Even though many people here now earn money from tourism, a lot of them still farm, growing their own food through the year. Six months bring most of the visitors — October/November and March/April — the other six bring almost none. During the off-season, some lodge and shop owners head to Kathmandu to pass the time, if they've earned enough during the busy months. Most have.
If tourism had never developed here, most people believe the Khumbu region would still be remote, inaccessible, and poverty-stricken to this day.
Before tourism, our local economy barely involved money — people exchanged goods and services directly. Now money runs through nearly everything, because nearly everyone here is connected to tourism in some way. The number of lodges and shops has grown enormously over the last decades, and more houses go up every year. Electricity now reaches almost every village, whether from the big hydroelectric plant in the Thame valley, a small local hydro-generator, or solar panels — all of it generated cleanly.
There are four kinds of tourism inside Sagarmatha National Park: general trekking, trekking-peak tourism, mountaineering, and cultural tourism. What we'd ask of tourists, beyond taking their rubbish with them, is that they follow the guidelines already posted in so many places.
The income has changed lives here — the growth itself is what worries people now.