Written by Shreejan Simkhada, CEO of The Everest Holiday and third-generation Himalayan guide. TAAN Member #1586. As of 29 September 2026. This is a live situation and I update this page as the position on the ground changes.
The short answer, as of 29 September 2026
A fresh spell of heavy monsoon rain crossed Nepal from Thursday 24 September and ran through the weekend, setting off floods and landslides in a long list of districts. It is a separate event from the Rasuwa flood of 26 August, and it has done most of its damage to roads and bridges rather than to trekking trails. The great majority of the country is trekking a normal autumn. Two things are genuinely disrupted this week and I will not pretend otherwise: several mountain roads are cut, and the Langtang and Rasuwa corridor is still not accessible a month after the August flood. If your dates are close and you want the honest position for your exact route, message me on WhatsApp and I will tell you straight, with no sales line.
The single most useful idea to hold on to is the difference between a road and a trail. When you read that a landslide has "closed" a region, it almost always means a vehicle road was blocked, not that the walking route is destroyed. Those two things can be true at the same time, and mixing them up is the biggest reason people cancel a trek they did not need to cancel. Below is the current picture region by region, split into trail and road, so you can see exactly which of the two your trip depends on.
How bad was this rain spell?
Bad in places, and still being counted. Reporting on the nationwide toll for this 24 to 29 September wave does not agree yet: Al Jazeera put it at at least 12 dead on 27 September, while weather.com reported 21 dead and 5 missing on 28 September, with more than 300 landslides over roughly a week of rain. I am giving you both figures rather than picking one, because the search is still going on and any single number this week is provisional. Rivers crossed their danger marks in the lowlands, the Narayani at Chitwan and the Tinau at Rupandehi among them, homes were swept away and inundated in Butwal, Nawalparasi and Saptari, and the authorities warned of flash-flood risk across 49 of Nepal's 77 districts. This is the tail of the monsoon behaving violently, not a permanent state, and it is already easing as I write.
Region by region: trail versus road, 29 September 2026
Green in my head means running a normal season, amber means it depends on your exact route and we check it before every departure, red means not accessible right now. Read the road column and the trail column separately.
| Region | Trail | Road / access |
|---|---|---|
| Everest / Khumbu (Base Camp, Gokyo, Three Passes) | Open, unaffected. A different watershed, reached by flying in. | Lukla flights subject to the routine autumn weather holds only. The 25 September visibility closures cleared; no new closure confirmed since. |
| Annapurna south (Base Camp, Poon Hill, Mardi Himal) | Trails reported open. The early-September Kimrong Khola landslide scare cleared weeks ago. | The Pokhara to Baglung road lost about 150 metres at Sahasradhara in Parbat on 27 September. Repairs are being pushed to be passable by Dashain. |
| Annapurna Circuit / Manang (through Chame) | Chame, the district headquarters on the trek, was hit by a flood on 27 September that swept away houses and two wooden bridges, so treat the route through Chame as disrupted this week, not clear. | The Besisahar to Chame road lost about 200 metres at Kharkhere Bhir on 27 September, and the Lamjung to Manang road was severed by lost bridges and erosion. A debris flood partly dammed the Marsyangdi at Chame; the Nepal Army was clearing it on 29 September. Treat the road through Chame as not yet reopened. Repairs are targeted for Dashain. |
| Mustang / Jomsom / Muktinath | No trail damage reported. | The Beni to Jomsom to Korala road was damaged at 46 points and officials expect more than a week to reopen it; treat it as closed as of 29 September. Flying Pokhara to Jomsom is the reliable way in. |
| Manaslu / Tsum / Larke Pass | Passable with disruption. The Namrung crossing is on a temporary wooden bridge, re-damaged around 26 September, and a landslide struck above Samagaun the same weekend. | The real blocker at Samagaun was weather grounding rescue helicopters for about four days; flights resumed around 28 September and are clearing the backlog. Road to the trailhead flagged with a damaged bridge. |
| Langtang / Gosaikunda / Ruby Valley | Not accessible right now. | The sole access road, up the Rasuwa and Trishuli valley, has been closed since the 26 August flood and no reopening has been reported. This is the one region I am telling people to hold off on. |
| Kanchenjunga, Makalu (far east) | Reported open, outside both flood corridors. | No new closures reported. |
| Dolpo and the far west (Dolpa, Humla, Mugu, Jumla, Rara) | No trail-closure reports, but I would treat this as an open question rather than a clean all-clear. | These districts were named among those with road subsidence and flash-flood risk in this wave. Check access for your exact dates. |
So the damage this week sits mostly on the roads that feed the Annapurna and Mustang trailheads, plus the Langtang corridor that was already down. The trails at the heart of Everest and southern Annapurna are walking a normal season. For the fuller Rasuwa-flood background across every region, I keep a trail-by-trail status page, and for the road-versus-trail logic in detail there is is the Annapurna Circuit open?.
