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Almost everyone who writes to us about Nepal arrives with the same name in their head. The Annapurna Circuit is the trek that made the country famous with walkers, and for about thirty years it deserved every word written about it.
I co-founded a trekking and tour company in Kathmandu. Everything below about the trail itself comes from our senior licensed Nepali guides, who are on these routes every season, and everything about permits comes from the issuing offices rather than from other websites.
What I want to do here is not talk anybody out of the Annapurna Circuit. It is still a fine walk. I want to be honest about what it has become, and then describe the two routes we most often end up recommending instead, depending on which thing you are actually short of.
What changed on the Circuit
The Circuit was a walk around a mountain range that took roughly three weeks. Then Nepal did something entirely reasonable for the people who live there and built roads up both sides of it.
That is not a scandal. Those roads mean a sick child in Manang reaches a hospital, and a lodge owner gets a delivery without paying a porter for four days. Anyone who resents them is asking Nepali villagers to stay picturesque for the benefit of visitors.
But it does change the walk. Substantial sections of the classic route now share ground with vehicles, and the old three-week itinerary has been cut, bypassed and rerouted in ways that vary year to year. People still love it. Others arrive expecting 1985 and spend a week disappointed on the side of a road.
So the question we ask anyone who writes to us is simple: what are you actually short of, time or solitude?
If you are short of time: Mardi Himal
Mardi Himal is a ridge walk in the Annapurna region that locals kept fairly quiet for years. It was only formally opened as a trekking route relatively recently, which is why it is missing from a lot of older guidebooks.
The 10-day Mardi Himal trek climbs out of Kande into rhododendron forest, then follows a forested ridge up through Forest Camp, Low Camp and High Camp. The trees thin as you gain height. What replaces them is the reason to go: Machhapuchhre, the fishtail peak, close enough to feel improper, with Annapurna South at 7,219 m and Hiunchuli filling out the rest of the skyline.
The high point is Mardi Himal Base Camp at 4,500 m, on a ridge directly beneath Machhapuchhre. We grade it moderate. It is genuinely a trek, not a stroll, but it does not ask for technical skill.
The practical case for it is the arithmetic. Ten days door to door from Kathmandu, including the drive to Pokhara and the buffer days you want for weather, is a fortnight’s leave. The Circuit properly walked is not.
The honest caveat: Mardi is no longer a secret. High Camp fills in October, and if you want a room rather than a floor you need somebody booking ahead of you. It is quiet compared with the Annapurna Base Camp trail, not quiet compared with a Scottish bothy.
If you are short of solitude: Manaslu
Manaslu is the one I would push if you have walked at altitude before and your complaint about Nepal is the crowds.
The 14-day Manaslu Circuit traces the Budhi Gandaki valley around the eighth highest mountain in the world and crosses Larkya La, the Larke Pass, at 5,106 m. It is a circuit in the way the Annapurna Circuit used to be: you walk in, you go over, you come down somewhere else, and the landscape changes completely underneath you as you climb from subtropical river gorge to a genuinely high crossing.
It is also a restricted area, and that is the whole reason it stays quiet. Restricted status means the permits cost real money and a licensed guide is required by law. That deters the volume of foot traffic that turned other valleys into a procession.
Two things I would flag that most articles have not caught up with.
First, the rule changed this year. Until March 2026 a restricted-area permit required a minimum of two trekkers, which meant solo walkers were locked out of Manaslu entirely. Nepal changed that, and solo travellers can now apply on their own. The guide requirement did not change, so you still cannot walk it unaccompanied, but the route is open to solo trekkers in a way it was not eighteen months ago. Plenty of sites still state the old rule.
Second, Manaslu is busier this season than it normally is, and not for a good reason. In late August a glacial flood destroyed the road through Rasuwa district and closed the Langtang, Gosaikunda and Tamang Heritage regions at a stroke. A season’s worth of trekkers had to go somewhere, and a lot of them went to Manaslu. I would not pretend to know how much pressure that has put on lodge capacity along the Budhi Gandaki, because I do not have reliable numbers, only what our guides are reporting back. Ask whoever you book with a direct question about beds before you commit to October dates.
The part people actually get wrong
Permits, every time. Not the walking.
Manaslu needs three of them: the Restricted Area Permit, the Manaslu Conservation Area Permit and the Annapurna Conservation Area Permit, because the route exits into Annapurna territory. The Restricted Area Permit runs to US$100 for seven days in autumn and US$75 for seven days outside the main season, with a daily fee on top after that: US$15 a day in autumn, US$10 outside it. The two conservation permits are about NPR 3,000 each, roughly US$23. I have set out how Nepal’s trekking permits actually work region by region, including where the official sources contradict each other, because they do, and I would rather say so than pick whichever figure looks tidiest.
Mardi is far simpler. It sits inside the Annapurna Conservation Area, so it is the ACAP permit and a TIMS card, and those are cheap.
For scale: Manaslu is mid-range as restricted areas go. Upper Mustang and Upper Dolpo cost considerably more.
What I would tell you
If this is your first Himalayan trek and you have two weeks, take Mardi and spend the saved days in Pokhara rather than rushing a circuit.
If you have been high before and you want the walk the Annapurna Circuit used to be, take Manaslu, and go before the restricted designation stops doing its job.
And if you have three unhurried weeks and you have always wanted the Circuit, walk the Circuit. Just walk it knowing what it is now, rather than what a book published in 1998 said it was.