Women Guides for Women Trekkers: About the Chhetri Sisters

Appalachia, June 2003

This story starts with three sisters and a few large dreams. Lucky, Dicky, and Nicky Chhetri were raised and high school educated in Darjeeling, India, during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1990 — on a whim, she claims — Lucky and a friend decided to enroll in a climber’s training program offered by the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Encouraged by her success in this program, Lucky began to think of ways to get involved with the growing Himalayan trekking industry. The first opportunity came after the death of the Chhetris’ father in 1991, when the sisters agreed to pool their small inheritances and move to the Nepali resort town of Pokhara. Here they opened a restaurant and lodge for trekkers. This was a bold move for the sisters in a male-dominated culture, and they were not universally well received in the Lakeside tourist district. While the people of Darjeeling were subjects of Nepal until the late nineteenth century, the area was then annexed by the British due to its rich tea-growing potential, and residents here are still viewed as outsiders in many regions of modern Nepal.

Interestingly, the Chhetris’ entrance into the Pokhara tourist scene in the early 1990s coincided with growing dissatisfaction among foreign women trekkers concerning their male guides. Accounts of harassment, swindling, and sometimes even rape were reported in the local papers. It was not long before foreign women staying in the Chhetri Sisters Lodge began to encourage the sisters to organize treks for them.

In 1994 Lucky finally agreed to join a married couple for a short trek into the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal’s premier trekking destination. The trip was successful, the clients were delighted, and Lucky began to glimpse the potential for a thriving business. That same year, the sisters hung out their shingle advertising a new service: Three Sisters Trekking — Women Guides for Women Trekkers. Business grew steadily, with Lucky and Dicky doing the guiding and Nicky managing the guesthouse and bookings.