Jiri to Everest Base Camp Trek section details the first eight days of a trek from Jiri to the Everest base camp or Gokyo. This is the best way to do an Everest trek, but it is shown here as two different treks only the high-altitude portion of the route. This means that the portion of the trek from Jiri to Lukla is often uncrowded, and therefore excellent trekking country. From Namche base camp described in the following trek and fly out. We can follow the route to Everest base camp described in the following trek and fly out. We can also make an excellent 30-day trek by walking on to Tumlingtar or Hile instead of flying from Lukla. Another alternative is to walk much of the route that is traversed by the Jiri road, following the Barahbise to Shivalaya trek route.
The trek from Jiri involves a tremendous amount of up-and-down walking. A glance at a map will show why. All the rivers in this part of Nepal flow south from Himalayan glaciers, but the trek route proceeds east. Therefore the track must climb to the ridge that separates two rivers, descend to the river itself, and ascend the next ridge. Even though the trek begins at an elevation of 1860m, on the sixth day it crosses the Dudh Koshi at only 1500m – after considerable uphill (and downhill) walking . If we total all the uphill climbing, it comes to almost 10,000m of elevation gain from Jiri to Everest base camp. The road to Jiri saves almost 4000m of uphill walking over the old approach from Lamosangu that was used in the 1970s, but this is still a long, hard trek with many steep hills.