Manaslu Circuit Trek Closed After September 2026 Flood: Official Status and What to Do

Written by Shreejan Simkhada, CEO of The Everest Holiday and third-generation Himalayan guide. TAAN Member #1586.

Last updated 6 September 2026. This is a live situation and I will update this page as the official position changes.

If you are booked on the Manaslu Circuit this autumn, or thinking about it, read this first. As of this week the route is officially closed by the Nepal government, and I would rather tell you straight than have you fly across the world to a trail you cannot walk.

The short version

In the early hours of Sunday, a flash flood tore down the Budhi Gandaki and the Therang stream near Namrung, in Chumnubri Rural Municipality ward 4 of Gorkha district. It washed away the bridges on the Manaslu Circuit trail, including the main suspension bridge over the Budhi Gandaki, along with two small hydropower plants and homes in the village. The District Administration Office in Gorkha responded the same day with an urgent public notice suspending the Manaslu Circuit and the Larke Pass until further notice, and asking anyone preparing for the trek or already on the way not to travel until the next notice is published. Separately, the Manaslu Conservation Area Project, which issues the permits for the region, put out its own advisory the same day telling trekkers to postpone their trips until further notice. This is not one office being cautious; it is two separate authorities, the district administration and the conservation area project, both saying the same thing, and both asking people not to proceed until the situation on the ground has been properly assessed.

That is not a weather warning or a caution. It is a formal closure of the route by the local government authority, and the trail is physically severed where the bridges used to be.

What exactly is closed

The order covers the Manaslu Circuit and the Larke Pass crossing. Because the lower Manaslu trail is the same approach used by the Tsum Valley trek, that route is affected in the same stretch. The damage is concentrated around Namrung, which sits partway up the circuit, so the break is on the main artery of the trek rather than on some minor side path. There is no simple detour around it while the bridges are gone.

What happened, in a little more detail

Nepal has had a hard monsoon tail this year. The Rasuwa flood on 26 August, on the other side of the country along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, was the one that made the international news. This is a separate event in a separate valley. A sudden surge came down the Budhi Gandaki and the Therang in the dark, when nobody could see it coming, and by morning the bridges were gone. Local reports describe two bridges destroyed, two micro hydropower projects lost, and damage to homes in Namrung. Power and communication lines to the area went down and road access to the upper and lower parts of the valley was cut, and the hundreds of trekkers who were already high up towards the Larke Pass when it hit have been left struggling to get back out. As far as I have been able to confirm, there was no loss of foreign trekkers, and the immediate priority on the ground is the people who live there.

Photographs from the Manaslu region in the days after the flood, from our guides on the ground: a trekking lodge reduced to rubble, the Budhi Gandaki in full spate with its suspension bridge torn away, and the debris path cut through the valley below Namrung.

When will Manaslu reopen

Honestly, nobody can give you a firm date, and you should be careful of anyone who does. Reopening depends on rebuilding or replacing the bridges and on the authorities inspecting the trail and lifting the notice. The estimate I am hearing from operators on the ground is late September at the earliest, and even that is not a promise. A temporary bridge could restore access sooner, or a difficult repair could push it later. Until the District Administration Office publishes a notice reopening the route, it stays closed, and I will not sell it as open before then.

If you are booked on the Manaslu Circuit this month

Do not travel to the trailhead. The trek cannot run while the route is closed, and going anyway is neither safe nor permitted. If you booked with us, you do not need to do anything except tell me what you would prefer, and there are two honest options.

The first is to keep your Manaslu booking and reschedule it for whenever the route reopens. Your deposit stays exactly as it is. The risk is the timing, because we do not yet know when that will be.

The second, if your dates are fixed, is to switch to a trek that is open right now, and keep your same dates. Your deposit carries straight across and we handle the change. For most people moving off Manaslu, the natural swap is the Annapurna Circuit, which I will come back to below.

What is still open and running

This is the part that matters if you have been reading alarming headlines and wondering whether to cancel Nepal altogether. Most of the country is completely unaffected. The floods hit specific river valleys, not the whole Himalaya.

The Everest Base Camp trek and the wider Everest region are open and running normally. The Khumbu sits in a different watershed and was untouched by both the Rasuwa and the Manaslu floods.

The Annapurna Circuit is open and completely unaffected. It runs up the Marsyangdi valley to the Thorong La at 5,416 metres and down the Kali Gandaki through Muktinath and Jomsom, on the western side of the country and a separate river system entirely from the valleys that flooded. Its bridges, teahouses and permits are all working as normal, and September on the circuit is quiet and clear, well before the October crowds. The Annapurna Base Camp trek is open too.

So if your heart was set on Manaslu, the Annapurna Circuit is the closest thing to it that is open now. It is a high pass, a full circuit, remote country and a similar level of challenge, and honestly it is one of the great treks of Nepal in its own right.

How we are handling our own trekkers

We have people arriving this month, and I have written to each of them personally rather than waiting for them to find the news themselves. Some are rescheduling Manaslu for later in the autumn, and some are moving onto the Annapurna Circuit on their original dates. Nobody loses their deposit over a closure that is nobody's fault. That is how force majeure should be handled, and I would expect any honest operator to do the same. If a company is quietly letting Manaslu trekkers fly in without telling them the route is shut, that tells you something about the company.

One thing to check before you rebook anything

Whichever way you go, make sure your insurance still fits the trek. The Annapurna Circuit tops out at 5,416 metres, similar to Manaslu, so your policy needs to cover high-altitude trekking and helicopter evacuation above 5,400 metres. A standard travel policy that stops at 3,000 or 4,000 metres will not do, and this is the single most common gap I see.

How to check the real status, and talk to a person

Trekking scams and rumours both travel fast when something like this happens, so do not take anyone's word for the status on trust, including mine. The authority that closed the route is the District Administration Office in Gorkha, and they are the authority that will reopen it. We are a licensed Kathmandu operator, registered in 2016, TAAN member 1586, and we have people on the ground in the region.

If you are booked on Manaslu, or you are trying to decide what to do with dates you have already committed to, message me on WhatsApp and I will give you the current position honestly, and help you move to an open trek if that is the right call. I keep a wider trail-by-trail status page for the autumn as well, at which treks are open after the floods.

Shreejan Simkhada is the CEO and co-founder of The Everest Holiday, a family-run trekking company in Kathmandu, and a third-generation Himalayan guide. TAAN Member #1586. Every booking helps fund our Nagarjun Learning Center.