Nepal travel health
Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Nepal, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Nepal: Kathmandu & Pokhara.
Required to enter
- Yellow fever certificate, but only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is present
Recommended
- Hepatitis A
- Typhoid
- Tetanus up to date
- Rabies — strongly advised, with street dogs everywhere
- Japanese encephalitis for the Terai
Emergency number
102 for an ambulance in Kathmandu; outside the valley there is effectively none
Care for visitors
Limited
CIWEC in Kathmandu is a genuinely good travel clinic with an international reputation. Beyond the valley it thins to nothing, and on a trek the answer is a helicopter. Insurance must explicitly cover trekking to your maximum altitude and helicopter evacuation — many policies cap at 3,000m or 4,000m, which is below most routes.
Altitude sickness, which kills trekkers every year and which is entirely preventable by ascending slowly. Do not drink the tap water. Kathmandu’s winter air quality is among the worst in the world. And be aware of helicopter evacuation fraud, in which operators exaggerate a case to claim on insurance.
The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.
