After their name in the male-dominated trekking business,
three sisters operate on their own to lead treks for women only.
Many people did not believe it, when sisters Lucky, Dicky
and Nicky Chhetri started guiding trekkers in Nepal’s challenging mountain
routes in 1994.
“In the beginning, people thought that we running some
kind of sex tourism, instead of trekking, travelling through the mountains with
foreigners for weeks,” says Lucky.
Surrounded with doubts in an industry dominated by men,
they were the only female participants out of 452 Nepalis who climbed one of
the country’s peaks in 2011. Now all three of them are in their mid-forties and
not only have they established a successful company of female guides and
porters, but also given a pathway for girls from Nepal’s most remote and rural
areas towards employment and empowerment.
The 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking is the first company to
employ female guides in Nepal, which now employs around 25 women as guides and
40 as assistant guides and porters.
After leaving their hometown of Darjeeling for Pokhara, which
is a popular lakeside tourist destination at the foothills of the Annapurna
mountain range, these three sisters opened a restaurant and guesthouse in 1993.
After a year or so, stories about female trekkers feeling
uncomfortable with their male guides and porters in the mountains led them to
post a sign advertising treks “by women, for women."
During the first season, Lucky guided trekkers to
Annapurna Base Camp, at 4,130 meters. She had herself trained on a basic course
at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling.
'We are investing in our girls'
Mountain guiding in Nepal is a prosperous business, as
many tourists visiting Nepal get engaged in some form of trekking.
After each season, the three sisters’ business expanded
rapidly, with more and more trekkers opting for female guides.
While guiding the trekkers through the mountains, the
sisters noticed the ruthless conditions of the young girls living in the remote
areas, including some who had been sold by their families to work in trekking
lodges.
“We knew the women living in the remote mountain areas
had to face many challenges like emotional, physical and economic hard
life," says Lucky. "The girls have to walk miles for water, climb
trees for firewood and work in fields, which hardly offers any good opportunity
and a good ambition."
She recalls her thoughts, “If I can be a guide, the women
living in the mountain regions, who go through so much physical hardship, also
can do it.”
The Chhetri sisters’ successful company is only a part of
their success story.
Two years later, after starting the company, they
established Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN), which is a non-profit organization
that offers training to the girls over the age of 16 in becoming mountain
guides.
The organization offers a six-month training period,
during which girls from around Nepal come to EWN to learn practical mountain
skills, including rock climbing, guiding, cartography and first aid, as well as
women’s health, leadership, English and flora and fauna of the Himalayas, in
both a classroom and practical setting.
“When the girls come at the beginning, they are very shy
and cover their faces, but later they get accustomed with it, they laugh and
share their experiences of guiding,” says Lucky.
“We are investing in our girls as a human resource.”
The training is free.
Many girls continue to work for 3 Sisters, first as
porters, then assistant guides, then as full guides capable of leading trekking
groups throughout Nepal’s many mountain routes.
0 comments:
Post a Comment