Is Nepal Safe to Trek After the 2026 Flood? Route-by-Route Status

On the morning of 26 August 2026, a piece of mountain roughly 600 metres wide broke off the north face of Langtang Lirung and fell more than a kilometre. What came down the valley was not a monsoon flood. It was ice, rock and meltwater moving at around 180 kilometres an hour, and it reached the Nepal–China border post seven minutes later.

Since then we have answered the same question several hundred times, from people holding tickets for October and November. The answer is more specific than the headlines allow, and it is not the same for every trek. Nepal did not lose its trekking season. It lost one corridor: the Trishuli and Bhote Koshi valleys running from the Tibet border down through Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and Chitwan. Everything in that corridor is either gone or changed.

Update, 28 October: heavy rain and mountain snow are forecast across Nepal from 29 to 31 October, and the government has asked trekkers not to start high treks on those days. You can start from Sunday 1 November, keeping the weather in mind. Details are in Nepal weather warning, 29 to 31 October 2026.

The board below is our answer, route by route. Every row carries the date it was last confirmed and who confirmed it, because on a corridor still being cleared, a status with no date is not information.

The distinction almost every other page is missing

A trek is not the road you take to reach it.

That sentence is the whole of this disaster's effect on Nepal trekking, and collapsing it is how a customer ends up standing at Betrawati looking at a missing bridge with a permit in their hand.

The Langtang valley is intact. The trail from Lama Hotel up through Langtang village to Kyanjin Gompa is walkable, the teahouses on it are standing, and the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal lists the area as safe. What no longer exists is the way in: 42 kilometres of road from Betrawati to Rasuwagadhi, several concrete bridges, and Syabrubesi Bazaar, the town that every Langtang itinerary ever written begins from.

Part of that road is coming back. A Bailey bridge at Betrawati opened to vehicles on 11 October, Meroauto reported, so you can drive again as far as the Betrawati side of Syabrubesi. The bridge at Syabrubesi itself is still to be built.

So "is Langtang open" has no yes-or-no answer. The trek is walkable and the drive is not, and there is a longer way in on foot. The board below marks it "open, access changed" and gives the replacement approach on the row.

What is unaffected, which is most of Nepal

TAAN's post-flood assessment names the regions the flood did not touch: Everest, Annapurna, Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Manaslu, Dhaulagiri, Dolpo, Humla, Rara and Jumla, and the far-western Himalayan destinations.

That is the overwhelming majority of what people come to Nepal to walk. Everest Base Camp is running on its normal itinerary with normal Lukla flights. The Annapurna Circuit and Annapurna Base Camp were unaffected, and permit arrangements for the autumn season are unchanged. Late-September storms then shut the circuit at Thorong La for about a week, and ACAP listed the pass as open for crossing again on 6 October. For where it stands now, see is the Annapurna Circuit open? Manaslu has since had a separate flood of its own, covered below. Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan and Sauraha are operating normally, and domestic aviation has run without interruption since the day of the flood.

The practical residue for most travellers is a slower road transfer. Kathmandu to Pokhara and Kathmandu to Chitwan are running two to five hours behind timetable in places while erosion is repaired, and a section of the Prithvi Highway at Krishnabhir in Dhading collapsed and is being rebuilt. Flying removes the problem.

Manaslu and Ganesh Himal: same trek, different drive

These are the clearest examples of the distinction above. The August flood left the Manaslu region, including Tsum Valley, Nubri and the Larke Pass, untouched. What changed is the approach: TAAN advises avoiding the Malekhu to Dhadingbesi road and using Benighat to Arughat instead, towards Machhakhola and Jagat.

Manaslu has since had its own flood. On 11 October 2026 a landslide dam burst on the Budhi Gandaki near the entrance to Tsum Valley and damaged the lower trail from Philim down to Soti. No deaths have been confirmed, but at least four people are missing. Bridges and houses were lost. TAAN said on 25 October that trekking had resumed on the Manaslu Circuit and in Tsum Valley after temporary repairs. We confirm conditions with you before every Manaslu or Tsum departure. See Budhi Gandaki flood in Manaslu for the details.

Ganesh Himal and Ruby Valley are the same story with a different detour. The trekking areas are fine; their usual access through Dhunche and Syabrubesi is closed, and the approach moves to Dhadingbesi or Arughat.

For Ganesh Himal and Manaslu, a booking is not a cancellation. You are looking at a changed transfer day, and an operator who has not contacted you about it has not checked.

Kailash overland through Kerung is finished for this season

This is the hardest conversation we are having, and there is no soft version of it.

The Gyirong port on the Chinese side of the border was destroyed. The Rasuwagadhi customs complex on the Nepali side was swept away, along with the immigration post, roughly 80 trucks and 170 containers. Five kilometres of road between Gyirong town and Rasuwagadhi is gone. TAAN confirms the Rasuwagadhi and Kerung route as completely affected and closed.

That is not a route that reopens after a repair season. Rebuilding it is a bilateral infrastructure project, and Nepal's own preliminary rebuilding estimate for the disaster as a whole is Rs 762 billion, around five billion US dollars.

The Yatra itself has not been cancelled, and this matters if you are holding a 2026 departure. It runs by two other roads:

• Nepalgunj, Simikot and Hilsa. Fly Kathmandu to Nepalgunj, Nepalgunj to Simikot, then helicopter to Hilsa at the border. The return flies back out the same way, so it never approaches Rasuwagadhi at any point. Helicopter legs on this route are entirely weather-dependent and delays are ordinary, so it needs buffer days built in rather than a tight connection at the end.
• Lhasa fly-in. Kathmandu to Lhasa by air, then overland through Shigatse and Saga. Longer, higher, and it needs a different permit set, but it avoids the damaged border completely.

One caution that we would rather over-state than under-state: TAAN's bulletin also lists Kodari and Tatopani among the alternatives, but the Tatopani crossing was closed on 31 August over landslide risk. Those two statements were published days apart and they disagree. Do not let anyone build your itinerary on that crossing without a fresh confirmation.

Should you cancel?

TAAN's guidance is that travellers should not cancel Nepal plans automatically, and should instead choose routes based on updated conditions. We agree, and we would rather say plainly why we are not neutral about it: we sell these trips, and Nepal's tourism revenue is part of how the affected districts get rebuilt.

So here is the version with our interest disclosed. If your trek is on the open list, the case for cancelling is weak. October and November are the best conditions of the year and nothing about them has changed. If your trek is in the Langtang or Rasuwa corridor, cancelling is not the only option and usually not the best one; rerouting is. If you were booked on Kailash overland via Kerung, you need a different route or a different year, and any operator still selling you that itinerary for 2026 is not telling you the truth.

How we keep this page honest

Every row on the board carries a date and a source, and they are per-row rather than a single timestamp at the top for a reason: these facts are not all the same age. TAAN's assessment is more recent than the border-closure reporting, and both are more recent than the first damage estimates.

Where sources disagree, as they do on Tatopani, the board says so on the row instead of picking the more convenient one.

The corridor is still being cleared, a second landslide-dammed lake is still forming upstream, and conditions can change quickly. Before you book a flight against anything on this page, ask us and we will confirm the corridor for your dates.