Livelihood Strategies of People in the Himalayan Region of Nepal: A Study in the Villages of Eastern Manang

This is a study on the changing livelihood strategies of people in Manang -a district that lies on the northern side of Annapurna Himals. I have focused my study on the villages in the eastern part of lower Manang. Primarily, my study has been done in these villages: Besisahar, Khotro, Nachai, Tachai, Tilche, Dharapani, Yak Kharka, Surki Khola and Bhimthang. As defined locally, these villages fall under the region of Nyishang and Gyasumdo in the Manang district. In this paper I talk about the shifts made by the people in their livestock keeping/raising from yaks to dzhopas to mules, depending upon what became most strategic to keep in the changing economic scenario of Manang. Moreover, there is a section in this paper about the crop rotation strategy that was locally developed many generations ago and is still in place today. There are tables showing which vegetables are planted and picked in which months. A section is devoted to talking about the trend of collecting yarsagumba in the recent days. Another section has been devoted to highlight the impacts of tourism on the economic state of the people of this region. In order to conduct my research, I traveled to the site and conducted interviews with the villagers. Most of the interviews were with people that were met at random in the villages that I visited. There were also many key-informant interviews where a specific person was sought after to gather information on a specific topic. Besides these interviews, much data for this paper has also been collected from group discussions.