Porters, he says plainly, get looked down on — a reputation earned by the misconduct of a small minority, unfairly generalised to everyone else in the trade. The work itself is far less uniform than the stereotype suggests: some porters carry specifically for tourists and trekking groups; others move loads between Juphal and outlying villages, or to farms where they also work once they arrive. Some do it full-time, some only in their spare hours, some only when the pay is good enough to bother.
Competition is the defining fact of the job. Even when travel agencies do hire locally, it's usually only to fill gaps when they're short-handed — most bring their own porters, sometimes from as far away as the Everest region, leaving Dolpa's local porters fighting for what's left.
Porters of Dolpa can earn almost the same amount of money they earn with trekking — 350 rupees per day — if they carry 55 kilos of loads from Juphal to Dunai. The only reason to prefer trekking with tourist groups is to get tips.
Given that the pay is roughly comparable either way, tips are really what tip the balance toward trekking work — when it's available at all, which isn't often, since agencies favour bringing their own porters from elsewhere specifically to guarantee they'll stay with the group for the full trek, and because outside labour tends to come cheaper.
Caste plays its own quiet role: most porters come from lower-caste backgrounds, and people from Dolpa's higher classes generally won't take the work, whatever the pay. Most agencies do provide gear for the trek — warm clothes, sunglasses, trousers, boots — though porters are usually expected to hand it all back afterward; only the wealthier agencies let them keep it.
The job carries real risk — only one porter has died on a trek so far, by his count, which he considers fortunate given the terrain. Porters are insured against death and injury, and receive extra pay if illness forces an early return home — a small but genuine safety net in work that otherwise offers very little.