Everest Base Camp with the Cho La pass and the Gokyo lakes

Gokyo is a small village in the next valley west of the one the classic trek walks up. It sits beside a chain of glacial lakes, under a brown hill called Gokyo Ri that people climb at dawn. The Cho La is the pass that links the two valleys, and it is the reason you can walk both in one trip instead of choosing between them.

So yes, Gokyo can be combined with base camp, and this is how. Three things are added to the trek. The lakes and the village of Gokyo. The dawn climb of Gokyo Ri, which looks back across the valley at the Everest wall. And the Cho La crossing itself, which is a full day of walking over a high, snowy saddle to get from one valley to the other.

Nothing is taken away. Everything the classic route gives you is still in this trip. You still walk into the Everest Base Camp trek the normal way, you still sleep at Namche Bazaar (3,440 m (11,286 ft)) and Dingboche (4,410 m (14,469 ft)) on the two rest days, you still walk out to Everest Base Camp at 5,364 m (17,598 ft), and you still climb Kala Patthar in the dark for the photograph. The Gokyo half is bolted onto the end of all that, not swapped in for part of it.

A word about the lakes, because we would rather describe them than measure them. Our own records describe a chain of glacial lakes in the basin, held sacred by both Hindus and Buddhists, and name the one beside the village as Dudh Pokhari. We hold no elevation for the lakes we are willing to publish, so this page gives none. The same goes for the Ngozumpa Glacier, the wide river of gray rubble and ice you cross on the way in from the pass. Our material calls it the largest glacier in Nepal. We have not been able to confirm that against an authority, and nobody publishes its length, so treat it as our description of the place rather than as a settled figure.

Counting only the days you actually walk, this route adds 3 days to the classic trek. Counting the way the trips are sold, the published figures run from 15 to 18 days, and those numbers are not measuring the same thing as each other.

Two counting schemes are in use on this site and everywhere else, and mixing them is how two honest pages end up contradicting each other. A product page counts trip days, Kathmandu to Kathmandu, which is the figure in our fact store and the figure you are sold. Our day by day itinerary page counts trail days, Lukla to Lukla, which counts only days you put boots on. Every number in the table below is a trip day. Every number in the route table further down is a trail day, and the sentence says so each time.

Read the table the way a buyer reads it and it makes no sense. One version of this route is published at the same length as the classic trek, which would mean a pass and a whole extra valley cost nothing. Another is published 3 days longer than that, for the same walk. Both cannot be right, and in fact neither number is wrong. They are counting different things.4

Here is what is really going on. The classic product counts arrival and preparation days in Kathmandu before it flies to Lukla, and it ends with a departure day. The 15 day version of the pass route counts none of those and starts at Lukla. So its 15 and the classic 15 are not comparable at all. The 18 day version is the same walk with the Kathmandu days put back. Nobody walks further for those extra days.

Strip all of that away and count only days on the trail, and the answer is clean. The classic route walks 11 trail days, Lukla to Lukla. This route walks 14.4 So the honest figure to plan around is 3 extra days of walking, plus whatever Kathmandu days and spare days you choose to put around them. We would tell you to carry at least one spare day for the pass on top of that, and the section on the Cho La explains why.

everestbasecamp.tours is an entity of Nepal Unique Treks and Expedition Pvt Ltd. That company sells this route as three separate products, under three near identical names, at three different day counts. If you have been comparing them and wondering what the difference is, the answer is that between two of them there is none.

We reconciled the three published itineraries day for day.4 Two of them, the Gokyo Cho La Pass Trek via EBC and the Everest Base Camp Cho La Pass Gokyo Trek, are the same walk. Every trail day lines up one to one. The longer one simply adds arrival and preparation days in Kathmandu at the front and a departure day at the back. The third, the Gokyo Chola Pass Everest Base Camp Trek, is a genuine variant: it walks the same loop in the opposite direction, through different villages on the way up. That difference is real and it matters, and it gets its own section further down rather than a page of its own.

We are telling you this instead of quietly picking one, for two reasons. The first is that you deserve to know when a choice you are being offered is not really a choice. The second is that three pages chasing one search split the answer three ways, and a reader ends up comparing prices and day counts that were never comparable. One route, one page, one recommendation is better for you and better for us.

So this page is the single answer. Where the three published versions disagree on a figure, this page gives the figure we can stand behind and says out loud that the others exist. Where they disagree on how the trip is run, it gives our recommendation and explains the reasoning rather than hiding it.

