As chairperson of the Development Association of Dolpa Tourism and Generation — one of several NGOs partnered with the broader Dolpa Promotion Project — he sees tourism's benefit to the local economy as real, but still limited. His organisation's own work, alongside partner group DESERT, has focused on social mobilisation: establishing a porter association, running general cook and guide training, and building toward community campsites along the main trekking routes. A village-level security programme is next on the list.
Sustainable tourism paves way for environment conservation along with economic upliftment of local people, including development of local handicraft and promotion of local entrepreneurship.
Waste has crept up alongside tourism — cans and plastic mainly, still modest in volume but a clear byproduct of visitor traffic. Social change has landed unevenly across the district: Dunai and Juphal show visible shifts in lifestyle, partly tourism-driven, while other villages remain largely untouched. Dolpa's underlying culture and social structure, he's careful to say, remain self-contained and largely unchanged — Nepali language skills have improved with tourism contact, but English has stayed a persistent stumbling block.
Education tells a similar mixed story: the government school, now roughly thirty-eight years old, still lags behind private alternatives in quality, though donations from foreign tourists have helped some schools improve regardless.
Migration follows a seasonal rhythm — northern traders arriving each winter for temporary work before heading home, while migrants from the south, particularly Nepalgunj, have settled more permanently in Dunai and Juphal, mostly in business. That outside control over local commerce has pushed up unemployment among Dolpa's own residents, though he notes one exception: educated women, interestingly, tend to find work more easily than men in this environment.
Local people go to shop of outsiders when they have money, with a hope of fair price and more choices. But they go to local shop owners to buy on credit.
That habit, more than jealousy or lack of capital, is what he sees undercutting local business specifically — a pattern of borrowing from neighbours rather than paying them, which tends to curdle into bad debt over time. On gender, he's cautiously encouraged: discrimination against women appears to be easing faster in Dolpa than elsewhere in the Karnali region, a shift he credits to sustained outside agency involvement. Outsiders' growing hold on local business hasn't, at least, produced any real backlash or discrimination against them in return.
“Tourists are suggested to be satisfied with whatever Dolpa can offer,” he says. What the district needs most, in his view, is simply time, resources, and a genuine push to develop individual tourism and local human capital together.