How the road changed the Annapurna Circuit

When the Annapurna Circuit opened to foreign trekkers in the late 1970s, it was a walk of about three weeks. You started in the low rice country of the Marsyangdi valley, climbed through Gurung and then Manangi villages to Manang, crossed Thorong La at 5,416 m and came down to Muktinath, then followed the Kali Gandaki south past Thakali towns to the lowlands. Everything in the lodges, from rice to kerosene to beer, arrived on a porter's back or a mule.

That walk made the Circuit famous. It crosses almost every climate Nepal has, from banana trees to bare high desert, in about two weeks of walking, and passes through the homes of at least four communities with their own languages and food. For many trekkers in the 1980s and 1990s it was the best long walk in the world, and we still meet people in Pokhara who came back thirty years later to see what had changed.

The answer is the road. On the west side, a road was pushed up the Kali Gandaki from Beni towards Jomsom in stages through the 2000s, and then on to Muktinath. On the east side, a jeep track was cut up the Marsyangdi gorge from Besisahar, reaching Chame and then Manang. Both are rough mountain roads, often single lane, and both are cut by landslides in the monsoon.

The table shows how the main stretches look today, as we know them. Road conditions change after every monsoon, so check current status before you travel.

Trekkers who miss the old trail sometimes forget that the people who live here asked for the road. Before it came, a sick child in Manang was days from a hospital. Rice, salt and cooking gas cost several times the lowland price because of the porterage. Apples from Marpha, potatoes from Manang and buckwheat from the upper Kali Gandaki could not reach a market before they spoiled.

Today a jeep can reach Besisahar or Beni in a day, and the hospital in Pokhara is a day's drive from Jomsom. Children from Manang go to school lower down and come home more often. Marpha's apples and apple brandy reach Pokhara in good condition, and the price of a sack of rice in the upper valleys has fallen. When a lodge owner in Manang asks a complaining trekker how many days he would carry a gas cylinder up from Besisahar, the conversation usually ends there.

The road also brought pilgrims. Muktinath is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, and Indian and Nepali pilgrims now arrive by jeep in large numbers in spring and autumn. Ranipauwa, the village below the temple, has grown to serve them, and on a busy morning there are far more pilgrims than trekkers at the 108 water spouts.

For trekkers, the road brought dust, engine noise and jeeps on narrow sections of the old trail. Some lodges on the lower Kali Gandaki, which lived on trekkers walking down from Jomsom, lost much of that trade when people took jeeps instead. For a few years travel writers called the Circuit finished.

That verdict came too early. The Annapurna Conservation Area Project and local trekking groups marked a network of alternative footpaths, the New Annapurna Trekking Trails, usually shortened to NATT. They link old village paths, herders' tracks and new sections on the far bank of the river or higher on the slope, so that most of the Circuit can be walked away from vehicles. Markers are painted on rocks and walls in red and white, with blue and white on some side trails.

NATT sections are often steeper and longer than the road, and some are washed out or overgrown in a given year. They are also where the Circuit's old quiet survives: stone villages with prayer walls, terraces of barley and buckwheat, and views of Annapurna II, III and IV and Gangapurna that the valley floor does not give you.

• Above Pisang, the upper trail climbs to Ghyaru at about 3,670 m and contours through Ngawal to Manang.
• Between Dharapani and Koto, the high trail via Timang and Thanchowk avoids a long stretch of road.
• From Muktinath, a path over the ridge to Lubra and down the Panda Khola reaches the Kali Gandaki near Jomsom.
• South of Jomsom, the east-bank trail through Marpha and Chhairo keeps you off the road to Tukuche.

A typical Circuit now takes 12 to 15 days from Kathmandu and back. Most trekkers take a jeep from Besisahar to Chamje or Dharapani and start walking there, accepting that the lowest gorge is mostly road. From there, the NATT gives you a walk on trails almost all the way to Manang, with the upper route via Ghyaru and Ngawal as the best day of the east side.

Manang, at about 3,519 m, is where you acclimatise. Two nights there, with a day hike to the viewpoint above the village or to the lake below Gangapurna, is the safest way to prepare for the pass. From Manang, short days to Yak Kharka and Thorong Phedi, or the high camp above it, set up an early-morning crossing of Thorong La. The descent to Muktinath is long, about 1,700 m down, and hard on the knees.

On the west side, the choice is yours. Some trekkers take a jeep from Muktinath and fly from Jomsom to Pokhara, about 20 minutes. We prefer at least one more day on foot, through Kagbeni's mud-brick lanes and down to Marpha by the east-bank trail. Thorong La can close after heavy snow, most often from December to February, and the crossing needs clear weather in any month, so check current status before you travel.

The whole Circuit lies inside the Annapurna Conservation Area, and every foreign trekker needs an ACAP entry permit. Since April 2023, foreign trekkers in Nepal's national parks and conservation areas must trek with a licensed guide hired through a registered agency. On the Circuit, checkpoints have checked for guides in many seasons, though not always. We follow the rule on every trek, and a good guide also knows which NATT sections are open that year. Check current status before you travel.

Roads in Nepal keep growing, and more of the side valleys will be reached by jeep in the coming years. We do not think that ends the Circuit. The pass, the high villages of Manang and the walk into the Kali Gandaki cannot be driven, and the trails around the road are still there for anyone willing to take the longer way.