Tumlingtar to Chainpur:
A Pilgrimage and Culture Trail
Like No Other
Two towns. One ancient trail. A thousand years of Kirat spirit, sacred lakes, brass-craft markets, and Himalayan silence that no guidebook has ever fully described.
There is a trail in Eastern Nepal that most trekkers fly straight over — literally. They land at Tumlingtar airport, glance out the window at the wide Arun valley below, and immediately start thinking about Makalu Base Camp or the Milke Danda ridge. What they miss is this: a short, soul-stirring walk to one of the most quietly magnificent towns in all of Nepal — Chainpur — passing sacred lakes, ancient Kirat settlements, terraced hillside villages and a culture so layered and alive it feels like walking through a living museum.
This is not a trek for record-breakers. It will not take you above 1,600 metres. There are no crampons, no altitude sickness, no emergency evacuation plans needed. What it offers instead is something rarer in the modern trekking world: authentic human encounter — with the Rai and Limbu communities who have called these hills home for three thousand years, with pilgrims carrying marigolds to hidden shrines, and with craftsmen who turn raw brass into objects so beautiful they belong in museums.
The Tumlingtar to Chainpur trail is Eastern Nepal's best-kept secret. After reading this, it won't stay secret for long.
Why This Trail? The Case for Going Slow in Eastern Nepal
Eastern Nepal has long lived in the shadow of the Everest corridor. While hundreds of thousands of trekkers pour through Namche Bazaar every year, the trails east of the Arun river see a fraction of that traffic. The Sankhuwasabha district — home to both Tumlingtar and Chainpur — is officially part of the Makalu-Barun region, one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet. But its lower trails, the ones that connect valley floor to hill town, carry a different kind of richness: cultural depth.
The Tumlingtar to Chainpur corridor sits in the heart of what historians call Majh-Kirat — Middle Kirat — the ancestral homeland of the Rai and Yakkha peoples. These communities trace their presence in these valleys back more than three millennia, predating the Hindu kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, predating even the earliest written records of Nepal.
Walking this trail, therefore, is not just trekking. It is time travel.
Tumlingtar: Your Gateway to the Ancient East
Your journey begins at Tumlingtar — a wide, flat plateau poised at 460 metres between the Arun River and the Sabha Khola, and the largest tar (flat highland) in all of Nepal. The airstrip here is one of those wonderfully improbable Himalayan runways — a grass strip carved into the plateau edge, from which twin-engine planes deliver trekkers, traders, and pilgrims from Kathmandu in a dramatic 45-minute flight through mountain valleys.
Do not rush to leave. Tumlingtar itself carries history. The indigenous Kumal people — traditional potters — are among the original inhabitants of this valley, and their craft of hand-turned clay pottery has been practised here along the banks of the Arun for generations. A morning walk through Tumlingtar's quiet lanes reveals clay pots drying in doorways, children playing barefoot on red-earth paths, and the kind of unhurried village life that urban Nepal has largely forgotten.
The Arun River at Tumlingtar is one of the most ancient rivers in the world — older than the Himalayas themselves, having carved its course before the mountains rose around it. Chatara, where the Arun meets the Koshi a day's travel south, is a significant Hindu pilgrimage point. Many pilgrims heading to Chainpur's temples pass through Tumlingtar on their way north.
The Trail: Stop by Stop
The trail from Tumlingtar to Chainpur can be walked in a single long day by fast trekkers (6–8 hours), but two days is far more rewarding — allowing you to overnight in a village teahouse, absorb the culture, and arrive in Chainpur in time for the morning market. Here is the route broken down by stage:
Tumlingtar (Tumlingtar Airport Area)
460mCross the Sabha Khola — a tributary of the Arun — shortly after leaving the airstrip plateau. The ford here is shallow in dry season; a suspension bridge serves the trail in monsoon months. The path immediately enters a mosaic of rice paddies, millet fields and riverine forest that feels worlds away from the aircraft you arrived on.
Khandbari — District Heart
~1,040mThe trail climbs steadily through subtropical forest and terraced villages to Khandbari, the district headquarters of Sankhuwasabha. This Newar-influenced bazaar town is the main commercial hub of the region, with teahouses, government offices, and the relaxed energy of an eastern hill town going about its business. Stop for dal bhat and sweet chiya (tea). From Khandbari's ridgeline, on clear days, Chamlang (7,321m) shimmers on the northern horizon — an unforgettable mountain apparition visible from a chai shop.
Chitlang & Pokhari Bazar — Village Life Immersed
~1,100–1,200mBeyond Khandbari the trail enters the true cultural heartland. Chitlang is a charming village of mixed Rai and Sherpa households where stone homes with carved wooden windows line narrow flagstone paths. Just beyond lies Pokhari Bazar — named for the sacred pond (pokhari) at its centre, garlanded with marigolds and a small Shiva shrine visited by local pilgrims year-round. This is an excellent overnight stop: the teahouses here serve Tongba (warm fermented millet beer), and evenings bring the sound of Rai folk songs drifting from homes across the valley.
