Trekking - Dolpo Trekking

The Dolpo Region

Dolpo is a hidden valley created by a Buddhist deity for his worshippers. Today, it is celebrated as a sample of original Tibet. Blue sheep, Himalayan black bear and the snow leopard are the most talked about fauna of this region.

Dolpo is located inside the Shey Phoksumdo National Park of mid-western Nepal, behind the Northside of the Dhaulagiri massif towards the Tibetan plateau

Cut off by a series of very high passes, closed by snow most of the year, Dolpo remains truly an isolated corner of Nepal. Time had stood still here for centuries, so has the inhabitants' way, since time immoral. The finely preserved ecosystem encompasses a wild and wonderful variety of plants and wildlife, including the blue sheep and snow leopards. A trek through Dolpo to Mustang is an experience not easily forgotten.

We travel in the restricted area of this region from Shey to Lo Monthang. We will need to have a special permit to do this route, and a government representative to accompany the party as per rule.

Dolpo Trekking programmes and itineraries

Dolpa Fairly untouched by outside influence Dolpa is the wild west of Nepal, a region that has provided the ultimate experience of solitude and wilderness to the generations of trekkers. Nowhere is this sense of untamed wilderness is more pronounced than in the trek route between Dhorpatan and Tarakot (a five day journey) in which one hardly comes across anything but nature in its untamed splendor. However, as many travelers have recounted that the experience is not the one of isolation but that of a rejuvenation with and intimate and unadulterated relationship with mother nature. There are wild walnut forest on the way and pink and red rhododendron bushes along the river valleys. The green water Phoksundo lake high up on the mountains not simply breathtaking, but as one of our American visitor remarked "place of heavenly peace".

Dormott Witten during the 50s described the Dopla experience as that of walking into a dreamy landscape painting. The only difference between the Dolpa Landscape and a painting is that the former is real and you walk through it and experience its beauty and feel part of its.

But it is not only the beautiful aspect of nature that one experiences along the track. Its dangerous and strangely attractive aspect manifest in the roar of avalanches across the Dhaulagiri range that one can hear from Tarakot. Both beautiful and challenging, dangerous and alluring, nature appears in various forms in route providing a Trekking experience that is unique both in terms of its range and variety.

This region of spectacular natural beauty is also the site of some famous religious building. At Dunai, a Hindu temple dedicated to goddess kali is one of the oldest in Nepal and at the confluence of Tarap and Bheri rivers its the Tarap Gompa, one of the oldest and biggest of its kind. Dolpa is also interesting for some of its unusual social practices. Noteworthy among these is the polyandrous marriage system as also a unique land tenure system. In this system each land owner loses two feet of his land to one of his neighbor at one end of his land area and gains two feet of land from another one of his neighbor at the other end of his land. People from Dolpa are quite enterprising and many often travel to foreign countries for trading purpose. They have their unique forms of social organization and religious worship which make a fascinating object of cultural study. In all a Trek to Dolpa is not only a physical journey across the Dhaulagiri range but also, to quote Peter Waugh (an Australian trekker of the sixties) 'a journey within'. This is a journey in which one experiences nature as an immediate presence and in complete harmony with life that it supports.

You must be minimum 2 person to get the special trek permit to do the trekking to this special area. You need Special Trekking Permit to do trekking to this area.