I checked 154 Himalayan trek packages. Only 32 of them publish a batch size.

After my Hampta Pass trek turned out much more crowded than I expected, I got curious about how common that is. So over the last few weeks I went through the booking pages of every organiser I could find for six popular treks and wrote down what they actually state on the page.

154 packages across 33 organisers. Here is how many publish a maximum batch size:

- Hampta Pass — 7 of 31

- Kedarkantha — 6 of 35

- Valley of Flowers — 5 of 25

- Brahmatal — 3 of 23

- Kashmir Great Lakes — 6 of 21

- Friendship Peak — 5 of 19

32 out of 154. So for about four out of five packages, you cannot find out how big your group will be without calling and asking.

And where it is published, the range is wide. Hampta Pass caps run from 12 to 30 depending on the organiser. That is not a small difference — it is the difference between a trek and a queue.

Two things I want to be careful about:

The ones who do publish a number are not the problem. If anything they are doing the right thing and getting nothing for it, because a reader comparing pages cannot even tell that the others left it out.

And a published cap is per batch, not per trail. An organiser can honestly say 30 and still run two batches on your dates. I learned that one the hard way.

Curious whether people here ask about this before booking, and whether you get a straight answer when you do.