Nepal

Nepal is a landlocked country of about 30 million people between India and the Tibetan plateau, and it compresses more vertical range than anywhere else on Earth. The drop from Mount Everest (8,848.86 m) to the Terai lowlands (about 59 m) happens across roughly 200 km of latitude. That gradient produces eight distinct climate zones, from subtropical sal forest to permanent ice, and it is the single fact that explains everything else about travelling here.

Eight of the fourteen mountains above 8,000 m are in Nepal or on its borders: Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna. Nepal was never colonised and has been an independent state since Prithvi Narayan Shah unified it in 1768, which is part of why 126 distinct ethnic groups and more than 120 languages survive inside a country the size of England. The Buddha was born at Lumbini in the southern lowlands around 563 BC, now one of the 10 UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country.

So where does a first trip to Nepal actually go? Most itineraries pick one of three regions and commit to it. The Everest region is the famous one, and Base Camp at 5,364 m is the trek most people mean when they say they want to trek in Nepal. The Annapurna region is more varied and easier to reach from Pokhara, with trails from 4 days to 3 weeks. Langtang is the closest to Kathmandu and the least crowded of the three. Outside trekking, the Kathmandu Valley holds seven of the country's UNESCO sites within 20 km, and Chitwan in the Terai has one-horned rhino and Bengal tiger.