The mountain roads that are cut, and when they should reopen
This is the part that actually affects a trekker this autumn, because it is a transport problem more than a trail problem. As of 28 to 29 September, the Beni to Jomsom to Korala road in Mustang was damaged at 46 points with more than a week quoted to reopen; the Besisahar to Chame road into Manang lost a 200 metre section on 27 September and the road on to Manang was severed; the Pokhara to Baglung road lost 150 metres; and closer to Kathmandu the Prithvi Highway and the BP Highway both took repeated hits and diversions. Officials are openly racing to have the worst of these passable in time for Dashain, the festival that falls between 11 and 25 October this year, when millions of Nepalis travel home. That target is a useful marker for roughly when things should be back to normal, but I want to be honest that it is a target the engineers are working towards, not a promise, and I will not give you a reopening date as if it were a fact. What I can promise is that where a road is genuinely cut on your travel day, we solve it with a flight or a different vehicle rather than walk you into a blockage.
Is the monsoon over?
Not yet, officially. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology had not declared the 2026 monsoon withdrawn as of 29 September, which is normal, because withdrawal is only announced once the retreat is actually under way. The long-run average full-withdrawal date is around 2 October, but in each of the last four years it has slipped into the second week of October, roughly the 8th to the 16th. This week's rain fits that pattern. The practical read is that early October is a genuine transition window this year rather than a guaranteed-clear one. If your dates are flexible, mid-October onwards is the safer bet. If they are fixed early, we plan for the tail of the monsoon and keep buffer days in hand, which is ordinary trekking rather than an emergency.
What this means if you are trekking soon
Three practical things, in the order I would worry about them.
Keep your dates flexible where you can. The single most useful thing right now is a spare day or two in your plan, so a one-day road delay or a weather hold does not cost you your flight home. We build buffer days into an itinerary as a matter of course, and this is the autumn to have them.
Get your insurance right, and buy it at home. Your policy needs to cover trekking to the real altitude of your route and, above all, helicopter evacuation. Ordinary European or Asian holiday policies usually stop well below Himalayan heights, so read the altitude limit in the wording rather than the summary page. Do not buy insurance here in Nepal, because the helicopter operators and the hospitals frequently refuse the local policies at exactly the moment you need them to work. This is the single most common gap I see, and it matters more, not less, in a week when helicopters are already busy.
Trek with a licensed operator who checks the ground. Trail and road news in Nepal moves guide to guide and lodge to lodge, faster than any bulletin. We call the lodges on the route before departure, we read the forecast, and our standing rule, told to every client in writing, is that the guide has final say on safety over the itinerary. If a section is genuinely not right, we reroute rather than push into it.
A word on Himlung Himal
On the morning of Sunday 27 September an avalanche hit a base camp on Himlung Himal, in the Manang district. The people caught were all Nepali, the guides, kitchen staff and support crew who were fixing ropes and building camp ahead of a client group due in October. By 28 September four of them had been recovered, around ten people had been rescued alive, and about a dozen were still missing, with the numbers still being confirmed and repeated bad weather grounding the helicopters that the search needs. No foreign climbers were on the mountain when it struck. I am not going to name companies or speculate about the cause while families are still waiting for news. I mention it here only because it has been in the headlines alongside the floods, and because it is a hard reminder of who carries the real risk in these mountains: the Nepali crews who go up first.
Which treks are running normally right now
If you have read an alarming headline and are wondering whether to cancel Nepal altogether, this is the part to read first. The Everest Base Camp trek, Gokyo and the Three Passes sit in a different watershed and are unaffected by this rain, with Lukla flights on their routine autumn schedule. Southern Annapurna, meaning Annapurna Base Camp, Poon Hill and Mardi Himal, is walking a normal season, with the only knock-on being the Pokhara to Baglung road repair. The Manaslu Circuit is passable with the disruption I described above, and we confirm the crossing before every departure. The full Manaslu account is on its own live page. Kanchenjunga and the far east, and every city, cultural and wildlife tour, are running as usual.
The two I would genuinely hold off on this week are Langtang and its neighbours, where the access road is still closed, and any trip that depends on the Manang or Mustang mountain roads until those reopen. For Langtang specifically, the honest, detailed position is on its own status page.
Talk to a person on the ground
If your dates fall in the next few weeks, or your route touches any of the affected roads or the Langtang corridor, message me on WhatsApp and I will give you the current position for your exact route and dates, and I will be honest if I would move a section. And if anyone tells you the whole of Nepal is closed, or that everything is perfectly untouched, be equally wary of both. The truth this autumn is more useful and more boring than either: most of the country is trekking a normal season, a few mountain roads are cut and being repaired, and one corridor on the northern border is still down.
A note for journalists: our team works in the affected valleys and took part in the rescue and search after the August flood. For on-the-ground information on trail, road and border status, or an interview, contact Shreejan Simkhada on WhatsApp at +977 9810351300 or [email protected].
Every booking helps fund our Nagarjun Learning Center. Written by Shreejan Simkhada, CEO of The Everest Holiday and third-generation Himalayan guide. TAAN Member #1586.
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