Pokhara, Nepal - Kamala Biswakarma wears the pants in her family. Literally. Saris or kurtas are usually standard wear for Nepali women, but Ms. Biswakarma, at 30, wears pants, a T-shirt, and hiking boots to work. She could almost be mistaken for a foreigner in this tourist hub because no other Nepali women of her age dress as she does.

It would be incredibly difficult to trek in the Himalayas wearing a long polyester sari – and Biswakarma is a trekking guide for Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN), a nongovernmental organization that trains and employs women to lead treks in the Himalayas.

A quiet rebel, Biswakarma has not only shed her colorful robes and donned a more comfortable outfit, she also brings home a paycheck. She earns more than her husband and even more than many Nepali men. To work in a male-dominated industry, with a salary equal to "high government officials," is almost unheard of for women in most parts of Nepal.

I met Biswakarma when I came to teach at EWN for one of their month-long trek-guide training sessions. As she maintained eye contact and asked pointed questions in class, she clearly stood out as a veteran among the fidgety, shy trainees who'd just arrived.

She wasn't really in class to learn, as much as to be an example to the new trainees. She has been a competent trekking guide for several years now. Training with EWN since 1999, her résumé now boasts 26 treks.

EWN – the brainchild of Lucky, Nicky, and Dicky Chhetri, three sisters with a sixth sense for business and a profound sense of generosity – sends its graduates to guide for 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking, a company the Chhetris created to cater to women trekkers. The idea was hatched nearly a decade ago, when the sisters – Nepalis who'd been raised and educated in India – owned a guesthouse here. Their female clientele brought back stories from the trail about being abused and harassed by male guides and porters. The sisters saw a demand for female guides.

Their revolutionary venture encountered overwhelming resistance from locals at first. Biswakarma, among the first female guides, almost gave up. She now recalls one of her first treks when – overnighting at a tea house in a remote village – she awoke to a loud pounding on her door. It was a drunk male guide from another company. In the loudest voice she could muster, she yelled, "Go away! If you don't I will shout loud enough for everyone to hear." That was enough to scare him away. But, she says, she wondered, "Why am I doing this?

"It was really hard to trek with [other male] guides," Biswakarma explains. "They were jealous of women taking their jobs."

Despite the resistance, Biswakarma's successes hardened her determination. "People can say what they want. I have to do it. I have to make a different kind of society for Nepali women."

 

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