Jamacho 10km or 20km in the Kathmandu Valley

If you are looking for a place to run in the Kathmandu Valley, and perhaps you have had enough of hustle and bustle, culture and people, then I can recommend a run up to the top of Jamacho. Jamacho is in the Raniban, the Queen’s forest, also known as the Nagarjun Forest Reserve to the north west of Kathmandu.

To get there, you need to be on the Trisuli road and head out of town for just a few kilometres beyond Balaju. You could walk from Gongabu bus park. Better to rent or borrow a bicycle as this area of town is pretty dusty and the air is not really of consumable quality. In fact it is probably deadly.

Jamacho's summit in the Nagarjun forest

On the Trisuli road (also up in the direction of Kakani) you’ll see a small army checkpost. The ex-King I believe now lives in the forest – not like a wild animal – but in a bungalow. At the check post foreigners have to pay Rs. 250 and Nepalis something like 10 or 20. You have to leave some ID and this means you have to return to the gate to collected it again.

Once inside, there is a route going straight up. The beginning section is now being furnished with the best stone steps I’ve seen anywhere making the path monsoon proof. It is a straight forward 5km to the top with quite a lot of level run-able ground.

And it’s bliss. The car horns fade away t be replaced by bird song, the air gets cleaner replaced by the smell of ‘nature’. It’s peaceful.

Once at the top you can choose to retrace your steps making a 10km run, or follow the road down which must be something like 17-20km, most of which is gentle decent.

The 10km took us 50min to ascend and about 30min to descend at a steady pace. The longer run took about 2h30m with a few stops to look at the views over the smoggy valley, monkeys in the trees and the (caged) golden pheasants near the end of the run.

All in all, easy to access and wonderful respite from the city.