Dangigaon — A Yakkha Living Archive
~1,150mThe village of Dangigaon is one of the trail's hidden gems. The Yakkha community here — one of Eastern Nepal's lesser-known indigenous groups, distinct from both the Rai and the Limbu — maintain oral traditions and ritual practices that have been documented by ethnographers as among the oldest surviving Kirat cultural expressions. A Yakkha grandmother weaving dhaka fabric on a wooden loom in her doorway is not a performance for tourists. It is simply Tuesday morning in Dangigaon.
Chainpur — The Ancient Bazaar Town
~1,270mThe trail's final descent brings you into Chainpur — and your first view of the town's distinctive stone-paved main street lined with traditional Nepalese houses is a genuine arrival moment. This was once the administrative capital of the entire Sankhuwasabha district. Before the headquarters moved to Khandbari in 1974, Chainpur ran the affairs of a vast mountain region. That administrative gravity left behind well-built civic architecture, a thriving multi-ethnic market, and a town that carries itself with a certain dignified self-confidence.
Chainpur: Where History is Still Being Made
To arrive in Chainpur is to arrive in a place that takes its past seriously without being trapped in it. The town buzzes with daily market activity — traders from Sherpa villages high above, Rai farmers from the valleys below, Limbu women in traditional jewellery, Newar shopkeepers managing centuries-old trading posts — all moving through the same stone-paved lanes their ancestors built.
The Famous Karuwa — Chainpur's Living Craft Legacy
Chainpur is famous throughout Eastern Nepal — and among collectors of traditional craft across the world — for one extraordinary object: the Karuwa. This is a distinctive brass water vessel with a pipe-spout, its exterior covered in intricate hand-chased carvings of floral patterns, mythological figures, and geometric motifs. The Karuwa has been made in Chainpur for hundreds of years and remains in active production today, made by artisan families who pass the skill from parent to child.
Each Karuwa takes days of hand work — the hammering of raw brass into shape, the painstaking chasing of designs with metal tools, the finishing of the spout. Watching a Chainpur craftsman at work is to watch a tradition so old it has outlasted kingdoms, wars, and the coming and going of entire political systems.
A genuine Chainpur Karuwa makes one of the finest souvenirs you can bring back from Eastern Nepal. Buy directly from the artisan workshops on the main bazaar street — not from intermediary shops — to ensure the craftsman receives a fair price and you receive an authentic piece. Prices range from NPR 800 to NPR 5,000+ depending on size and detail.
Chainpur Fort — Ancient Stone and Mountain Silence
Above the town, Chainpur Fort (Chainpur Gadi) stands as a physical record of the region's contested history. Built during the Kirat period and later reinforced during the Gorkhali expansion, the fort site offers both archaeological interest and a commanding view of the Arun valley and the Himalayan skyline to the north. On clear mornings, the peaks of the Makalu massif — including Makalu I (8,463m) — are visible from the fort's upper walls.
Pilgrimage Sites Along the Trail
This trail is not simply a cultural walk — it is a living pilgrimage corridor. Several sacred sites draw devotees from across Eastern Nepal throughout the year, and the trail between Tumlingtar and Chainpur connects many of them.
Sabha Pokhari
A high-altitude sacred lake of profound significance to both Hindu and Kirat traditions. Devotees walk for days to bathe in its waters during festival periods. The lake area hosts ancient stone shrines and is surrounded by cloud forest.
Siddhakali Temple
Dedicated to Goddess Kali, this temple in the Siddhakali region draws hundreds of pilgrims annually. Its location on a dramatic hillside makes the approach itself a spiritual act — a climb through rhododendron forest to a shrine that feels carved from the mountain.
Pokhari Bazar Sacred Pond
The village pond at Pokhari Bazar is garlanded with marigolds and tended by a local priest. Small oil lamps are lit here at dawn by passing pilgrims — a quiet, intensely local act of devotion that most travellers walk past without realising its significance.
Baneshwor Hill — Chainpur
Above Chainpur, Baneshwor Hill hosts a Shiva temple and an open-air viewing platform sacred to local devotees. The annual Baneshwor Mela draws pilgrims from across the district. The hill itself is a place of morning meditation for Chainpur's residents.
Hedangna Gadi (Fort)
The ancient Hedangna Fort, reachable on a short side-trail from the main route, is a Kirat-era fortification with spiritual significance for Rai communities. Local lore connects the site to founding ancestors of the Bantawa Rai clan.
