I run a small teashop along a trekking route. More teashops have opened since I began, but our main customers are porters and other travellers with limited incomes. Some tourists stop to try local food, although most eat and drink in the larger lodges.
I have watched Sherpa life and consumption change greatly over recent decades. Sanitation and hospitality have improved. Almost everyone now depends on tourism in some way, and the number of lodges has increased at an astonishing speed.
We once drank mostly chang and raksi; now our shelves hold imported beer, foreign wine, Coca-Cola, clothing and trekking equipment.
We try to stock whatever visitors may need. These products create business, but they also change what local people see, purchase and expect. Tourism influences daily life not only through jobs but through the goods available in every shop.
Life has become much more expensive. Prices are high because businesses have only about six months to earn enough income for an entire year. During the quiet months, there may be almost no customers.
In my experience, prices are generally the same for locals and tourists. Everyone pays the higher rate. At the same time, local incomes have also risen considerably, and for many households the relationship between earnings and expenses remains reasonably balanced.
A cup sold in the busy season must help carry a family through the months when hardly anyone walks past the door.
The economy has moved from local exchange toward cash and imported consumption. This has brought comfort and variety, but it has also made us dependent on a short tourism season and on goods transported from far away.
Small teashops like mine sit at the lower end of the tourism economy. We do not receive the same spending as lodges, but we serve the porters and budget travellers who make trekking possible.
Tourism changed more than what we sell; it changed how six months of work must pay for twelve months of life.