So leaf; Upper Mustang tourism has meant the individual's gain and the community's loss.
Life was hectic enough before tourism came to Upper Mustang. In the eight bustling months when Lobas stayed in Lo, fields had to be prepared and sown, irrigation canals had to be repaired, sheep, goats, and dzo-pa had to be fattened and their wool collected and spun. Villagers contributed a few days' labour lo their gumba and another few days for village works. Fields had to be weeded, grass, shrub, and dung collected, rice bought. Some young men and women migrated to the two-harvest villages of lower Mustang to work for cash or grains. In the meantime, small village disputes had to be resolved, and the inter-village misunderstandings that escalated into small-time wars had to be settled peaceably. Slack periods were filled with hearty three, four, five-day picnics, parties and guff-sessions. In late August and September, fields were harvested, food grains processed and hay stored, and then the Lobas packed off to southern Nepal or India to conduct their winter trade.
Shooting the breeze by the gates of Manthang may soon be a thing of the past. In April 1992, the first tourists and their support staff arrived, and after that, a stream of foreigners followed. The weather went bad, and some of the elders grumbled, but then again, there was money to be made in renting out horses, mules and the threshing-grounds-cum-camping-sites. Furthermore, every tourist was an important person: a surgeon, a biochemical engineer, a writer, a diplomat, a donor. Some promised money for schools, some conducted dental clinics, some offered their free expert advice. The Lobas duely khata-ed them and sent them off.
As in the other Himalayan regions of Nepal, tourism brought with it development. In the winter of 1992, the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) established its office in Lo Manthang under the direction of the Ministry of Tourism. In a unique experiment in decentralising the benefits of tourism, the Ministry was to channel 60 percent of the entry fee charged to Upper Mustang tourists back into the community through ACAP's development works. Other development agencies, such as CARE/Nepal, also moved up.