Parents who walk regularly often assume the limiting factor is fitness. Above 3,000 m it is not, and that is the thing worth understanding before you pick a route.
Fitness does not protect you from altitude
This surprises people, so it is worth stating first.
Being fit does not meaningfully reduce your risk of acute mountain sickness. Fit young athletes get it. The main predictors are how high you sleep, how fast you got there, and whether you have had it before.
So "my father walks five kilometres every morning" is genuinely good news for the walking and tells you almost nothing about how he will handle 4,000 m. These are separate problems and only one of them responds to training.
What does change with age is recovery, joint tolerance on descents, and the likelihood of a condition or medication that interacts with altitude. That last one is a conversation with a doctor, not a website.
Our nine routes, sorted by the number that matters
| Route | Max altitude | Days | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Araku coffee ridge | 1,180 m | 2 | Easy |
| Nongriat living root bridges | 1,430 m | 3 | Moderate |
| Fimmvörðuháls | 1,100 m | 2 | Moderate |
| Chadar | 3,390 m | 9 | Challenging |
| Kedarkantha | 3,810 m | 6 | Easy |
| Hampta Pass | 4,287 m | 5 | Moderate |
| Valley of Flowers | 4,329 m | 6 | Moderate |
| Kunzum and Chandratal | 4,590 m | 6 | Moderate |
| Goecha La | 4,940 m | 11 | Challenging |
The gap is stark. Three routes stay comfortably low. The rest jump straight past 3,000 m.
The one we would actually suggest
Araku coffee ridge, in Andhra Pradesh. Two days, 14 km, maximum 1,180 m, about 420 m of ascent, graded easy.
Altitude is simply not a factor. The distances are short enough to stop when you want. It is coffee and plantation country rather than a summit push, which for most people walking with their parents is the trip they actually wanted.
The near-miss, and why
Nongriat in Meghalaya is 1,430 m, so altitude is fine, and the double-decker living root bridge is one of the more remarkable things in India.
The catch is the stairs. The descent to Nongriat is a long flight of steep steps, and you climb every one of them on the way back. That is hard on knees in a way that distance figures do not capture, and it is the specific thing that tends to defeat older walkers. Graded moderate for exactly this reason.
Worth doing if knees are good. Worth being honest about if they are not.
Why Kedarkantha keeps getting recommended anyway
Kedarkantha is graded easy, which is why it appears on every list of gentle Himalayan treks, including ones aimed at families and older walkers.
It also summits at 3,810 m and sleeps you above 3,000 m in sub-zero conditions.
The grade describes the walking. It says nothing about the altitude, and the altitude is the part that puts people in trouble. We have written this up in more detail in Kedarkantha with kids, and the reasoning is the same for a seventy-year-old as for a seven-year-old.
If altitude is unavoidable
Sometimes the destination is the point, as with a Char Dham trip. In that case the profile matters more than the route.
Gain height over days rather than hours. Avoid flying or driving straight to a high sleeping altitude, which is what makes Kedarnath by helicopter harder on the body than walking up. Build in a rest day. Descend to sleep lower where the route allows it. And treat a headache that will not shift as a reason to go down, not a reason to take another paracetamol.
The honest summary
One of our nine routes is a comfortable yes. One is a maybe that depends on knees. The other seven are ruled out by altitude rather than difficulty, and no amount of morning walking changes that.
Our family trips list applies the same rule automatically across everything we publish, not only treks, which is where the low-altitude destinations and most of the pilgrimage sites come in.