Trekking to Annapurna, Part Three

The costs, in case you were wondering!

Though the lodge-towns were frequent, we had brought most of our own food to avoid paying the extortionate prices levied against the tourists. Nepal is surprisingly organized, though it is usually the type of organization that works against you. In my experience, this means various mafia-style cartels for most things that tourists want including internet, food and lodging. Once you step outside of the tourist areas, of course, the price drops by a factor of three but there is no ‘outside of the tourist area’ in the remote mountain lodges, so you are pretty much stuck paying $3 for a bowl of cereal. Having brought our own food, we were able to save about $6 per day, thus making our total expenditure per day around $12 including all permits, fees, transportation, lodging and food. This is almost unheard of for this sort of trek- a testament to our craftiness.

Most people we talked to said you could squeak by on $20 a day.