Those who stay

A wet crunch broke the silence. Damp snow became sharp shards of ice that crumbled under their own weight, falling onto the teahouse deck. The smell of wet wood sat stale in the air. The window reflected the snow outside. 

Amar Gurung’s gaze remained locked on the snow that arrived a month and a half early in September this year. Too early for the apples and buckwheat to be harvested. Too early for the 21 climbers who left Gurung’s teahouse to summit Chulu West Peak the day before. Too early for the trekkers who Gurung hoped would have been his guests. 

“This is not normal,” he says. “Can someone tell us what to do?”

When record rain fell in central Nepal killing at least 250 people on 27-28 September, communities along the Annapurna Circuit in Manang also experienced unseasonal storms that disrupted climbing routes and agriculture.

Climate change is causing snow and rain to fall at the wrong times, in the wrong places, and with unparalleled ferocity. Younger inhabitants in Manang are leaving to pursue careers that do not depend on tourism, or an unpredictable environment.

“The new generation doesn’t want to stay here,” adds Gurung. “They don’t want to follow their parents, they see how hard it is.”

Amar Gurung and his wife Santi have sent their children to Pokhara for schooling. And like many others, they do not plan to return. Climate breakdown has added to the outmigration from this trans-Himalayan district.

The deep wrinkles on Amar Gurung’s face resemble the rugged terrain of this semi-arid valley beyond the Annapurnas. They tell stories of decades spent working outdoors at 3,500m in the village of Ngawal. Nature does its own thing among these mountains, and its behaviour is increasingly erratic.

Shyam Krishna Panta was home in 2021 when a muddy flashflood raced through the village of Tal at 1,669m. The local school where he was principal was swept away, and classes are still held in a nearby monastery.

“We give free food, accommodation, and studies to encourage students to come back to school, but parents are still hesitant,” says Panta. He admits that safety cannot be guaranteed because no one knows when another flood might come tumbling down the surrounding mountains.  Tal sits by the Marsyangdi River before it enters a long series of narrow gorges.

“People ran to higher ground for safety,” recalls Tilkashi Gurung of the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) mother’s group in Tal. Lifelong residents Pemba and Bugima Gurung could not walk without assistance and crawled up the slope. Others had to be rescued by helicopter.

Tal locals wanted to leave after the flood, Tilkashi tells us, but without money, they could not. They are also scared to rebuild near the river as the land continues to erode and there are frequent rock slides. Farming is difficult in the stony debris left by the flood.

Every monsoon, new hiking trails for tourists are washed off as unseasonal post-monsoon floods like that of 2021 and now in 2024 increasingly become the norm.

For now, Tal plays the waiting game. Students, like Sumi Gurung, wait for her new school to be finished. Teahouses wait for guests. A whole village waits to be told what to do. 

“We were born here, our whole lives are attached here. We don’t want to leave,” says Tilakshi. 

The road from Besisahar constructed in 2008 allowed visitors and goods to travel higher up the valley to Manang. Trekkers can now skip Tal, and begin their hikes to Tilicho or Thorong La from further up. The circuit that used to take 23 days to complete can now be done in just a few days.

There are trekking trails on the other side of the river for those who do not want to hike along the road, but the budget to maintain the trekking trail is not enough.

In Upper Pisang village at 3,300m, Norbu Chhiring ‘Japs’ runs a guesthouse with a view of the north face of Annapurna II from its windows. But this September, the view was blocked by angry clouds.

In Spring 2019, an avalanche from Annapurna II buried Nepali guide Ajay Dhakal and his Dutch client Vincend Jan Bloen. Rescuers needed metal detectors to reach the bodies clutching a tree.

“Landslides make sounds,” says Japs. “Avalanches, you don’t always hear until you are in it.”

As snow softens because of a warming Himalaya, there is more instability in the snowpack that triggers avalanches, making tragedies like this more common in the mountains. Even Pisang Peak above the village, which rarely had avalanches, now has them. 

Local architecture has also had to adapt to the erratic weather. As average annual rainfall has doubled in the last 14 years, the mud roofs common in Manang have converted to sloping tin ones.

Norbu feels safer in Upper Pisang, high above the Marsyangdi. Those in Chame and Tal, closer to the river, are vulnerable to floods. He says, “I can’t say if it’s three years or 20, but it will not always be safe to live down there.”

Umakant Sapkota is seen as an outsider in Manang village. He is from the Chitwan district and is posted here as secretary at the ACA office and says it has not been easy to balance ACA conservation interests with local needs.

“We have two choices, the people’s choice and the environment’s choice,” Sapkota explains. ACA urges locals not to cut down trees, but there is a demand for timber for guesthouses.

