Tourism Voices from Khumbu, in Nepal, explore how local communities experience tourism and how they would like tourism to develop.
Stories from this region include the perspectives of local residents, entrepreneurs, young people and other groups involved in tourism.
Nepal, Khumbu — Sagarmatha National Park
Six months of trekking season, six months without. Life in Khumbu still runs on farming as much as tourism, but the money — and now electricity, nearly everywhere — has changed what's possible here. What worries people most is growth nobody is steering.
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Outside guides and agents are moving in, and local competition means working for less just to keep the work. Food and basic goods have gotten pricier too — hardest on the people who aren't paid in tourist money.
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A worker with the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Commission on the rubbish tourists cause but rarely leave behind themselves — that's mostly down to local teashops and lodges. Untangling who's actually responsible is a job that never really ends.
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A teashop owner on how tourism rewired what Khumbu drinks and buys — imported beer instead of chang, bottled wine instead of raksi — with prices now high enough that locals and tourists pay exactly the same.
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Health posts and dental care that didn't exist before; children who argue more openly with their parents; neighbours quietly competing over whose house looks better. Tourism transformed daily life in Khumbu — she just wishes it hadn't cost the forest so much.
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