The heat transfer effects on peristaltic motion of nanofluid in a vertical porous stratum under long wavelength and low Reynolds number approximations are studied in this paper. The fluid motion is governed by non-linear coupled partial differential equations which are solved using perturbation expansion by taking N as a perturbation parameter. The expressions for velocity, temperature, concentration, and pressure rise per wavelength are obtained. The influence of different pertinent parameters on fluid velocity, temperature, concentration, and pressure rise over one wavelength is analyzed through graphs. The trapping phenomenon is presented graphically. The result shows that the velocity decreases with growing values of permeability parameter. The significant effects of the Grashof number, thermophoresis parameter, and Brownian motion parameter on the nanoparticle concentration and temperature distribution are observed. The influence of physical parameters on size of the tapered bolus is discussed. The results obtained for the present flow description reveal several interesting behaviors that warrant advance study on the non-Newtonian fluid phenomenon. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.