Karolina Nowak

I completely recommend Ian Taylor Trekking (ITT, for ease of this review) for your trekking needs! We booked an ITT trip to Island Peak in Nepal. Throughout the booking process either Ian or Laura were readily available to answer our questions, always responding quickly to emails, and were flexible with setting up any calls. Ian was an absolute wealth of knowledge before and during the trip; we learned a lot from him.

One of the main reasons for choosing ITT was their acclimatization schedule during the trek – this is extremely important, especially if you don’t know how your body will react to elevations above 14k ft. They build in extra time to acclimate to the elevations, as compared to other outfitters, so we were more comfortable booking this specific itinerary.

The trip dossier we received after booking provided a lot of information ahead of the trip including a detailed packing list (and video!) that we could easily reference. Once we got to Nepal the positive experience continued – we stayed at nice teahouses, logistics were all taken care of, and we had an amazing Sherpa team.

Our climbing guide, Ang Kami, is one of the most experienced Island Peak guides out there – we were very fortunate to trek & climb with him (he is on most, if not all, the ITT Island Peak trips). We were also fortunate to have a great group of climbers, though that’s more up to luck! 6 of us total from different parts of the US got along great during the 3 week trip – and 3 weeks can be a long time to spend with people :).

We all managed to reach the summit which just put the icing on the cake of this trip. I highly recommend going with a guiding service to the Himalayas – it truly enriches the experience – and cannot recommend ITT enough.