is free, and most people use it to sleep. The ground here is broken and boulder-strewn, and in wet weather the rock is slick, so the pace is unhurried.

The hardest and best day of the trek, and we start before light. The trail climbs past Phedi and up to Laurebina La at 4,610 metres, the high point of the route. In clear conditions Manaslu, Ganesh Himal and the Langtang peaks stand across the north. In monsoon you may cross the pass inside cloud and hear the drums before you see the water.

The descent to the lakes passes Surya Kunda and Bhairav Kunda before Gosainkunda itself opens up below, with the grey rock in the middle that pilgrims hold to be Shiva lying in the water. You will not arrive alone. This is the day the shamans converge, and the trail fills with red headcloths, cowrie shells and drums.

Our camp is already standing when you get there. From tonight you are on full board, cooked by our own kitchen crew.

The full moon of Shrawan. The day belongs to you and to the lake.

Shamans begin moving toward the water around five in the morning, and the drumming has usually not stopped since the night before. Through the day, jhankris and dhamis circle the lake, dance in trance to the dhyangro, and perform rites at the Shiva shrine and at Trishul Dhara, the spring below. Women shamans in cowrie-shell headdresses fill decorated jugs at the spring and pour the water into the palms and over the heads of whoever comes. Novices are initiated. The elders hold a drumming contest with an egg balanced on the drum head, and the winner breaks it against the door frame of the temple.

Hindu pilgrims bathe in the lake to wash away the year's wrongs, and men who wear the janai replace the sacred thread. Tens of thousands of people come up here for this, from Kathmandu, from the hill districts and from India.

Your guide will stay with you and explain what is happening as it happens. There are things that are fine to photograph here and things that are not, and we will be clear about which is which before you take the lens cap off.

We come down the western side past Lauribinayak and Cholangpati, losing a thousand metres through the morning. The crowd thins with every hour and by Cholangpati the trail is quiet again.

Sing Gompa, also called Chandanbari, sits in fir forest at 3,330 metres and has a small Buddhist monastery and a cheese factory that has been running for decades. After the intensity of the previous two days the silence takes some adjusting to.

A steep forest descent to Dhunche at 1,960 metres, roughly three to four hours, and then the drive back down the Pasang Lhamu Highway to Kathmandu.

That highway is still recovering from the flood of 26 August 2026 and conditions vary week to week. We check it continuously in the run-up to departure and again while you are on the hill. If it is not usable on the day, we fall back rather than improvise: either a helicopter lift from Dhunche or a walk-out east through Helambu to Melamchi. Both are costed and planned before you ever leave home.

This day exists so that one bad weather window does not cost you your flight. Monsoon can hold a group at the pass, and a damaged road can add hours.

If the trek has run to plan, and it usually does, the day is yours. Patan and Bhaktapur are both easy half days from the hotel, and we can arrange a guide. In the evening we eat together.

We drive you to the airport about three hours before your flight. If you are carrying on into Nepal or across to Tibet, our office can put the next leg together for you.