Things to Do in Pokhara in May

Trekking in Annapurna, Langtang, Everest, and Upper Mustang covers Nepal's marquee mountain regions from a single Pokhara launchpoint. Each corridor has a distinct sensory world. The Annapurna Circuit's rhododendron forests give way to arid, wind-scoured valleys that smell of juniper and yak dung. Langtang's narrow gorge funnels glacial wind past cheese factories and tamang settlements. Everest's Khumbu trail climbs through cloud forest where you hear nothing but your own breathing and the crack of prayer flags overhead. Upper Mustang, the old Kingdom of Lo, is a rain-shadow desert where the earth shifts from ochre to deep rust and the silence is so complete you can hear sand grains skitter across cave-temple walls.

The Sarangkot Village Coffee Culture and Authentic Local Life Tour climbs the ridge above Pokhara to a farming community where small-lot coffee bushes grow in the shade of orange and banana trees. The scent of freshly roasted beans hits before you reach the drying racks. Villagers walk you through the full process: hand-picking ripe cherries, pulping them in a hand-cranked machine, and roasting in a blackened iron pan over an open wood fire that crackles and pops as the beans darken. You drink the result on a terrace looking south across the lake, the cup warm in your hands even as the breeze carries the cool dampness of the valley below.

The Annapurna Base Camp Trek over eight days compresses one of the world's great mountain approaches into a week-plus push from subtropical bamboo forest to a glacial amphitheatre ringed by peaks above 7,000 metres. The trail follows the Modi Khola gorge, crossing suspension bridges that sway and groan underfoot while the river thunders through boulders far below. Above Deurali the vegetation thins to scrub and stone, and the temperature drops sharply. Mornings at base camp hover near freezing, the air thin enough to taste metallic, and the ice walls of the south face of Annapurna I glow pink for exactly seven minutes at sunrise before the colour drains to white.

The four-day private Poon Hill trek is the Annapurna region's most accessible high-altitude viewpoint walk, and its brevity does not diminish the payoff. The route climbs from Nayapul through Gurung villages where stone houses trail woodsmoke from cooking fires and chickens scatter across slate-paved paths. The predawn push to Poon Hill's summit at 3,210 metres rewards with a 360-degree panorama: Dhaulagiri to the west, the full Annapurna range to the north, and Machhapuchhre's fish-tail spire catching the first amber light. The descent through Ghandruk passes terraced mustard fields and rhododendron stands whose fallen petals carpet the trail in deep crimson.

The exclusive round-trip transfer from Pokhara to Jomsom and Muktinath replaces an unpredictable domestic flight or a multi-day drive with a private vehicle journey through the deepest gorge on Earth. The road follows the Kali Gandaki River northward, carved into cliff faces where you can reach out the window and touch raw geological strata layered like pages of a book. At Jomsom the valley opens into a windswept plateau that smells of dry dust and apple orchards, and the onward climb to Muktinath temple at 3,710 metres passes through a landscape so stark it looks lunar, broken only by prayer flags strung between cairns. The temple's 108 stone waterspouts pour snowmelt over pilgrims who gasp at the cold, and a natural gas flame burns eternally behind a thin veil of water inside the shrine.

The three-day Poon Hill trek from Pokhara is the compressed version of the classic route, trimming a rest day and moving at a pace that suits fit walkers who want the summit sunrise without spending a fourth night in a teahouse. The itinerary covers the same Gurung villages, the same stone stairways worn smooth by generations of porters, and the same forest canopy where langur monkeys crash through branches overhead and you hear their alarm calls echoing off the valley walls. Teahouses along the route serve dal bhat with hand-ground pickle that stings the tongue, and evenings bring the sound of rain pattering on corrugated roofs while trekkers dry their boots beside wood-burning stoves that fill the common room with the sweet, resinous smell of sal wood.