The Gokyo Valley is the best-kept secret of the Everest region: a trek as spectacular as the classic one to base camp, but quieter, greener in its lower section and crowned by one of the most impressive views in the whole Himalaya. Its great draw is the Gokyo Lakes, a chain of six glacial lakes of an unreal turquoise set among the high peaks, considered the highest freshwater lakes in the world and sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists.
The high point of the trek is the climb up Gokyo Ri (5.357 m), a hill above the village of Gokyo whose summit opens onto a panorama few places on the planet can match: four of the six highest mountains on Earth — Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu — lined up above the sea of ice of the Ngozumpa Glacier, the longest in Nepal. Many trekkers who have done both routes agree that the view from Gokyo Ri is even better than the one from base camp itself.
This guide helps you plan the trek: the same permits and the same flight to Lukla as for base camp, how to acclimatise properly so you can go above 5.000 metres without getting altitude sickness, how many days you need, and how to combine Gokyo with Everest Base Camp by crossing the Cho La pass, if you're after a bigger adventure. Gokyo is the choice for anyone who wants the Himalaya of the eight-thousanders without the crowds: turquoise lakes, silence and the roof of the world as a backdrop.
The Gokyo Valley is part of the Khumbu, the land of the Sherpa, a people of Tibetan origin who crossed the Himalayas some 500 years ago and settled at the foot of Everest, bringing Tibetan Buddhism with them. Its lakes, fed by meltwater from the Ngozumpa Glacier, are sacred: every year, during the Janai Purnima festival (in August), Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims climb up to bathe in their icy waters. For centuries these high valleys lived from yak herding and trade with Tibet; today, like the rest of the Khumbu, they revolve around trekking. The history of the Sherpa, of Everest and of the region is told in detail on our Everest Base Camp history page.
Read the full history ↓The roof of the world: the Khumbu region, home of the Sherpa and of Everest, scene of the 1953 first ascent and of the modern epic —and tragedy— of mountaineering.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
High in the Khumbu, in the shadow of Cho Oyu (8.188 m), the sixth-highest mountain on the planet, lies one of the most astonishing landscapes in the Himalayas: a chain of six lakes of an impossible turquoise set among glaciers and moraines, above 4.700 metres. These are the Gokyo Lakes, the highest permanent freshwater lakes in the world, and they would not exist without the ice that surrounds them.
The star of this landscape is the Ngozumpa Glacier, the longest in Nepal: some 36 kilometres of ice, rock and moraine flowing down from the slopes of Cho Oyu. The Gokyo Lakes are fed by several sources: seepage from the Ngozumpa itself, a stream that comes down from the Renjo La pass to the northwest and another that rises from the glacier to the east. The meltwater, loaded with the very fine rock dust that the glacier tongues grind as they move, is what gives the lakes their distinctive milky turquoise colour, which shifts in tone with the light and the season.
The whole valley is, in fact, the work of ice: the glacial cirques, the moraines that dam the lakes, the U-shaped valleys. And it is still changing before our eyes. With global warming, Himalayan glaciers, the Ngozumpa included, are retreating and forming ever larger meltwater ponds on top of the ice, a phenomenon that scientists watch with concern because of the risk of glacial lake outburst floods (known as GLOFs) that can devastate the valleys below. Gokyo is therefore a place of breathtaking beauty and, at the same time, a thermometer of climate change on the roof of the world.
Long before the first trekker arrived, the Gokyo Lakes were already a sacred place. For both Hindus and Buddhists, their icy waters have a purifying power, and on the western shore of the third lake, the largest, stands a small temple dedicated to the god Vishnu (also venerated in connection with Shiva). The lakes are considered the home of water deities (the nagas), and bathing in them is an act of spiritual purification.
Every year, during the Hindu festival of Janai Purnima, which falls on the full moon of August, hundreds of pilgrims (around five hundred, by some estimates) climb up to Gokyo, despite the extreme altitude and the cold, to take a ritual bath in the sacred waters. Janai Purnima is the festival when high-caste Hindu men renew the janai, the sacred thread worn across the chest, and tie the rakshabandhan, a protective thread, around their wrist. That a pilgrimage like this reaches such a remote, high place says a lot about the strength of the bond between the peoples of the subcontinent and their sacred mountains.