9 of the 14 trail days on this route are the classic Everest Base Camp trek, walked in the same order to the same villages. 5 are new. That is the whole shape of the trip in one line.

Notice where the split happens. You do not choose between base camp and Gokyo on day one. You walk the whole classic route first, exactly as everyone else on the trail is walking it, and the trip only becomes a different trip on the morning after Kala Patthar, when your group turns west and almost everybody else turns downhill.4

This table carries no distances and no walking hours, on purpose. Our own published itineraries give different figures for the same legs, and rather than average them into something nobody measured we print the full spread once and only once, on the route and distance page. The shared days are described properly, one at a time, on the day by day itinerary.

The Cho La is a pass, which means a low point in a high ridge, and it sits at 5,420 m (17,782 ft)2. It is the only way to walk from the base camp valley into the Gokyo valley without going all the way back down and around. Crossing it is one very long day, and it is the day this whole route turns on.

What it actually involves. You leave Dzongla in the dark, because you want to be over the top before the afternoon wind gets up. The first part is a walk across boulder fields to the foot of the pass. Then there is a steep pull up loose rock and scree, using your hands in places, which is the part people remember in their legs. The top of the pass is snow and ice over a small glacier, and it is flatter than it looks but slippery. Then a long descent on the far side down to Thagnak, which is where the day usually starts hurting.

It holds snow and ice. The top runs over a small glacier, so there is a stretch where you are walking on snow rather than rock, and after fresh snow there is a great deal more of it. That is normal and it is not a reason to stay away. It does mean your boots need something on them for grip, that a trekking pole earns its place, and that this is the one part of the trip where your guide will look at the sky before dawn and make a decision. Full climbing equipment is not normally used on the standard crossing, and no honest operator should be selling this to you as mountaineering. It is walking, on a day where the ground is not friendly.

Now the part most pages leave out. The Cho La can be closed. Fresh snow, heavy wind, or ice in the wrong places, and the crossing does not happen that day. Sometimes you wait a day and go. Sometimes you do not go at all, and the group walks back down the valley and around by the low route to reach Gokyo, or gives up the Gokyo half entirely. That is why we tell you to carry a spare day for the pass and to keep slack in your flights home. It is also why we will not promise you the pass in writing. Nobody can.

Compared with the classic trek, this is a real step up. The hardest thing on the classic route is the climb of Kala Patthar (5,545 m (18,192 ft)3) before dawn, which is a short steep climb in the cold. The Cho La is a longer, rougher day than that, at a height where nothing is quick, and it comes after a week and a half of walking rather than at the end of a rested night. If you want the honest scale of the ordinary version first, read how hard the Everest Base Camp trek is and then come back to this page.

One correction while we are here, because it is our own estate we are correcting. One of the three product pages for this route states the Cho La at 5,367 m in its itinerary and at 5,420 m in its own list of questions, on the same page. The figure this site publishes is 5,420 m (17,782 ft)2, which is what independent sources agree on. You will also see pages that give the Cho La, the Renjo La and the Kongma La all the same height. They are three different passes at three different heights, and the page about the three Everest passes gives each one its own figure.

Both are brown hills you climb in the dark with a head torch on. They are not the same view and neither replaces the other. Kala Patthar is a portrait of one mountain. Gokyo Ri is the wide shot.

We do not publish a height for Gokyo Ri, and you should know why. Our own material carries 3 different figures for that one hill: 5,357 m, 5,360 m and 5,483 m. That is a spread of 126 m, and one of our product pages manages to state two of them on itself, one in the body and a different one in its own list of questions.5 Until the Survey Department of Nepal or a published topographic map of the Khumbu settles it, this page names no height for the hill. The full list of heights we cannot settle is on the elevation page.

That refusal has a practical consequence, so here it is plainly. People ask whether Gokyo Ri is higher than Kala Patthar. Kala Patthar is settled at 5,545 m (18,192 ft)3, and every one of the 3 heights our material carries for Gokyo Ri is below that. So the answer is no, on any figure you pick. What we will not do is tell you by how much, because that would mean choosing one of the three and not mentioning the other two, which is what every page that answers this with a flat number is doing.

One more honest note. If the Everest photograph is the thing you want, the classic trek already gives it to you, and you do not need a pass to get it. Gokyo Ri is not a better Everest viewpoint. It is a different view of a different part of the same range, and it is worth the extra days of walking only if you want the range and not just the mountain.

The loop can be walked in either direction. Base camp first and then west over the Cho La into Gokyo, which is what this page describes. Or Gokyo first, climbing the far valley through Dole and Machhermo, then east over the pass and on to base camp afterward. Both are real trips. We recommend base camp first, and the reason is acclimatization.

