In nine days we leave Auckland. Four months of travel. Canadian Rockies campervan, Eastern Canada, Iceland stopover, a week in Scotland, Everest Base Camp via Gokyo, the Trans Bhutan Trail. Back in New Zealand in December.
We arrive in Bhutan on 13 November 2026 — three days after the Evertrek EBC trek ends in Kathmandu. Eighteen days at altitude in Nepal, three nights recovering in Kathmandu, then a 90-minute Druk Air flight west into Paro.
The Greenstone-Caples Track sits in the shadow of the Routeburn — one valley over, significantly less crowded, and arguably more rewarding precisely because fewer people make the effort to find it. At 61km, it’s a genuine four-day loop through the Fiordland wilderness, reaching its high point at McKellar Saddle at 945m.
Kelowna is the final stop before we drop the Indie Campers van back in Vancouver and fly east to Quebec. We’ve built two nights there deliberately
In October 2026, I’ll fly from Edinburgh to Kathmandu. From there, a 4am drive to Ramechhap, a 20-minute flight to Lukla, and then 18 days of trekking to Everest Base Camp and back.
Most packing guides for EBC give you a list. This one gives you a system — because the 15kg Lukla flight limit doesn’t just constrain how much you bring, it fundamentally changes how you think about packing.
Tipping on the EBC trek is expected, meaningful, and consistently underprepared for. Most trekkers think about it seriously for the first time in the teahouse at Gorak Shep, having already spent all their USD on bottled water and charging fees.
Most people assume the psychological difficulty of EBC comes from fear — of altitude sickness, of turning back, of the scale of the mountain. That’s part of it. But the more common mental challenge is subtler and more cumulative.
Banff National Park is the most visited park in the Canadian Rockies — and the most visited for good reason. Over 1,600km of maintained trails cut through some of the most dramatic mountain scenery on earth, from turquoise glacial lakes at valley level to exposed alpine ridges at 2,400m+.
Jasper National Park covers 11,000 square kilometres — more than twice the area of Banff — with a fraction of the visitor density. The practical consequence for hikers is that Jasper’s trails tend to be longer, wilder, and less crowded than equivalent distances in Banff.
