A guide costs $28 a day with us. A porter-guide is $24 and a porter is $22, and 13% government tax goes on top of each. That is the whole price list, it is the same in the Khumbu as in the Kathmandu foothills, and it is the same in the last week of October as in the middle of the monsoon.
Almost nobody else in Nepal will tell you that in advance. Look at ten trekking sites and you will find ten ranges: "from $25", "$25 to $40", "depending on the trek". This post is about why we publish a number instead, and what that number has to cover before anyone at Elite Trekkers sees any of it.
What the day rate has to pay for
Four things, and only the first of them is obvious.
The wage. Our staff are paid a proper living wage. That was the founding condition of this company rather than a policy we adopted later, and it is the reason our rate is not the cheapest number you will find in Thamel.
Their food and their bed on the trail. This one catches people out, and it is worth asking about anywhere you get a quote. With us it is inside the day rate: you pay for your own teahouse and your own dinner, and nothing at all for your guide's. Where it is not included, it is a cost that lands on the trekker at the end of a fortnight, or on the guide, and it is not always clear in advance which.
Insurance. Guides and porters working with us are insured. Trekkers reasonably assume this is universal in a country where the work involves altitude and weather. It is not.
Gear. Proper equipment for the conditions, provided rather than deducted. A porter carrying your bag over a 5,000m pass in trainers is a photograph you will see on other people's trips.
The 13% is Nepali government tax, charged on the service and passed straight on. We show it separately so that our number can be compared with anybody else's on the same basis, and so that it cannot quietly appear later.
Where the rest goes
Nowhere, in the sense that most people mean by profit. Elite Trekkers is run as a charity and 100% of our surplus is reinvested in Nepal. There are no shareholders waiting at the end of the chain, which is the actual reason we can hold one published rate all year rather than charging what October will bear.
If you want to check that we are what we say we are, the numbers are in the footer of every page on this site: company registration 163703/073/074, and trekking agency licence 2252. Both can be looked up. We would rather you did that than take our word for it, and you should ask the same of anyone else you are considering.
Why we started publishing it
This company exists because of what happened in 2015. After the earthquake the trekkers stopped coming, and agencies around Kathmandu cut guides' wages by more than half because they could. Guides with twenty years on the trails were competing against each other for the few jobs left, on terms nobody could live on.
The morning that decided it, one of our guide friends explained over breakfast that he had run out of options and was going to take a five-year contract in a factory in Korea. Five years, in a dark building, seeing his wife and his young son for two weeks every second year. He was not unusual. Half the people we knew were considering the same thing.
You cannot fix that with a website. What you can do is refuse to be the kind of operator that made it possible, and then be specific enough in public that a trekker can tell the difference. A published rate is how we do that. A range would let us quietly become the other thing.
What a range is actually for
Ranges are not dishonest by nature. Some treks genuinely cost more to staff than others. But a range does one thing reliably: it lets the number move after you have committed, and it moves in one direction.
It also hides the more interesting question. When an operator quotes "$25 to $40 a day", the spread is rarely about the trek. It is usually about what is being included, what is being deducted, and who is absorbing the cost of a guide's dinner. A single number forces all of that into the open, which is uncomfortable in a way we think is useful.
Three questions to ask any operator in Nepal
Including us. If the answers are vague, that is the answer.
- Is that a fixed rate or a range, and what makes it move? A range that has no stated cause is a price that will grow.
- Does it cover my guide's own food and lodging on the trail? Over fifteen days this is not a small sum, and it lands on somebody.
- Are your guides and porters insured, and who pays for their gear? Ask what the porter weight limit is while you are there. Ours is 18kg, and you can read why on guides vs porters.
These take a minute to ask by email and they will separate the operators in your shortlist faster than any amount of reading. Tips are a separate matter and go entirely to the person who earned them, which is worth confirming too, because it is not universal.
What this post does not tell you
It does not tell you what a guide is paid per day. That figure is not published on this site, and we are not going to invent a percentage for a blog post: we removed a claim of exactly that kind from our cost page when we could not stand it up properly, which is a decision we would rather explain than repeat.
What we will do is answer the question if you ask it. Send it to us, or put it to the guides directly through ask an ET expert, and you will get a straight reply from Kathmandu. Our view is that any operator who will not answer that question, from us to the largest agency in Thamel, has told you something.
The full rates, what a whole trek works out at, and the costs a day rate hides are on what a guide or porter costs. If you are still working out whether you need a guide at all, start with do you need a guide to trek in Nepal.