Himalaya Backpacking - Adult

Spend 35 days trekking 100 miles through the world-famous Himalayas on ancient trade paths that once connected Tibet with India. You’ll expand your cultural awareness, leadership skills, and outdoor knowledge along the way. 

Reaching elevations of 15,000 feet, you’ll hike past villages where water buffalo-powered agriculture is still the main way of life, gaining and losing up to 2,000 feet in a day. Weather and trail conditions shape the route as you go — temperatures swing dramatically between the valleys and the high passes.

Photo credit: Tali Stopeck

Your instructors will teach the foundational skills of backcountry travel — camping, cooking, navigation, Leave No Trace, and risk management — before gradually stepping back and handing leadership to your group. Along the way, you’ll have frequent opportunities to visit local communities and learn about a way of life different from your own. As competence builds, you may travel in student-led groups for a day at a time, and if your group is ready, your course may culminate in a multi-day independent student expedition.

You’ll be in the Kumaon and Eastern Garhwal Himalayas — a glacier-carved range sacred to Hindus and home to Himalayan black bear, tahr, fox, bharal, and barking deer.

You’ll leave knowing how to move through one of the most demanding mountain environments on earth, and with a community built through 35 days of shared challenge.

Photo credit: Annemarie Vocca