Phaplu and Salleri: The Road Start to Everest in Solukhumbu

Almost every Everest guide starts the same way: a flight to Lukla. Our road-trip itinerary starts somewhere else, in the Solukhumbu district town of Salleri, and on the first night most guests ask the same question. Where exactly are we, and why does the itinerary say "Salleri/Phaplu"? This page answers that. It covers what the two names mean, how high the place really is, what the airstrip next door is, and what the published sources do and do not agree on.

Are Phaplu and Salleri the same place?

Nearly, but not quite. Wikipedia describes Solududhkunda as the only municipality of Solukhumbu District, in Koshi Province. The town of Salleri sits inside it and is the district headquarters. The name joins "Solu", a river in the region, with "Dudhkunda", a lake east of that river. At the 2011 census Wikipedia gives Salleri a population of 6,590, and it gives the whole municipality 24,323 people over 565.06 square kilometres after the 2018 boundary changes. Those two numbers are very different things, so do not read the second one as the size of the town.

Phaplu is the neighbour to the north. Wikipedia says Phaplu Airport is in Phaplu, in the northern part of the municipality. Using Wikipedia's own coordinates for the municipality and for the airport, I measure about 1.5 kilometres between the two points in a straight line. That is why our itineraries write "Salleri/Phaplu" as if it were one stop. For a guest it is: you arrive, you sleep, you leave.

How high is Phaplu?

Our itinerary says 2,413 metres, and that matches the one published figure I could find that comes with a source. As with every village page I write, I checked it against a second measure rather than trusting one number.

The one-foot difference between 7,917 and 7,918 is rounding: 2,413 metres is 7,916.7 feet. The terrain model is within about 30 metres of the airport figure either way, which is what you would expect from a 30-metre grid on a hillside. So the honest answer is about 2,400 metres. That is roughly 450 metres lower than Lukla, which our road-trip package page gives as 2,860 metres. You start walking lower, and that is the whole point of the route. If you want to know why a lower start helps, our guide to acclimatisation on Nepal treks explains it.

What is Phaplu Airport, and do you fly there?

Our guests drive, so I will be careful here and tell you only what the published pages say. Wikipedia lists Phaplu as a small domestic airport serving Solukhumbu. It says the airport opened in October 1976, citing the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, and that it was later broadened by Sir Edmund Hillary to take Twin Otter aircraft, citing his book View From The Summit. Wikipedia marks the date of that second point as unclear, so I would not repeat a year for it. The authority closed the airport in 2013 to pave the runway and it reopened a year later with a full asphalt surface.

Even the runway length is not agreed on the page. The infobox says 680 metres and the text below it says 671. Both are small. This is a short mountain strip, not a place for large aircraft.

The same page lists Nepal Airlines, Summit Air and Tara Air as flying to Kathmandu, with a Tara Air charter to Lukla. Most of the schedule links on that page are dead, so I cannot tell you today's timetable and I will not guess one. What I can tell you is that weather closes it. Nepal News reported on 26 June 2025 that flights had resumed at Phaplu after 17 days, with operations halted since 9 June because of rain and thick fog, and that a Nepal Airlines Twin Otter carried 12 passengers in and 10 out. The article also says flight suspensions are common there.

Wikipedia adds that flights heading for Lukla are often diverted to Phaplu when the weather turns. Our guide to the Ramechhap and Lukla flights covers the other end of the same weather problem.

What do you actually do on the first night?

The itinerary for Day 1 is simple. You leave Kathmandu early in a private jeep and our itinerary gives the drive as around 8 to 9 hours. It follows the Arniko Highway east, then climbs after Lamosangu into the Solukhumbu district, where mani walls start to appear at the edge of villages. You reach Salleri in the late afternoon at 2,413 metres. The lodge is simple and dinner is served in a common room heated by a wood stove.

That is a real change from the usual Everest plan. Guests who flew to Lukla that morning are already at Phakding. You are in a district town, with shops and a bazaar, and the trek has not started. Day 2 is a jeep ride to Thamdanda and then a walk to Paiya, which joins the classic route two days later. Our Lukla-or-road guide, Lukla flight vs road to Everest Base Camp, compares the two plans in more detail.

On the way back it is Phaplu again. On Day 14 the trek ends near Thamdanda, a jeep takes you to Phaplu and the lodge has hot water and a menu that goes beyond dal bhat. On Day 15 you drive to Kathmandu. Our itinerary gives that last drive as 10 to 12 hours, which is longer than the 8 to 9 hours on the way up. Plan for the longer figure and do not book an evening flight home on the same day.

Is the road route better than the flight?

It depends what you want. Here is the trade, as I see it.

• You spend two of your fifteen days in a jeep, not in the mountains. Our package page says exactly this: two days driving, then twelve days walking.
• You start about 450 metres lower than Lukla, so the climb is more gradual.
• You do not depend on a Lukla flight at either end. You do depend on a long road, and I have no source on how that road behaves in heavy rain, so I would ask us before booking in the monsoon.
• You see lower Solukhumbu, where, according to our Day 2 itinerary text, Paiya and the villages around it see only a handful of foreign visitors each week.

If you are comparing the road start with the other overland option, our Jiri to Everest Base Camp comparison sets out the differences. The full day-by-day plan is on our Everest Base Camp trek by road page.

Is there anything to see in Salleri and Phaplu?

It is not a sightseeing stop and I will not pretend it is. Our Day 2 itinerary notes a monastery above Phaplu where young Sherpa monks study, and Wikipedia lists two community radio stations for the municipality, Radio Dudhkoshi and Solu FM. That is about all I can source. If you have an hour in the evening, walk up to the bazaar, drink tea and watch the town go about its business. It is a working district headquarters, not a trekking village built for visitors.

What is the weather like?

Wikipedia's climate table for the municipality is based on a station at Chialsa, 2,770 metres, which is not the same height as Phaplu, so I will not quote it as the town's weather. What I can say is that the June 2025 closure above shows how the monsoon behaves here. Our package page lists spring and autumn as the best time, and that is when I would go. For the Everest region more broadly, our domestic flights guide explains why buffer days matter whichever way you start.

The short version

Salleri is the headquarters of Solukhumbu and Phaplu is its airstrip suburb, about 1.5 kilometres to the north. The height is about 2,400 metres on every reading I could make, around 450 metres below Lukla. Our road-trip itinerary starts and ends here, with an 8 to 9 hour drive up and 10 to 12 hours back. If you want to talk through whether the road or the flight suits your dates, message me on WhatsApp on +977 9810351300.

Written by Shreejan Simkhada, CEO of The Everest Holiday and third-generation Himalayan guide. TAAN Member #1586. Last updated 3 October 2026.