The Aroha difference
We believe the best journeys are generous — to travellers, to guides and to the places that make them possible.
Aroha was built by people who were tired of watching international operators sell Nepal while keeping most of the money outside it. Every guide on our roster is Nepal-based. Every lodge and homestay is paid directly. Every price on this site includes guide and porter insurance, because a trip that does not is not cheaper — it is just shifting the risk onto someone else.
We run sixteen journeys across eight regions, cap groups at twelve, and turn down more custom work than we take. That is deliberate. A trip designer who is running forty departures cannot know the lodge owners on any of them.
How we work
Everything else on this page follows from these.
Our guides are employed, insured and paid above the national association rate, in season and out of it. Porters carry a maximum of 25 kg and are insured to the same altitude as their group. This is the single largest line in our cost base and we are not looking to reduce it.
Most departures run at eight to ten. Above twelve, a group stops fitting in a lodge dining room, stops moving at a single pace, and stops being able to change plan when the weather does.
Homestays and family lodges are settled directly at the end of each trip. On our community routes we publish the share of your fee that stays in the district, and we will show you the working if you ask.
If a trip is wrong for you, we would rather lose the booking than have you find out at 4,500 m. Our enquiry replies regularly recommend a different journey, a different season, or another operator.
Responsible travel
Vague commitments are easy. These are the ones we can be held to.
What we cannot fix. The thing we cannot fix is flying. A Kathmandu–Lukla round trip is a large share of the footprint of any Everest trek, and we are not going to describe an offset as a solution. We offer the road-and-walk alternative through Salleri on every Khumbu departure, and we will keep saying that very few people choose it.
How we got here
A fictional history for a fictional company, included because a real one would have it.
Nima and Anisha start running trips for people who found them by word of mouth after the 2015 earthquake season.
Twenty-three households across five villages are trained and brought onto the Tamang Heritage Trail.
Dolpo and Kanchenjunga are added, which means camping crews, satellite communicators and a much longer planning cycle.
The whole guide roster moves from per-trip fees to year-round employment with insurance and off-season pay.
The current catalogue, still capped at twelve travellers, still refusing more custom work than it accepts.
The roster
Employed year-round, insured to altitude, and paid above the association rate.
Everest & climbing
Culture & slow travel
Mustang & Annapurna
Langtang & community trails
Eastern Nepal, rivers & remote routes
Dolpo & camping expeditions
Guide profiles are fictional. The photographs beside them show the terrain each guide works in — they do not depict the people described.
Start somewhere
Or tell us the weeks you have free and let a trip designer suggest where they are best spent.