The trekking industry exploits the hill porter, little realising that short-term greed invites long-term disaster. A minimum portering wage must be fixed. There should be more, not less, intervention by government in the trekking marketplace.
Thirty years ago, the first of those Westerners to have fallen under the spell of walking in the Himalaya remained behind to organise journeys for others. Among those who stayed back to make a living from providing such a service was Col. Jimmy Roberts, followed a few years later by Mike Cheney. Both men set standards which have been observed since by the better trekking companies.
There are now more than 200 trekking agencies in Kathmandu that sell treks throughout the Himalaya and Karakoram, and the number is growing. In the West, new agencies continue to set shop and they vie with each other in trying to attract Himalaya-bound mountain walkers. It has become a big business with few constraints. While there seem to be no bounds on the growth of the trekking industry, there is very little interest in regulating it.
But the alarms bells can be heard, all the way from the European Alps, where "Alp Action" is swinging into gear to curb the gross commercialisation and overcrowding, which has led to pollution, acid rain and decaying forests; every other slope is strung with ski tows and lifts. In the free-for-all market economy of the Swiss cantons, greed on grand and institutional scale is ruining the things which all tourists want. It has been said that tourism destroys tourism, and this seems especially true with mountain tourism.