“Their interest is to earn money, ours is to protect,” adds Sapkota, acknowledging that locals know a lot about changes to the Himalayan environment, “but local people also want to earn money. Tourism is a seasonal business… but nature is here 365 days a year.”

On the trail to Tilicho Lake at 4,918m, a group of guides sat huddled by a small fire that lit up the otherwise dark room. They included the owner of the guesthouse Bijay Gurung, who listened to a hiker describe his third attempt to get up to the lake. 

The man wore rain boots dripping with melted snow. The storm had dumped hip-deep snow. He once again did not make it to the lake that day because of the risk of avalanches as the wet snow melted.

In the 12 years he has run the guesthouse, Bijay says this is only the second time it has snowed in September. Volunteers leave early next morning to clear the trails for the next set of trekkers headed up to Tilicho. They will be the first to make it since the start of the storm.

On the next valley, Ang Kami Sherpa stood tall, beaming with pride among the scattered orange tents below Thorong La at 5,415m. Up here, the flood in Kathmandu feels distant.

Dark blue skies and low winds allow for a good weather window when students from the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) summit cross Thorong on 3 October. The students are training for their Bachelor’s in Mountaineering, preparing to be the next generation of Nepali climbers and guides.

Sherpa is a support climber, and tells us that global warming can make mountaineering easier because there is less ice on the slopes.

“Every year, there are new changes to adapt to, especially early in the season, we need more and more ladders and rope-team support,” he says, adding that the biggest change is that melting snow means that there are more crevasses. 

Suk Bahadur Gurung worked in the mountaineering industry for 16 years until the Covid pandemic. He now owns the Prasanna Hotel and Lodge near Chame. He has led clients up Mera Peak and other 7,000-metre peaks, but feels that the industry is becoming too competitive and unpredictable.

“The weather is harder and harder to predict with climate change,” says Suk, adding that clients who spend a lot of money to scale the highest mountains get angry when they cannot summit.

NMA’s Gandaki president Shes Kanta Sharma spent 35 years guiding and climbing in the mountains. He says, “We are struggling to find how we can earn money and protect our mountains.” 

Uncertain weather has also made Nepal’s trekking industry more unpredictable. Tila Roka has trekked the Annapurna Circuit more than 50 times in her 13 years as a guide.  

More often recently, guides cannot determine how much money they will make in a season and whether it will provide for them for the rest of the year.

“This is a seasonal job, and we can’t predict how the weather and conditions will be during the guiding season,” she tells us. “Every season, something happens. But each year, it gets worse.”

As of early October, Roka had multiple trekking trips for the season cancelled as news of the Nepal floods went out to the world. She is unsure when her next trek will be.

The mountaineering industry is no longer the economic saving grace that it once was, says Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa, a glaciologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

His grandfather was a member of the first Everest Expedition in 1953 but has banned his grandchildren from climbing. So Tenzing was sent to school in Kathmandu.

“Mountaineering is not a sport here,” says Tenzing, “It’s a way of living. But now that education is more accessible, people don’t need to be in the mountains anymore.” 

While the September storm has cleared and the floods have subsided, there is an understanding among Nepalis that this devastation will not be the last. The lives of those living in the Himalaya continue to exist in a symbiotic relationship with the environment.

It is unseasonably warm now in Manang after the snow. Most here feel that there are many more disasters in store in the future. They can tell that nature is restless.  

Moving mountains and women

Women guides who fought  gender stereotypes now struggle against the climate crisis 

Nepalis define mountains differently than most of the world. A mountain only graduates from the term ‘hill’ to ‘peak’ if it is above 7,000m. The word ‘mountain’ is saved only for those above 7,000m. Even then, it is not a mountain if there is no snow.

By these definitions, when the snowline moves up every year due to global warming, the notion of what is and is not a mountain in Nepal changes as well.

 “Our profession exists because of the mountains,” says trekking guide and 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking Company co-founder Lucky Chhetri, “So we need to respect them.”

The 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking was founded in 1996 partly to engage grieving widows by having them participate. Three years later in 1999, it started the non-profit Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN) female trekking guide training at a time when women were not considered fit for the mountains.

“It took time to convince people here that women could guide,” says Chhetri, adding that there was also a need among female travellers for female guides.

Today, the program attracts more women from the cities. But 3 Sisters still leads by the founding principle to bring Nepali women into the male-dominated trekking industry and promote gender equality in the tourism sector. 

Women guides who fought gender stereotypes now struggle against the climate crisis, and the 3 Sisters is leading the charge. 

Lauren Fox is a documentary filmmaker and journalist, currently working as a Reporting fellow with the Pulitzer Center. She is a recent graduate of Boston University. She grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado -- inspiring much of the work that she creates.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.