Nepal's Mountainside Teahouses Elevate the Experience for Trekkers

Comforting rest stops dot the trail for adventurers ascending Mera Peak, offering food, rest and a warm cup of the local brew

We were only three days into a 27-day journey through the forests of eastern Nepal, pushing through low clouds and a steady downpour. 

“Are we going the right way?” I asked Arjun Rai, my guide on the Mera Peak trekking trail.

“I think so,” he said, rain dripping from the bill of his baseball cap. “I’m pretty sure.” 

The mist was so dense we could see barely 100 feet ahead. It was an especially wet September, the end of monsoon season. As we descended a narrow, muddy gulch, we reached a rushing waterfall that cascaded down a rocky incline and directly blocked our path. To cross it, we slipped off our shoes and socks and waded barefoot through the icy torrent, which dropped off sharply to our right.

Rai crossed with ease and grace, lightly gliding from one slick river stone to the next. I clumsily grabbed on to rocks in the water to hold my balance, trying not to scrape my feet or tumble down the waterfall to my death. After we made our way to the other side, Rai lit a cigarette and said, “Now this is a real adventure!” We looked at each other through the downpour and both threw our heads back in laughter, briefly forgetting that we were drenched, cold and covered with mud.

That positive outlook is the way of the Nepalis—and especially the native Nepalis of the mountains. When things get hard, which in the Himalayas is most of the time, you make the best of it and keep walking. Still, only about 7 percent of Nepal’s population lives in these high-altitude regions. Life in the Solukhumbu district—home to many of the country’s tallest peaks, including Everest—is harsh and often unforgiving: freezing temperatures, steep cliffs, infertile soil and few drivable roads. Yet its remoteness and rugged beauty are exactly what draw tourists here. Between October 2023 and September 2024, around 56,000 tourists visited Solukhumbu, most of them foreigners.

After five hours of trudging through the rain, we finally saw it: a small hut on a hillside, smoke curling from its entrance. A teahouse. Reaching the doorway, I ducked beneath a low beam and found Pembadoma Sherpa, 14, and her sister, Mingmakanchhi, 7, tending the fire. Pembadoma smiled shyly as she stirred a pot of po cha, or Sherpa tea. In this region, the thick, salty brew is made of dzomo (a yak and cow hybrid) butter, black tea and roasted barley flour. As the rain drummed against the tin roof, she worked the churn, stirring the tea with a wooden dowel, her movements steady and practiced.

This modest teahouse is one of hundreds of simple mountain shelters that are the lifeblood of Himalayan trekking, serving as rest stops and social hubs for climbers, herders and travelers moving between villages. Tourists stop here for many reasons—to rest, stay overnight, eat and dry their clothes by the fire—but often what they’re seeking is connection. Conversations around teahouse stoves can stretch for hours, spanning languages and continents. Inside, the food is hearty and nourishing: steaming plates of dal bhat, Nepal’s national dish of lentil stew with rice, vegetables and pickles; momos, soft dumplings filled with meat or vegetables and served with spicy dipping sauce; roti, a thin unleavened flatbread; and thukpa, a thick noodle soup. These meals reflect a blend of Indian, Tibetan and Chinese influences, humble but built for endurance and warmth.

Some teahouses are operated by the wives of mountain guides who spend months away leading expeditions. Many others are family-run, some passed down through generations. For many women and families, the teahouse is more than a business; it’s a vital source of stability. It keeps families—many named for the Sherpa ethnic group—rooted in their ancestral villages, financially provides for their children’s education and creates a steady income in places where few other opportunities exist.

The teahouse in the next village, Ramailo Danda, belongs to Phurtemba Sherpa, a retired mountain guide. “My father built this place himself,” his son and lodge manager, Chhongba Sherpa, told me. “It was jungle before. He cut the hillside by hand to make flat ground. At first it was very small, only enough space for six people. Every year he added a little more, stone by stone.”

Phurtemba started guiding when he was around 20. He tried to summit Everest five times and made it twice. When he retired, he turned his focus to the teahouse—work that was no easier. “The hardest thing,” Phurtemba said, “was water. There’s no natural source here. We tried pipes from 3,000 meters [about two miles] up the valley, but it didn’t work. Finally, we brought water from 450 meters [about 1,500 feet] below, pumping it through the rock.” He paused, then smiled. “Now it works. Mostly.”

Phurtemba also owns another teahouse farther up the trail in Chhatra Khola—the Mera Riverside Lodge—perched on the edge of a bluff beside a roaring river and a waterfall that feeds the valley below. There, a young woman named Rachana Rai worked in the kitchen, stirring pots of lentils and kneading dough. “I like it here,” she told me. “It’s quiet, but not lonely. The mountains keep me company.”

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Every major trek in Solukhumbu begins with a flight into Lukla, a small town perched on a cliff with a runway so short and steep it’s considered one of the most dangerous in the world. From there, trails wind northeast, toward Everest Base Camp, some 64 miles away on foot, or east for 40 miles toward Mera Peak (21,247 feet). 

At Mera’s high camp, approximately 19,000 feet, stands what is said to be the highest teahouse in Nepal. Surrounded by icefall, cornices and jagged seracs, it’s run by Sherpa cooks who live there for weeks at a time in subfreezing cold. “We don’t make much—maybe 30,000 rupees [about $210] a month,” one told me through an interpreter. They rely on tips. “Tourists are kind. Even with little salary, we are happy to work. When they smile and say thank you, we feel rich.”

The Sherpa people, whose name comes from the Tibetan words shar (“east”) and pa (“people”), are celebrated for their endurance and grace at altitude. Descended from nomads who migrated south from Tibet, they settled in the Solukhumbu region centuries ago and became the backbone of Himalayan mountaineering. While climbers from around the world seek glory on these peaks, it’s the Sherpas who guide climbers, fix the ropes, break trails, carry the loads and, when necessary, recover the fallen—as they did during my own time on Mera, when a Korean climber died and a Sherpa rescue team found his body and brought him down the mountain.

Sherpa culture is steeped in Buddhism. Along the trails, the landscape is marked by mani stones, carved with prayers, mantras or religious images, and stupas, dome-shaped Buddhist shrines; strings of blue, white, red, green and yellow prayer flags flutter in the wind. Inside the teahouses, the rhythm of life slows: Fires crackle, tea simmers, and stories are told easily between strangers. For the teahouse staff, the work is relentless—cooking, cleaning, stoking fires in the thin air—but most owners I met spoke of pride, not exhaustion. “People come from everywhere,” said Lakpa Sherpa, owner of Himalayan Lodge & Cafe in Khote. “We take care of them like family. That is our way.”

On the final morning of the ascent, we left high camp at 3 a.m., climbing slowly toward Mera’s summit as dawn broke, casting an alpenglow on pristine slopes. Our pace was steady. As I continued my way upward, the sun appeared over the mountaintops, and the full expanse of the Himalayas came into view: Everest to the north, Makalu to the northeast, a sweep of glistening peaks stretching in all directions, and the villages we’d passed through scattered far below.

By Day 21 of the journey, I’d visited nearly a dozen teahouses, had hundreds of conversations and sipped countless cups of Sherpa tea. Now, as we headed back to Lukla, it struck me how much this climb had depended on the families who opened their doors along the way and offered warmth in a place defined by cold. In Nepal, the rugged landscape is shaped by mountains, but it’s the Nepali people and the teahouses that make moving through it possible.