Effective April 1, all solo travellers exploring the highlands of Nepal will be required to hire a certified guide due to security concerns. This new rule from the Nepal Tourism Board will apply to all foreign visitors trekking through Nepal’s national parks, with the exemption of locals who possess topography and cultural knowledge. The ban aims to make trekking in Nepal safer and create more employment opportunities in the country while reducing the cost of conducting search and rescue operations when lone hikers go missing. With few paved hiking trails in Nepal, infrastructure and population scarcity are prevalent, and cellular connectivity is unstable. The abrupt weather changes in the mountainous regions of Nepal, on the other hand, frequently result in fatal accidents each year, including those caused by avalanches, blizzards, and high-altitude sickness. The country’s economy, which depends heavily on tourism, could be severely impacted by the cost of search and rescue operations when lone hikers go missing. The majority of missing cases are free independent trekkers – travellers who hike without guides or groups. Prior to this new policy, travellers with route permission and a Trekkers Information Management System (TIMS) card could hike independently. Foreigners require a TIMS card as a fundamental trekking permit to engage in adventure tourism, and recent legal changes require travellers to hire a guide before obtaining a TIMS permit. Furthermore, the Nepal Tourism Board raised the cost of the TIMS permit to 2,000 per person.