Mundhum Sacred Sites
The Mundhum — the oral sacred scripture of the Kirat people — identifies specific natural features along this trail as cosmologically significant. River confluences, certain rock formations, and hilltop clearings are pilgrimage points for Kirat practitioners performing ancestral rites.
The Living Culture: What You Will Encounter
Beyond monuments and shrines, what makes this trail remarkable is the living culture you encounter at every stage. Eastern Nepal's ethnic communities have not been museumified — they are dynamic, proud, and continuing to evolve their traditions on their own terms.
The Rai People — Custodians of the Trail
The Bantawa Rai are the largest ethnic community in Sankhuwasabha, and their presence defines the cultural texture of this trail. Their language — Bantawa, one of the Kiranti language family — is spoken in villages all along the route. Their festivals, particularly Sakela (a communal dance ritual celebrating ancestral spirits and agricultural cycles), are extraordinary to witness if your timing is right. Sakela is celebrated twice yearly — in Baisakh (April-May) and Kartik (October-November).
Limbu Gold and Tongba Culture
Limbu communities near Chainpur are renowned for two things: their extraordinary tradition of wearing heavy gold and silver jewellery — ear ornaments, nose rings, necklaces of silver hakupatasi — and for Tongba, the warm millet-beer that is central to Limbu social life. A Tongba session — millet fermented in a cylindrical wooden vessel, drunk through a bamboo straw — is not just a drink. It is a ritual of community and welcome that you will be invited into if you sit long enough in the right teahouse.
Newar Trading Culture in the Hills
Chainpur's main bazaar reflects the Newar community's historic role as traders and craftspeople in Eastern Nepal's hill towns. The architecture of the old market — multi-storey stone and brick buildings with carved wooden windows and ground-floor shop fronts — is distinctly Newar in character, transplanted from the Kathmandu Valley into the Himalayan hills centuries ago.
Practical Guide: Everything You Need to Know
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Best Season | October–November (post-monsoon clarity) and March–April (spring wildflowers, rhododendrons) |
| Start Point | Tumlingtar — fly from Kathmandu (45 min) or Biratnagar (18 min) via Tara Air / Summit Air |
| End Point | Chainpur — jeep or bus to Khandbari, then road to Biratnagar, or return to Tumlingtar (2 hours) |
| Duration | 1 long day (6–8 hrs walking) or comfortable 2 days with village overnight |
| Difficulty | Moderate — steady uphill from Tumlingtar (460m) to Chainpur (1,270m), well-maintained paths |
| Permits | TIMS card recommended (available Kathmandu or Biratnagar). No restricted area permit needed |
| Accommodation | Basic teahouses in Khandbari, Pokhari Bazar, and Chainpur. Book ahead in festival seasons |
| Food | Dal Bhat widely available. Chainpur has good local restaurants. Try Tongba and local sel roti |
| Budget | NPR 2,000–4,000 per day (food, accommodation, local transport). Very affordable |
| Guide | Optional but enriching — a local Rai guide adds extraordinary cultural depth to every stop |
| Mobile Network | NCell and Nepal Telecom both work on most of the trail. Offline maps recommended |
June to September is monsoon season — leeches on the trail, landslide risk on some sections, and reduced visibility of the mountain views. The trail is passable but significantly less comfortable. Some teahouses close during heavy monsoon months. Avoid if possible; plan for October–April instead.
Why This Trail Ranks Among Eastern Nepal's Best
In a region dominated by high-altitude epics — Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Everest — the Tumlingtar to Chainpur trail occupies a different category entirely. It is accessible to anyone with a reasonable level of fitness. It requires no expedition permits, no tents, no altitude medication. And yet it delivers something that many of those iconic treks cannot: genuine, unhurried cultural immersion at a human scale.
You will walk through villages where children learn Bantawa songs from their grandmothers. You will cross rivers on bridges that local communities built with their own hands. You will eat food grown in the fields you walk through. You will watch an artisan transform a flat sheet of brass into a Karuwa so beautiful it seems impossible. And at journey's end, standing on Chainpur's stone-paved main street in the early morning mist, with Himalayan peaks glowing on the northern horizon, you will understand something that no amount of altitude can teach: that the most extraordinary places in Nepal are often the ones nobody thought to photograph.
Start Where the Flight Lands. Walk Where the Story Begins.
Most travellers who fly into Tumlingtar are on their way somewhere else. They have Makalu on their minds, or Kanchenjunga, or the Milke Danda ridge. All of those are magnificent destinations.
But the next time your plane descends toward that wide flat plateau between the Arun and the Sabha, consider this: the most remarkable journey may not be the one that starts at the trailhead everyone talks about. It may be the one that begins the moment you cross the Sabha Khola on foot and start climbing — slowly, attentively — toward the ancient bazaar town in the hills above.
Chainpur has been waiting there for a thousand years. It is in no hurry. And neither, for once, should you be.
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