Acclimatization means letting your body get used to less oxygen before you go higher. The classic route is built around a staircase of nights that does exactly that, with two rest days in it, one at Namche Bazaar and one at Dingboche. Walk base camp first and you go over the Cho La having already slept as high as this trip ever puts you, with base camp and Kala Patthar already behind you. The pass becomes the last hard thing you do, at the point where your body is most ready for it.

Walk it the other way and the pass comes earlier, with fewer nights high behind you. The Gokyo valley does give you height on the way up, and the dawn climb of Gokyo Ri works as an acclimatization day in its own right, so this is not reckless and our parent company sells it. It is simply a thinner margin at the hardest point of the route, and it skips Tengboche and Dingboche on the way up in exchange for Dole and Machhermo.

There is a second reason, and for most people it is the one that decides it. The Cho La is the part of this trip that weather can cancel. If you walk base camp first and the pass closes, you have already done the thing you came for, and what you lose is the Gokyo half. If you walk Gokyo first and the pass closes, you can lose base camp itself. Given the choice, put the cancellable day after the day that matters most to you, not before it.

When would we run it the other way? If you have walked to base camp before and the Gokyo valley is the part you actually want, take the quieter valley first while the trail is empty. If your dates fall when the main trail is at its busiest, the reverse direction spends its early nights away from the crowd. Tell us which you want when you write to us and we will build it that way, with the acclimatization checked rather than assumed.

This is the part of the page we would rather you read than the rest of it. Adding a pass is not a small upgrade. It is a harder trip with a day in it that can go wrong, and the wrong person on it has a miserable two weeks.

Choose this route if you have walked multi day trips before and enjoyed them, you are steady on rough and loose ground, you can give the trip its extra days without making the flights home tight, and the day by day shape of the classic trek reads to you as manageable rather than alarming. It also suits people who have looked at the classic route and quietly thought it sounded a bit short.

Do not choose this route if the classic trek’s altitude profile is what worries you. This is the clearest thing on the page. If you read the classic itinerary and the heights made you nervous, do the classic trek. Adding a pass does not make a frightening trip less frightening. It makes it longer, it puts a harder day at the top of it, and it adds the one morning where somebody has to decide whether it is safe to go. We have never had anyone come home from the classic Everest Base Camp trek wishing they had made it harder.

Also think twice if your dates have no slack in them, because the pass may cost you a day and the flight out of Lukla may cost you another. And think twice if this would be your first long walk at altitude. Our own product page for the shorter version says in its own words that this is not a route for beginners, and we agree with it. The honest starting point is the classic Everest Base Camp trek, and the honest way to find out where you sit is the page on how hard this trek really is.

One thing that is not on the list is age, and one thing that is not on the list is being a fast walker. Neither decides this. What decides it is how many days you can give it, how you have handled height before, and whether you are willing to turn around on the morning your guide says the pass is not on.

We guide this route ourselves. everestbasecamp.tours is run by Nepal Unique Treks and Expedition Pvt Ltd, a licensed Kathmandu operator and member 2291 of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal. We are not an agent passing you to somebody else, which is why we can tell you what we will and will not promise about the pass.

The permits are the same two permits the classic trek needs, and we buy both for every client on every trek we run. Nothing extra is required for the Cho La and there is no separate pass fee. The page about permits and fees has both, sourced and dated.

What it costs. One of the three versions has a confirmed price: the Everest Base Camp Cho La Pass Gokyo Trek, which walks to base camp first, the direction we recommend. The price of that trek is 1,495 USD. The written quote confirms the price for your group and your dates before you pay anything.

The other two have no single published price yet. They are the Gokyo Cho La Pass Trek via EBC, the same walk without the Kathmandu days, and the Gokyo Chola Pass Everest Base Camp Trek, which walks the loop the other way round. If you want either one, the price comes to you in writing, in the quote for your dates, before you pay anything. Send us your dates and the size of your group through the trip inquiry form.

To hold a place you pay a deposit of 30 percent of the trip price, and what you owe if you cancel is set out on our booking terms page.

Four things worth asking any operator about this route, including us. Which direction do you walk it, and why. How many spare days are in the itinerary for the pass. What happens, concretely, if the Cho La is closed on the morning. And who makes that call, the guide on the ground or an office in Kathmandu. If an operator has not thought about the fourth one, that tells you something.

Every number above is listed here with the body that publishes it and the date we last read it. If a figure has changed since, write to us and we will correct the page and say that we did.