Award route card · one-way
The trekking exit. Everest Base Camp in, Bangkok beaches out — and Thai's zone chart is the last honest fixed price in the neighbourhood. ROP files Nepal in Asia Zone 3 alongside all of India, so the TG nonstop costs 17,500 miles in economy and 27,500 in Royal Silk — identical to Delhi's chart price for a flight 700 km longer. The business row is the play: ₹27,500 of miles for a lie-flat-adjacent regional J after three weeks in a sleeping bag, and it's genuinely fundable from India — HDFC and Axis both transfer into ROP directly. No published alternative exists: Air India prices Kathmandu only as a destination, and nobody's Avios routing survives contact with a map.
The play · business
Feed it: 13,750 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 27,500 HSBC Reward Points (1:1) · 27,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1)
| Program | Metal / routing | Points | Surcharge | All-in ₹ | vs play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thai Royal Orchid Plus | Thai Airways nonstop (Star Alliance), Royal Silk | 27,500 | — | ₹27,500 | the play |
The play · economy
Feed it: 8,750 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 17,500 HSBC Reward Points (1:1) · 17,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1)
| Program | Metal / routing | Points | Surcharge | All-in ₹ | vs play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thai Royal Orchid Plus | Thai Airways nonstop (Star Alliance), zone chart | 17,500 | — | ₹17,500 | the play |
All-in ₹ = points × the program's house value (valuation index) + the sourced one-way surcharge; a dash means the carrier doesn't publish it and the ranking counts it ₹0 — the row's note carries the caveat. “Dynamic” rows never compete for the play. Feed-ins come from the same transfer data as the optimizer, multi-hop chains included.
27,500 miles one-way in Royal Silk to TG's own hub — the standout published J price in the Himalaya. Fund it via HDFC or Axis EDGE direct transfers (or the IHG 5:1 hop); TG releases award J on KTM more readily than its India routes.
Feed it: 13,750 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 27,500 HSBC Reward Points (1:1) · 27,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1)
Zone 3 (Asia 3 — "Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka") → Bangkok: 17,500 one-way, same as ex-Delhi. Cash fares on the tourist wave swing hard by season; below ₹14k, pay cash and keep the miles.
Feed it: 8,750 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 17,500 HSBC Reward Points (1:1) · 17,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1)