Dolpo & camping expeditions
Karma Bhote
Runs the only Aroha journeys with no lodges, no road and no way to shorten the route.
- Based in
- Dunai, Dolpa
- Years guiding
- 16
- Certification
- NMA trekking guide · Expedition logistics · Wilderness first responder
- Languages
- Nepali, Dolpo Tibetan, English
Karma is from Dunai, the district headquarters of Dolpa, which is a two-day walk from the nearest road and a forty-minute flight from the nearest hospital. Everything he knows about expedition logistics comes from that.
An Upper Dolpo departure moves a kitchen crew, pack animals, three weeks of food and eight travellers across three passes above 5,000 m. Karma plans it to the meal, and has never had to evacuate a client from inside the route.
He is quiet on the trail and unexpectedly funny at dinner, and he knows which of the Bon monasteries will let visitors sit in on a morning practice.
In Dolpo you carry your mistakes for three weeks. So we do not make them at the planning stage.
Karma Bhote
- 22Full Dolpo traverses
- Roughly 900Nights under canvas
- 0Evacuations from inside the route
Guide profiles are fictional. The photographs beside them show the terrain each guide works in — they do not depict the people described.
2 journeys
Trips Karma leads.
Book any of these and this is who meets you at the airport.
Upper Dolpo, beyond the passes
22 days · Max 8 travellers · May–Sep
Twenty-two days across the highest inhabited valleys in Nepal, camping the whole way, in the one region that stays dry through the monsoon.
Manaslu Circuit expedition
15 days · Max 10 travellers · Mar–Apr · Oct–Nov
A full circumnavigation of an eight-thousander, through a restricted area where solo trekking is not permitted and the numbers stay low.
The rest of the team
Other guides.
Private departures
Travel with Karma.
Name a guide when you enquire about a private trip and we will build the dates around their calendar wherever we can.