That is why, for the traveller, the Gokyo Lakes are not just a natural spectacle: they are a sanctuary. The right thing to do is to look at them and photograph them respectfully, without swimming for fun, without dipping your feet and, of course, without leaving rubbish or polluting their shores. In 2007, Gokyo and its associated wetlands (some 7.770 hectares) were also designated a Ramsar site, that is, a wetland of international importance, in recognition of their unique ecological value at such high altitude.
The Gokyo Valley is part of the Khumbu, the land of the Sherpa, a people of Tibetan origin who some five centuries ago crossed the high Himalayan passes from the Kham region of eastern Tibet to settle in the upper valleys of present-day Nepal. They brought with them the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, which pervades the whole Khumbu landscape: chortens, mani walls carved with mantras, prayer flags fluttering on the passes.
For centuries, the high villages of the Gokyo Valley (Dole, Machhermo, Gokyo itself) were not permanent settlements but summer settlements (known as yersa), places the Sherpa climbed to with their yaks to make the most of the rich high pastures during the warm months, before heading down to the lower villages when winter came. Yak herding, together with growing potatoes and barley on terraces and, above all, trade with Tibet, was the backbone of Sherpa life.
That trade was vital. Over high border passes such as the Nangpa La (a glacial pass of more than 5.700 metres, not far from Gokyo), yak caravans exchanged salt, wool and livestock from the Tibetan plateau for grain, rice and manufactured goods from the south. Namche Bazaar, further down, was the great market where all that traffic came together. This traditional economy went into crisis in the mid-20th century, when the Tibetan border closed after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and was fully transformed once trekking became the region's new livelihood.
The Gokyo Valley opened up to the outside world through mountaineering exploration. The great mountain that dominates it, Cho Oyu (8.188 m), was one of the first eight-thousanders to be climbed: on 19 October 1954, a small, lightweight Austrian expedition led by Herbert Tichy, together with the famous Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama and the Austrian Joseph Jöchler, reached its summit. It was a remarkable feat because of how pared-back the expedition was, very different from the huge operations of the time, and it made Cho Oyu one of the most 'accessible' eight-thousanders for high-altitude climbers.
The Khumbu valleys, Gokyo included, were explored and mapped in those years by mountaineers and geographers looking for routes to Everest and its neighbouring peaks. Edmund Hillary himself, after the first ascent of Everest in 1953, travelled through the region and helped develop it. The Gokyo area, with its glacier and lakes, was recorded on maps and began to draw the first Western trekkers from the sixties and seventies onwards, when Nepal opened up to mountain tourism.
The creation of Sagarmatha National Park in 1976 (a World Heritage Site since 1979) brought the whole Gokyo Valley under a protection scheme designed to preserve both the fragile high-mountain ecosystems (home to species such as the snow leopard and the Himalayan tahr) and Sherpa culture. From then on, the old summer herding settlements gradually became tea house villages, and the trickle of trekkers coming up to see the turquoise lakes and the view from Gokyo Ri turned, decade after decade, into a steady flow.
On today's Everest tourist map, Gokyo holds a special place: it is the quiet alternative. While the classic Everest Base Camp route receives tens of thousands of trekkers every season and its lodges fill to bursting, the Gokyo Valley keeps a calmer, more intimate feel, with fewer people and spectacular scenery. For many hikers who have done both routes, the view from Gokyo Ri (with Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu lined up above the turquoise lakes) is even better than the one from base camp itself.
That relative calm sits alongside the same challenges facing the whole Khumbu. The region depends more and more on trekking, with all the good it brings (income, schools, healthcare, opportunities for Sherpa families) and all the problems (pressure on scarce resources, waste management, dependence on a tourism industry that is sensitive to any crisis). Water, firewood and food are precious at those altitudes, and the responsible visitor tries not to waste them.
Above all, Gokyo today is a privileged vantage point on the climate crisis in the world's highest mountains. The retreat of the Ngozumpa Glacier, the growth of meltwater ponds and the uncertainty over the future of Himalayan ice (which feeds the rivers that hundreds of millions of people downstream drink from) make this remote valley much more than a postcard destination. Walking up to the sacred lakes of Gokyo, watching the sunrise over the eight-thousanders from Gokyo Ri and standing at the edge of a melting glacier is not only one of the great experiences on the planet, but also a lesson in humility and respect for a landscape as beautiful as it is fragile.
