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Most people who ask us to build a custom trip don't need one. If your dates have a week of give and you want to walk one well-known route, a published group departure is cheaper, the logistics are already solved, and the date already sits inside the reliable weather window.
Customizing earns its cost in three situations: your available days don't match any published route, you want two regions in one trip rather than flying back for a second holiday, or your dates are fixed by an employer and won't move.
Pricing starts from the route's private rate, which on a standard trek is USD 300-400 more per person than the group rate. There's no separate customization fee on top. This page covers what can change, what can't, and how long each kind of change takes to arrange.
Four things: the dates, the pace, the combination of regions, and the booking format.
Dates. You can step off the published calendar and pick any start date the season allows. This is the most common request and the simplest, needing only a guide held on your dates and domestic flights secured.
Pace. You can add rest days, build in weather buffers, or shorten the daily distance. A standard 14-day Everest Base Camp trek becomes a 17-day trek with two extra acclimatization nights and a slower descent, which is worth doing if you've had altitude trouble before or you're walking with older family members.
Route combinations. You can join two itineraries: a few days of Kathmandu culture before a trek, a Pokhara retreat after one, or two mountain regions back to back without returning to the capital.
Format. The moment you change a date or a route the booking becomes private by definition, because we can't sell seats on a schedule that exists only for you.
Acclimatization days. On any route crossing 3,000 m the sleeping-height progression stays as written: no more than 500 m of sleeping gain per day, with a rest day for every 1,000 m of net gain, following the Himalayan Rescue Association's Pheriche clinic guidance.
Days can be added to that schedule. They can't be taken out. This is the one request we decline rather than price. Compressing a 14-day Everest itinerary to ten by cutting the Namche and Dingboche rest nights is how trekkers get flown out on a stretcher, and it isn't a trade this company makes.
If your days don't stretch to a high route safely, the honest answer is a lower route rather than a shortened high one. The short trips segment covers what fits a one-week window without that compromise.
Yes, with one constraint that decides most of the planning: trekking permits are issued per region and none of them transfer. Complexity scales with how far apart the two access points are.
A Kathmandu cultural tour paired with Everest Base Camp still needs the full Khumbu municipality permit and the Sagarmatha National Park entry, applied for exactly as if the Everest leg stood alone. Pairing the Annapurna Circuit with the Manaslu Circuit means the combined trip inherits Manaslu's restricted-area requirements, agency filing and a licensed guide, even though only one leg is restricted; neither leg requires a second trekker.
Logistically, two Kathmandu-based programs need almost no extra planning. Combining a Kathmandu stay with any Lukla-dependent trek means the whole schedule inherits Lukla's weather risk, and the buffer day has to sit between the two legs rather than at the end. The Lukla cancellation guide covers what that day is actually absorbing.
The two that come back cleanest pair a short cultural leg with a moderate trek, or a hard trek with a recovery retreat afterward.
Ten days: culture then a trek. One day on the Kathmandu Heritage Day Tour, then the Poon Hill trek run privately and stretched from five days to six with an extra night at Ghorepani. Pricing starts from the tour's private rate (from USD 90) and Poon Hill's private rate (from USD 500), plus the extra guide-day and lodge night at roughly the per-day rate the base itinerary already implies. Neither leg is restricted, so four to six weeks covers the booking.
Eighteen days: trek then recover. The Annapurna Circuit followed by the Pokhara Wellness Retreat, in that order. This one has a real coordination problem worth naming: a trek's finish date can move by a day for weather or pace, so the retreat's start has to be booked with that slack in it rather than pinned to an optimistic estimate. Getting that transition right is most of what the custom quote is doing.
Under two weeks for city programs, four to six weeks for standard treks, six to eight weeks for restricted areas. These are minimums, and they stretch in peak season rather than shrink.
| Trip type | Lead time | What the time is for | Peak-season target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kathmandu, Pokhara, or Lumbini programs | Under 2 weeks | Guide and hotel scheduling only | 3 weeks |
| Standard-permit treks (Everest, Annapurna, Langtang, Far West) | 4-6 weeks | Guide scheduling, plus a Lukla seat for the Khumbu | 8 weeks |
| Restricted areas (Manaslu, Upper Mustang, Dolpo, Kanchenjunga) | 6-8 weeks | Department of Immigration permit processing via a registered agency | 10 weeks |
| Two regions combined | Longer leg's timeline | Both permit stacks, plus a buffer day placed between the legs | Longer leg + 2 weeks |
Under two weeks covers anything built from Kathmandu, Pokhara, or Lumbini programs, since none needs a trekking permit.
