Simikot

There is no road to Simikot. That single fact tells you almost everything about Humla, the district it governs — a wedge of far-northwestern Nepal wedged between Tibet and the rest of the country, reachable only by a small plane out of Nepalgunj or Surkhet, weather permitting, which it frequently isn’t.

Waiting for the Plane, Twice

We spent two extra nights in Surkhet because the Simikot flights kept getting cancelled — low cloud over the airstrip, the pilot explained, apologetically, for the second morning running. When we finally landed, the strip itself turned out to be a grass-and-gravel shelf cut into the hillside above the Karnali River, and half the town seemed to have walked up to watch the plane land, which is apparently the daily entertainment.

The Last Town Before Tibet

Simikot itself is small and unglamorous in the best way — a main street of stone houses roofed in corrugated tin, a scattering of basic lodges catering to the trekkers and Kailash-bound pilgrims who pass through on their way toward the Tibetan border at Hilsa, four or five days’ walk further north. We weren’t headed to Kailash this trip, just to Simikot itself and a short loop into the hills above it, and I liked the town precisely because it wasn’t performing for through-travelers the way gateway towns often do.

Humla is one of the poorest and least developed districts in Nepal, and it shows in ways that are hard to romanticize — the reliance on subsidized rice flown in during winter, the near-total absence of roads or electricity infrastructure beyond a few solar panels. But it also shows in the terraced barley fields climbing every available slope, the Tibetan-influenced Buddhist and Bon shrines scattered through the hills, and a hospitality that felt entirely unrehearsed, since almost no tourists come here who aren’t already committed to a much longer trek.

When to go: May through October offers the most reliable flight conditions and passable high trails, though flights can be cancelled by weather any time of year. Winter brings heavy snow and frequent isolation; most travelers avoid it entirely.