Kanchenjunga Base Camp Trek in March

March is the month to look at the trees without expecting the show. The 2,500 to 3,500m rhododendron band that the tour notes call some of the most extensive in Nepal holds Gyabla, Ghunsa and, on the way out, Tortong at 2,995m. The notes give April and May as the time of colour, so a March walker passes through the same band ahead of it, and the forest is a setting and not yet the spectacle.

What March does offer is the villages. The approach passes through Limbu and Rai settlements with millet terraces and bamboo houses, according to the tour notes, and tongba, the fermented millet beer, is part of daily life there. Few foreign trekkers pass through, so the village days of the first week are quiet ones, and the pace of the walk is yours.

The high ground is a transition. Between Khambachen and Lhonak the earth is less frozen than in January and not yet the clean, dry surface of autumn, and the Pangpema day can be a bright seven hours or a windy one. The southern leg is where late-winter snow is most likely to remain, so a guide’s recent knowledge of the passes counts for more here than in October. The exit is the reward: seven hours to Yamphudin at 2,080m, seven more to Khebang at 1,915m, and warmer air at every step down.

March is quiet because spring traffic has not yet built; the busier weeks on this route arrive from April. The restricted-area permit keeps visitor numbers minimal, the tour notes say, and that is most true in March, when a party may have a whole dining room to itself.

Quiet means self-reliance. Facilities above Tseram are simple, a helicopter evacuation takes longer than in the Khumbu or Annapurna regions, and the milder days of March change none of that. Prepare for a remote route and not for a weekend walk.

The road starts to change with spring. Day 3 and day 4 cover the same 249 km and 39 km as always, and the surface is usually dry in March, with the odd cloudy spell at the start of the pre-monsoon pattern. The flight to the eastern lowlands is the piece to protect: leave a spare day in Kathmandu before it, and book the return leg after day 20 with room to spare. Day 2, the pre-trip meeting and sightseeing, is the natural place to absorb a slip.