Ashish Shrestha
Founder at HoneyGuide13 posts since 2014
Born in Kathmandu, Ashish studied neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to the mountains he grew up with. An avid trekker and a birder, he has been working the Khumbu since 2015, just long enough that when he recommends a guide or a lodge, he is choosing from people he knows.
Posts by Ashish
13 posts
How to Avoid Altitude Sickness on the Everest Base Camp Trek, and What to Do If You Get It
Above 3,000 m, sleep no more than 500 m higher than the night before, spend an extra night after every 1,000 m gained in sleeping altitude, and never climb to a higher altitude with symptoms.
Published
Independent, group, or private: how should you organize your Everest Base Camp trek?
Organizing an Everest Base Camp trek comes down to three questions: how much the plan should bend to fit you, who you want to trek with, and how much you want to spend. The arrangement you choose follows from your answers.
Published
How to get to Everest Base Camp? Putting together a day-by-day itinerary.
Take a base itinerary and test every day against four things: how much higher you sleep, how far you walk, how you fly, and, if it matters to you, where you sleep. Change anything that doesn’t fit your requirements.
Published
What is HoneyGuide's approach to safety on an Everest trek?
HoneyGuide's approach to safety is to settle most of the risk before you even reach the trail, then run the trail based on data and written protocols. A guided trek is not automatically a safer one, and the research below says so. Does trekking with a travel company actually make an Everest trek safer? Not …
Published
Which Everest trek is a good fit for me?
Everest trips come in four kinds: heli tours, short heli treks, classic treks and high pass circuits. The right one is decided first by the days you have, second by how high you are willing to sleep, and third by the pace you can hold.
Published
How long are treks in the Everest Region? Duration, Distance, and Days to block off
The famous Everest Base Camp Trek is 12 days. However, the Everest Region has trips ranging from half-day for the EBC Heli tour to 5-6 days for short heli treks. Then there are the treks with high passes that can be as long as up to 18 days. However, before you can calculate the total days to block off, you have to factor in your international flights, Kathmandu stay, and buffer days.
Published
Trekking to Everest Region With a Medical Condition
A short list of conditions like sickle cell anemia, pulmonary hypertension, unstable angina rules out the Everest region altogether. However, a much longer list does not. It is also important to note that what decides is not the word Everest. The Khumbu has trips that sleep at 3,440 m (11,290 ft) and trips that sleep …
Published
Best of the Everest Base Camp Trek: What Is Actually Worth the Walk
The best thing on the Everest Base Camp trek is not Everest Base Camp. It is the 4:30 am climb to Kala Patthar, the green-roofed villages under Khumbila, and the hour at Tengboche when the monks start the evening puja and Ama Dablam goes pink behind the gompa. Reaching the Base camp is like crossing …
Published
What is a Beyul?
In the Tibetan belief system, beyuls are hidden valleys in the Himalayas that can protect the faithful during times of crisis. As spaces consecrated by Guru Padmasambhava himself, these are places of material abundance, spiritual harmony, and eternal life.
Published
How I found Yab-Yum in Mustang -Trekking Tales
Gurusampo a unique and beautiful cave, not too far from Tukuche in Mustang in the Annapurna Circuit Trek. This is our experience from our visit to the Cave!
Published
What is Soma Ras, the Drink of the Gods?
Soma is exalted in the Rig Veda, an Indo-Iranian scripture, as a drink that brings immortality and divinity to the drinker. Perhaps taking a cue from this reference, Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel, Brave New World, uses the word ‘soma’ to refer to a recreational hallucinogen. Utopian or dystopian, the fact remains that psychoactive …
Published
Extinct Wild Yak found in Nepal
Yaks have been milked, bred and broken in the Himalayas and Tibet for so long that they no longer have the majesty of their wild brethren. And human beings have been so successful in this domestication business that wild yaks have not been seen in the Nepal Himalayas since the 1970s. That is until now. …
Published