Four to six weeks covers a standard-permit customization for Everest, Annapurna, Langtang, or the Far West. Most of that time goes to guide scheduling, plus a Lukla seat if the Khumbu is involved.
Six to eight weeks is the floor for anything touching Manaslu, Upper Mustang, Dolpo, or Kanchenjunga. The Department of Immigration's restricted-area process doesn't move faster for a premium booking, and a combination trip plans against the restricted leg's timeline rather than the shorter one.
A request landing four weeks out in mid-October competes for guides and Lukla seats with everyone else, and it usually keeps the route but loses its first-choice dates. Eight weeks is realistic for October and April.
Four things: your dates, the regions you want, your party size, and any physical conditions that affect walking pace. With those, a guide can price the trip on the first pass instead of the third.
The last one is what people leave out, and it's the one that changes the itinerary most. Prior altitude experience, joint problems, a medical condition. A party that has been to 5,000 m before gets a different Everest schedule from a party that has never seen snow. A detailed request comes back as a priced itinerary. A vague one comes back as a list of questions.
If you've already booked and want to change something, the post-booking changes guide covers what's still adjustable and when the deadlines fall.
The same four guides who built the fixed itineraries, split by region.
Passang Dawa Sherpa takes Everest combinations. Mingma Tendi Sherpa takes Langtang, Manaslu, and the Annapurna Circuit. Ajay Shrestha takes anything involving the wellness programs. Ramesh Rai takes permit-heavy trips across multiple restricted regions, because he files every permit the company issues and knows which regional combinations create real friction and which only look like they should.
Credentials are on the team page. The practical consequence is that the quote comes from someone who has walked the route, so the answer to "can we add a day here" is based on what that lodge and that morning are actually like rather than on what a map suggests.
It starts from the base route's private rate and adds the cost of extra days or the permits for new regions. There is no separate customization fee.
The number reflects what the trip costs to run, which is why a quote for a simple date change lands close to the published private rate you already see. Added days cost roughly what a day on that itinerary already costs in guide wages, porter fees, and meals. Combined regions add each region's own permits rather than averaging them. The family and custom comparison shows where a curated segment is cheaper than a bespoke build.
Message the guide named on the trip page closest to what you want, using that page's contact options, and include the four things listed above. There's no intake form and no charge for a quote.
If two regions are involved, write to whichever page covers the harder leg: the restricted area, or the higher one. That leg is the constraint everything else has to fit around.
FAQ
Yes, all 38 routes on this site can be rebuilt around your own dates, slowed to a gentler pace, or combined with another region. The one thing that can't change is the acclimatization schedule on any route above 3,000 m. Days can be added to it for safety; they can't be removed.
It costs more than a group departure because it starts from the private rate, which on a standard route is USD 300-400 more per person. There's no separate customization fee on top of that, and added days cost roughly what a day on that itinerary already costs in wages and food.
Under two weeks for anything built only from Kathmandu, Pokhara, or Lumbini programs. Four to six weeks for standard-permit routes like Everest or Annapurna. Six to eight weeks minimum for anything touching Manaslu, Upper Mustang, or Dolpo, because the restricted-area permit process doesn't speed up for a custom booking.
Yes, but permits are issued per region and don't transfer. Combining a standard region with a restricted one means the whole trip inherits the restricted area's minimum group size and agency filing rules. Combining anything with a Lukla-dependent trek means the weather buffer day has to sit between the two legs rather than at the end.
Book the published departure if your dates have a week of flexibility and you want to walk one well-known route, because it's cheaper and already scheduled in the safest weather window. Customize when your days don't match any published length, when you want two regions in one trip, or when your work dates genuinely won't move.
