Women Who Move Mountains: Trekking In Nepal

On Day 2 in Kathmandu, we walked into a kitchen and learned to cook. 

It sounds simple. It wasn't. 

The kitchen belonged to Sungabha Nepal — previously known as Seven Women — a social enterprise founded in 2006 by an Australian woman with seven participants and a clear-eyed belief that economic independence changes lives. It still does. To date, more than 5,000 women have been educated, trained, and employed through Sungabha's programs. Most of them arrived having been marginalised or ostracised because of disabilities — pushed to the edges of their communities by stigma that had nothing to do with their capabilities and everything to do with circumstance. 

In that kitchen, we made Nepali food and swapped stories about women who had rebuilt their lives from a very difficult starting point. I won't pretend I wasn't emotional. The food was delicious. The conversation was nourishing. 

The weight of what we leave behind 

Before the trek, we spent time with Sagarmatha Next — an organisation doing extraordinary work in the Khumbu region, the gateway to Everest. They're tackling Nepal's waste crisis head-on: collecting rubbish from one of the world's most visited — and most littered — mountain environments, and transforming it. Artists up-cycle the collected material into artwork. The information centre educates travellers about the scale of the problem. 

Their Carry Me Back program is elegant in its simplicity: if every trekker carries just 1kg of rubbish back down the mountain, the cumulative impact is enormous. One kilogram per person. The math is humbling. 

This trip was supported by the Intrepid Foundation's partnership with Sagarmatha Next, with post-trip donations dollar-matched. If you want to help — and the Everest waste problem is genuinely urgent — you can donate here. 

Dolma's kitchen 

After the trek, we drove to Pokhara — a beautiful lakeside city at the foothills of the Himalayas — and were welcomed into the home of Dolma, a second-generation Tibetan refugee whose family migrated to Nepal in the 1960s and now lives in one of four Tibetan refugee camps in Pokhara. 

She taught us to make momos. Traditional, hand-folded, uncompromising momos. 

Dolma did not accept thin dough or lopsided folds. She held us to account — warmly, firmly, repeatedly — until every dumpling was correct. We ate them for lunch. They were perfect. She knew they were. There was a particular satisfaction in her smile that I think had less to do with the dumplings and everything to do with a room full of grown women finally learning to do something properly. 

Days for Girls 

On our second-to-last day, we visited Days for Girls — an NGO working in Kirtipur, just outside Kathmandu, doing something that sounds straightforward and is actually radical: providing menstrual education to young women and men, teaching consent and self-defence, and distributing reusable pads. 

In Nepal, the practice of Chhaupadi — which prohibits women and girls from normal family activities while menstruating, treating them as impure — is still present in parts of the country. Days for Girls is working to dismantle it through education, dignity, and practical support. 

I left that visit feeling the particular kind of quiet that comes from encountering people doing genuinely necessary work without fanfare. 

Nepal is full of these organisations. Tucked into cities and camps and kitchens, they are changing the conditions of women's lives one skill, one conversation, one dumpling at a time. Tourism — done intentionally — connects you to them. And connection, as it turns out, is the whole point. 

Women-only travel is not new. But something is shifting. 

The market data reflects it. The conversations reflect it. And last week in Nepal, surrounded by women from across our global business hiking through the Annapurna foothills with an all-female porter crew and guide, I felt it. 

There is something categorically different about travelling with women. I don't say that to exclude — I say it because it's true, and because the travel industry is finally building products that honour that truth rather than apologise for it. 

What changes when the group is all women 

There's an ease that settles in quickly. Conversations go deeper faster. Vulnerability appears at altitude without much fanfare — there's something about being physically challenged together, sweaty and uphill and slightly underprepared for how hard Day 1 would be, that strips away professional veneer in the most productive way. You learn more about the people beside you in three days of trekking than in three years of back-to-back meetings. 

You also notice differently. The all-female porter crew carrying our bags through the Himalayas hit differently when you're already attuned to the women in the room. The story of Sungabha lands with more weight. Dolma's kitchen feels like homecoming rather than tourism. Days for Girls doesn't feel like a field trip — it feels personal. 

I'm not sure the experience would have had the same texture in a mixed group. I think it would have been wonderful, but different. This was specific.

The community impact is real 

This is important for those of us in the industry to understand and amplify: women-only travel isn't just good for the travellers. It's often structured specifically to support women in the destination communities. 

Our trip was led by women. Guided by women. Portered by women. Our cooking classes were run by women who needed economic independence to reclaim their lives. Our momo lesson was hosted by a refugee woman in her own home. The NGOs we visited serve women and girls. 

The supply chain of this kind of travel, when designed intentionally, is a genuinely different model. Travel dollars flow to women-led enterprises, employ female guides in an industry where they remain underrepresented, and fund education and training for women who have been pushed out of economic participation. 

That's not a marketing angle. That's the product. 

On travelling as a leader 

I travel a lot for work. I think about travel constantly — it's literally my job. But I don't often travel in a way that leaves me feeling genuinely moved. 

This did. 

There's something about stepping into the countries and communities your business connects people to — not as an operator or a strategist, but as a traveller — that recalibrates your compass. You remember what the experience actually feels like. You remember why it matters. You return to the work with something that no briefing deck can give you. 

We kicked off Women's History Month in the Himalayas, learning to fold dumplings in a refugee camp kitchen, walking behind women who carry more than we do with more grace than we manage, and meeting women who rebuilt their lives from nothing with skills and determination and a willingness to welcome strangers into their story. 

I left Nepal with a full heart. And a very clear sense of what travel, at its best, is supposed to do.