One country, three expeditions in one: living valley, high trail and jungle.
Sixteen days that climb from Kathmandu's temple squares to a 4,065-metre summit at dawn, then drop to the grasslands of the far west, where you track Bengal tigers the old way, on foot with naturalists who read the grass. Guillaume de Remacle, our co-founder, leads the expedition from arrival to departure.
The shape of the sixteen days
The rhythm is honest: on the trek, porters carry the bags, one for every two guests, and you carry a daypack. Two internal flights do the long distances, and the teahouses are simple, warm and real.
Most of our guests do. Rooms are shared twin, and we pair you with another solo traveler. A room of your own is $180 more, $4,880 all in, wherever the trip sleeps in beds rather than teahouses.
In Bardia, tiger numbers have climbed back and a whole ecosystem with them. This is what protection looks like when it works, and it is why Nepal is new for us. The stories you bring back are the loudest thing we do; the carbon work happens quietly, published for anyone who asks.
“My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.”Tenzing Norgay, Tiger of the Snows
The living part
Half of this trip happens at somebody’s invitation.
Nepal is easy to photograph and harder to meet, and this itinerary is built the other way round. In Bhaktapur you sit down at a potter’s wheel beside someone who has thrown pots in that square their whole working life, and you make something badly, and they fix it. In Junbesi you spend a morning at the village school. At Thupten Chöling you are guests of the monastery for a night, which means you eat when they eat and you wake when the hall wakes, earlier than you would choose.
In Kathmandu it is Pashupatinath and the Boudha stupa, a singing bowl ceremony in Thamel, and the walk up to Namobuddha for the last of the light. Nine of the sixteen days are spent in the hill country and the valley, among people, before the park days begin.
None of it is staged for us. These are places our team has come back to for years, and the welcome is the product of that.
Bardia National Park
A recovery you can walk into.
In 2009 Nepal counted 121 wild tigers, and 18 of them were in Bardia. The national survey published in 2022 counted 355 in the country and 125 in Bardia alone. Nepal was the first country to meet the global commitment to double its wild tigers, and Bardia carries more of that recovery than any park except Chitwan. Next door in Banke, which had no resident tigers in 2010, the survey found 25.
The rhinos are the harder half of the story. Bardia held 67 greater one-horned rhinos in 2000. By 2008, after years when the park could not be properly guarded, there were 22. What is there now was rebuilt animal by animal, with rhinos moved west from Chitwan and watched since. The 2021 national count put 752 rhinos in Nepal, 38 of them here.
We tell guests both halves, because the second one is what makes the first one mean anything. Walking with the park’s naturalists is the point. Protection here looks like people, on foot, every day, and in Bardia you see it at close range.
Sightings are never guaranteed and we will not pretend otherwise. That is what makes the moment the grass parts unforgettable. Between tigers there are one-horned rhinos, wild elephants, river life and birds beyond counting.
We don’t rush. We explore.
tigers in Bardia when Nepal began scientific counts in 2009.
counted there in the national survey published in 2022.
The trek is the connective tissue, not an add-on.
Six days of village-to-village walking in the middle hills, climbing gradually so the summit morning comes to fit legs and lungs alike. You sleep in teahouses and at Ang Chokpa's Inn in Junbesi, spend a morning with the village school, pass working monasteries and mani walls, and stay a night at Thupten Choling monastery. Then you arrive at Pikey Peak in the dark, the summit Sir Edmund Hillary said had his favourite view of Everest, and watch the highest mountains on Earth turn gold.
Optional extension
Bhutan: the kingdom next door, while you are already at the roof of the world.
You are closer to Bhutan in Kathmandu than you will ever be at home: a short flight instead of a long-haul pilgrimage. Bhutan meters its tourism deliberately, so the crowds stay small and the dzongs, prayer flags and mountain monasteries feel lived in rather than staged. We arrange the extension with our partners there and shape it around the group; the details are a conversation, not a brochure.
From the expedition
Sixteen days, as they actually looked.
Every frame here was taken on this itinerary. Click any image to see it full size.
Dates & price
| Departure | Rooms | Per person | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 15–30, 2027 | Shared twin | $4,700 | Small group |
| March 15–30, 2027 | Room to yourself | $4,880 | $180 supplement |
| Bhutan extension, after the trip | Arranged with our partners | + $1,350 | Ask on the call |
Reserve your place
A short form, then a 25-minute expedition call. We reply within one business day. 30% deposit secures the place.
FAQ
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Terns feed by plunge-diving, total commitment, perfect timing. It's how we travel, too.
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