Dal bhat and the teahouse menu at altitude

Ask a Nepali what they had for lunch and the answer is often simply bhat, cooked rice, which in practice means the whole meal around it. Dal is the lentil soup poured over the rice, usually red lentils, black lentils or a mix, cooked with turmeric and finished with a spoon of ghee or oil fried with cumin, garlic or the wild herb jimbu. Around them sit tarkari, a curry of whatever vegetables are in season, saag, sautéed mustard or spinach greens, and achar, a pickle of radish, tomato or mixed vegetables that gives the plate its bite.

In much of rural Nepal the day has two main meals. The first comes in the late morning, after the early work in the fields, and the second after dark. In between there is khaja, a snack of beaten rice, tea, roasted corn or noodles. Trekking lodges serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to match visitors' habits, but guides and porters often keep to the old rhythm and eat dal bhat twice.

On the trail, dal bhat comes with refills. When your plate is half empty, someone from the kitchen arrives with a pot of rice and a ladle of dal and offers more, and then more again. Saying no takes a hand held flat over the plate and a firm but smiling bas, enough. The refill is a matter of hospitality as much as business: in a Nepali home a guest is always offered more, and the lodge kitchen follows the same habit.

The refill is also why dal bhat is the best value on any trekking menu. A plate of pasta or a pizza costs about the same, comes once, and is made from ingredients the cook uses less often. Dal bhat is what the family eats too, so the rice is fresh, the dal is made in quantity and the vegetables are whatever came up the trail that week. You will see the t-shirt slogan dal bhat power 24 hour in every trekking shop in Thamel, and it is not wrong.

• Order dal bhat on long or cold days; the refills cover the energy a 6-hour walk takes.
• Ask for the achar on the side if you are not used to chilli.
• Eat with the right hand if you want to try it the local way; spoons are always on offer.

The price of a plate of dal bhat is a good altitude meter. In a local eatery in Kathmandu it costs a few hundred rupees. At Gorak Shep, the last lodges below Everest Base Camp, it can cost three to four times as much. Nothing about the dish changes; what changes is the distance every grain of rice has walked.

Above the last road, supplies arrive on porters' backs, on mules and, in the Khumbu, on yaks and zopkyo, the yak and cow crossbreed that works below about 4,000 m. A porter carrying a load for a lodge is paid by weight and by distance, so a sack of rice that reaches Dingboche has paid several days' wages on the way. Cooking gas comes up the same way, a cylinder at a time. The figures below are approximate ranges we have seen in recent seasons. They change every year and differ between lodges, so use them for budgeting only.

A teahouse makes most of its money in the kitchen, not from the rooms. Twin rooms in the Khumbu and the Annapurnas are often priced at a few hundred rupees, and in some lodges they are free, on the understanding that you eat dinner and breakfast there. If you sleep in one lodge and eat in another, expect the owner to charge more for the room, and fairly so. Eat where you sleep.

In many Annapurna villages, the lodges agree a common menu and price list, so the plate of dal bhat costs the same whichever door you choose, and competition is on the warmth of the dining room and the cooking. In the Khumbu, prices are set lodge by lodge but follow each other closely. Either way, the menu is long, and the same dishes appear from Lukla to Gorak Shep: porridge, Tibetan bread, pancakes and eggs for breakfast; noodle soup, fried rice, momos, potatoes and pasta later in the day.

Extras are where the bill grows. Hot showers, charging a phone, boiled water and Wi-Fi all cost more the higher you go. Carry a filter bottle or purification tablets and refill from taps and springs; it saves money and plastic.

Every teahouse kitchen above about 3,000 m has a row of pressure cookers, and you will hear them whistle long before dinner. Water boils at a lower temperature as you climb, about 89 °C at Namche and about 85 °C at Dingboche, so rice and lentils cooked in an open pot would take far longer and come out hard. The pressure cooker brings the temperature back up and saves gas, which is the most expensive thing in the kitchen.

Higher villages also cook with what the land gives. Potatoes grow in stone-walled fields as high as Dingboche, and Sherpa kitchens make riki kur, a grated potato pancake eaten with butter or yak cheese, and shyakpa, a thick stew of hand-pulled noodles, potato and vegetables. Tsampa, roasted barley flour mixed with butter tea, is the old high-altitude staple. In the Kali Gandaki, Thakali kitchens serve buckwheat, dried meat and a dal bhat set so carefully balanced that Thakali khana has become a restaurant style across Nepal. Ask your guide which local dish the lodge does well; the answer is rarely pizza.

Our guides eat dal bhat, and so do most of our trekkers by the third day. Above Namche we suggest a vegetarian diet. By local Buddhist custom, animals are not slaughtered in the Khumbu, so any meat on a menu up there has been carried from below Lukla, often for several days without a fridge. Dal, rice, eggs, potatoes and vegetables are fresher and kinder to a stomach that is already working hard at altitude.

We order dinner when we arrive, so the kitchen can plan; lodges cook one dish at a time on a few burners, and a big group takes a while. We drink 3 to 4 litres of water a day, add hot lemon or ginger tea, and leave alcohol for the walk back down. Under the 2023 rule, foreign trekkers in national parks and conservation areas trek with a licensed guide, and on our treks the guide also handles the lodge orders and the bills. Check current status before you travel.