Kori Danda Trek

The side of Annapurna nobody photographs

Almost every famous Annapurna viewpoint looks at the range from the south or the west. Poon Hill, Muldai, Khopra, Mardi, Annapurna Base Camp — all of them face the wall built around Annapurna South, Hiunchuli and Machhapuchhre.

Kori Danda faces east, and the mountains change completely. Annapurna II (7,937 m) and Annapurna IV (7,525 m) dominate instead, with Lamjung Himal (6,983 m) in front of them and Machhapuchhre reduced to a shape off to the west. These are the peaks at the far end of the Annapurna Circuit, the ones you spend days walking towards in the Manang valley — and here you are looking straight up at them after two days out of Pokhara.

At 3,800 m Kori is also the highest of the short trekking viewpoints within easy reach of the city, higher than Mardi's Low Camp, Muldai, Khopra Danda or Poon Hill.

Sikles is the point, not just the trailhead

Most treks start at a road-end with a tea shop. This one starts in a village of several hundred slate-roofed stone houses stacked up a hillside at 1,980 m, which is one of the largest Gurung settlements in the country and among the least rebuilt.

The people here are Tamu — the Gurung name for themselves — and Sikles has historically sent its sons into the Gurkha regiments, which is why you will find retired soldiers who served in Hong Kong or Brunei sitting outside houses their grandfathers built. The village also sits at the heart of where the Annapurna Conservation Area Project did its earliest work in the 1980s, making local management of forest and grazing the model rather than a fenced-off park.

What this means practically is that Sikles is not a trekking economy. The fields are worked, the livestock matter, and you are a guest rather than a customer. We stay in a village homestay on the last night rather than a lodge, deliberately.

Why four days is the right length

Kori is sold as anything from three to six days and the versions are genuinely different trips.

Version	What it does	The catch
3 days	Sikles, then a very long push to Kori and out	Around 1,800 m of gain in one day; most people suffer
4 days (this trek)	Splits the climb, night on the high pasture, night in Sikles	None worth mentioning
6 days	Adds Kapuche Lake and Hugu Goth	Two extra days for one lake and a lower valley

The four-day shape splits the 1,820 m climb from Sikles to Kori across two days, which is the whole reason it works. It also gives you a night in the village on the way down, when you are finished walking and can actually spend time there.

Kapuche Lake — worth a detour or not?

Kapuche sits at 2,546 m below the Annapurna II ice fall and is described, accurately, as the lowest glacial lake in Nepal. Glacial lakes of that character normally sit above 4,000 m; this one is fed directly by ice collapsing off the face above it, which is why it exists so low.

It is genuinely striking and it is in the wrong direction. Reaching it properly means dropping into the Madi valley towards Hugu Goth and climbing back out, which is what turns a four-day trek into six. We do not bolt it on as a rushed half-day, because that produces a long walk to a viewpoint above the lake rather than time at it.

If Kapuche is what you want, tell us and we will quote the six-day version that does it justice.

The difficulty, and the one day that is long

Moderate overall, with a distinct shape: two days up, one long day down.

Day	Walking	Height change	Notes
1	Drive 2–3 hrs, walk 4–5 hrs	+900 m from Sikles	Climb begins immediately after the drive
2	3–4 hrs	+900 m	Short but thin air; open ground
3	6–7 hrs	−1,820 m	The whole descent in one go
4	Drive 2–3 hrs	—	Village morning, then out

Day three is the honest one. Coming off Kori to Sikles gives back every metre of the climb in a single day, much of it on steep pasture and forest trail rather than engineered steps. Poles matter. So does starting early enough that you are not doing the last hour in the dark.

What the high pasture is like to sleep on

Nights one and two are spent on grazing ground, not in villages. The buildings up here are kharka — seasonal herders' shelters and the simple lodges that have grown beside them — and they operate on the same calendar as the livestock. Outside the main seasons some are closed entirely.

Expect a plain room or a shared dormitory space, blankets, an outside toilet, water from a spring or carried, and food cooked on wood or gas. There is no menu to speak of: there is dal bhat, and there is tea. It is warm, it is filling, and above 3,000 m it is the right thing to be eating anyway.

Because capacity is measured in beds rather than rooms, we confirm space before departure. In late October there is not a spare bed to be had on that ridge.

A trail with some history under it

The route through Sikles and up onto these pastures forms part of the network the Swiss geologist Toni Hagen walked in the 1950s while surveying Nepal on foot — a period in which he covered around 14,000 km through the country, at a time when almost no outsider had seen most of it.

That is not a reason to book a trek. It is a reason to notice, while you are walking, that this is a working route between settlements and pastures that people used long before anyone thought of it as recreation. The trail does not go where it goes for the views.

Permits

Kori sits inside the Annapurna Conservation Area, so you need:

• ACAP — Annapurna Conservation Area Project entry permit
• TIMS — Trekkers' Information Management System card

Both included, both arranged by us in Pokhara before departure. Bring your passport and two passport photographs. The ACAP checkpoint on the Sikles road records your details for search and rescue.

Season, and what closes

Late September to November is the best window: clear air, the pastures still open, and Annapurna II at its sharpest. March to May works well, warmer, with rhododendron in the forest belt on the way up.

Winter is the one to check with us. Kori at 3,800 m holds snow, and more importantly the seasonal kharka lodges close when the herds come down, which can make the high nights unavailable rather than merely cold. Monsoon is poor here for the usual reasons plus one specific to this route — the pasture crossing is hard to follow in cloud.

If you want the same region without the altitude, Khumai Danda sits on a neighbouring ridge at 3,245 m and runs in three days. For the same eastern peaks from the other side, the Annapurna Circuit spends days beneath them.

Where this trek goes

• Pokhara — A lakeside town at 820 m with the Annapurnas 30 km away

Related activities: Trekking in Nepal.

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