Travel Question: Why is the cost of flying to Nepal so appallingly high?

Have a question? Ask our expert Simon Calder

Peak time: bagging an April flight to Kathmandu will cost you (Getty/iStock)

Q I have committed to a trekking trip in Nepal leaving on Easter Sunday and returning two weeks later. I am now looking for flights and unfortunately they seem extremely expensive – close to £1,000 return, when I was looking for something around £600 or £700. What do you suggest?

Name withheld

A Unlike the Indian powerhouses of Delhi and Mumbai, Kathmandu is something of a niche destination from the UK. There are no longer any direct flights, and connecting services are limited to a handful of airlines: Emirates and its partner FlyDubai, Oman Air, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines.

I am unaware of any particular event in the Nepali capital that is pushing up demand; I checked a few days either side with similar results.

I imagine that it is simply the fact that April is in the middle of the spring trekking season and that lots of Europeans are keen to travel to Nepal (the same thing happens in October, which would normally be an off-peak month).

I recommend three possible strategies. First, see what online travel agents are offering; they “mix and match” different airlines more easily than booking through a carrier (I recently bought a ticket involving Air Canada and British Airways, not a natural combination, with an online travel agent). But be circumspect; an agent based in Sweden or Spain is unlikely to offer great after-sales service. And make sure someone is watching over your shoulder while you fill in the online form so you make no small but potentially expensive errors.

Alternatively, you could book a ticket to Delhi for under £500 return, for example on Turkish Airlines, and a side trip from there to Kathmandu for around £200. But two big health warnings. By having separate bookings you take on some risk. If the first flight goes awry and you get to Delhi too late for the connection, you have no comeback. And you will need an Indian visa (you can protest all you like at Heathrow that you’re planning to self-connect and not stray from the airport transit area, but as far as the check-in agent can tell your final destination is India). But personally I would adopt a third option: waiting a week to see if anything changes. My research suggests that there will always be seats available, even booking on the day, and it seems unlikely that fares will increase much further – and they may actually fall a little.

Every day, our travel correspondent, Simon Calder, tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder