He trained as a Village Tourism Guide — qualified to show visitors his own village, though not certified for full trekking routes — and has gone out with a handful of tourist groups since. Steady work hasn't followed, though; more often he ends up going along as a cook or porter instead, whatever role is actually available.
Porter work remains the main door into tourism for local people generally, and he'd like to see that expand — better language skills, better training, more local involvement overall. Local guides do exist, trained and ready, but Kathmandu's trekking agencies rarely think to ask about their availability, preferring to bring guides from elsewhere even when local ones are sitting idle.
Some tourists had died a few years ago because of poor knowledge, on the part of the agency's guide, about the proneness of the trail to avalanche.
That's not an abstract concern for him — a local guide knows the climate and the trails in ways an outside guide simply can't, and he thinks agencies should use local guides not only to benefit the local economy but for tourists' own safety. Inflation in Dolpa, he's careful to note, isn't tourism's doing — it's a natural feature of the local economy, though shopkeepers do charge more to porters and guides during trekking season specifically, on the common assumption that anyone working alongside tourists must be earning well. Porters, notably, are only allowed to sleep at lodges if they also buy their food there.
Social change has crept in gradually — men wearing trousers now, better sanitation, a growing sense of self-possession among locals. Most houses remain built the traditional way, mud-stuccoed with thick stone walls and wooden-beam roofs, though some now feature more floors, bigger windows, and brighter rooms — a shift he traces partly to increased mobility and the arrival of outsiders.
The KLDP trail improvements, especially on the route toward Dho, have made both transport and travel safer, sparing lives that might otherwise have been lost to accidents on the old paths. Education remains constrained less by the school itself than by the calendar: winter closes classes; spring means fieldwork; then herb collection for two months; then harvest and trade. Somewhere in that cycle, school simply doesn't fit for many families. Those who do finish tend to aim first for a teaching post — though even competing for a government job means a three-day walk to Jumla just to sit the exam.
“Tourists and travel agencies should use local food and guides,” he says. “It benefits local people, and it also gets the agencies a cheaper, easier arrangement than making it all themselves.”