7 Days in Kathmandu and Nepal
Seven days is the full version of this trip: a real mountain sunrise, an Everest flight, two proper days in Pokhara, and two proper days in Chitwan, without cramming any of them into an afternoon. It is still not a trek. If Everest Base Camp or Annapurna Base Camp is the actual goal, treat this as the prep template and budget another twelve to nineteen-plus days on top of it for the trek itself; seven days gets you to the gateway, not up the mountain.
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Arrival, visa |
| 2 | Nagarkot transfer, overnight |
| 3 | Sunrise, Everest flight, on to Pokhara |
| 4 | Pokhara, day one |
| 5 | Pokhara, day two |
| 6 | Transfer to Chitwan |
| 7 | Chitwan safari, return |
Book these before you go:
- Your Pokhara lakeside stay on Agoda , since rooms with a Phewa Lake view go first.
- A Chitwan jungle safari tour on GetYourGuide , arranged ahead of arrival rather than sorted from a lodge reception desk.
Day 1: land, get legal, get the trek sorted. Visa-on-arrival runs $30 for 15 days, $50 for 30, $125 for 90, cash only in practice since the counter’s card readers are unreliable enough to not rely on; filling in the online arrival form ahead of landing shaves real time off the queue. Skip the parking-lot touts, who’ll quote double the prepaid counter’s fixed rate, and take that counter or a Pathao/InDrive booking into Thamel instead. If a trek is any part of this trip or a future one, use the afternoon to lock in a TAAN-registered agency with a genuine Kathmandu office, ideally one contacted before you landed. This is not throwaway caution: a Kathmandu court opened hearings in April 2026 against 32 people, agency owners and helicopter operators among them, over a fake-rescue insurance fraud scheme that billed trekkers’ travel insurers more than $19.69 million for evacuations that were never actually needed. A discounted same-day deal from a Thamel doorway is not the bargain it looks like. Rest, get an early night.
Day 2: Nagarkot overnight. Transfer up in the afternoon, roughly ninety minutes by road, and settle in for the night rather than attempting a same-day round trip that defeats the point.
Day 3: sunrise, the Everest flight, then Pokhara. Watch the Himalaya sunrise from Nagarkot, 2,175m, best odds on a clear October-November or March-April morning, then head back to Kathmandu. If tomorrow’s Everest scenic flight is booked, get to bed early: Buddha Air, Yeti Airlines, and Guna Air all run these 6:30 to 8am, roughly $165 to $300 depending on carrier and season, and weather cancellations happen often enough to build real slack around. Assuming it flies, you’re free by mid-morning; from there, fly (about 25 minutes) or drive (6 to 7 hours) on to Pokhara, the genuine gateway town for Annapurna trekking, not Kathmandu itself. Settle in lakeside.
Day 4: Pokhara, day one. Phewa Lake in the morning, Sarangkot for the paragliding launch and valley views in the afternoon, worth doing whether or not you’re trekking a step of Annapurna this trip.
Day 5: Pokhara, day two. Cross Phewa Lake by boat to the World Peace Pagoda, or walk up to Australian Camp for a short taste of what an actual Annapurna trek looks like on the ground. Travel on toward Chitwan in the late afternoon if the connection allows, or first thing the next morning if not.
Day 6: on to Chitwan. Travel southwest into the Terai lowlands, by flight to Bharatpur or overland, and spend the afternoon and evening on a jungle walk or canoe ride ahead of tomorrow’s proper safari.
Day 7: the safari, then home. A dawn canoe ride and jeep safari here turns up rhino sightings genuinely often, not as a maybe, and pairs with Tharu village culture that has nothing to do with the Newar heritage the Kathmandu valley itself runs on. If time and routing allow, Lumbini, Buddha’s birthplace out in the Terai near the Indian border, is a worthwhile bolt-on for travelers continuing overland toward India rather than flying straight back, though it doesn’t nest neatly into this route on a standard schedule and is better treated as its own extension than a rushed final stop. Head back to Kathmandu with real buffer for departure; international flights out want you there with margin, and Kathmandu’s traffic does not care about your boarding time.
Getting around and practical notes. There’s no metro anywhere in this country’s cities. Taxis dodge the meter regardless of the law, agree a fare first or use an app that locks one in. Carry cash, card acceptance outside hotels and larger restaurants is inconsistent. October through November and March through April give the clearest mountain views and the best trekking-season odds; June through August brings heavy monsoon rain that can wash out hill roads and mountain views alike. If you’d rather spend seven days on the valley itself, Durbar Squares and Newari food included, that’s a genuinely different trip . For the same route minus a full second day in each of Pokhara and Chitwan, the 6-day itinerary is the tighter fit.