Tamang homestay in Gatlang

Your host family welcomes you with tea and shows you to a simple room, often upstairs above the family's living space. Houses are built close together around small courtyards, with heavy timber frames and carved windows darkened by smoke. Life centres on the kitchen hearth, where food is cooked over a wood fire. Rooms are simple: a bed or mattress, thick blankets, a window over the lane. Toilets are usually shared and may be outside. Hot water is limited, so expect a bucket wash rather than a shower, and bring a headlamp for the night.

Depending on the season, you might help harvest potatoes, carry fodder, shell maize or tend goats. Your guide translates as hosts talk about family, farming, the Chilime power plant, and how the floods of recent years have touched the community. Children often take visitors around the village. Children are often the best guides to the village, keen to show you their school, the gompa and the best viewpoints. Older people may speak only Tamang, and a few words from you, starting with Fyafulla, will earn a warm smile and often an invitation to tea.

Dinner is dhindo or dal bhat with greens and potatoes, and sometimes chhyang. In the morning, walk to the gompa or up to Parvati Kunda. Homestay fees go to the family through the community network, and the stay is one of the most direct ways to support the village. Breakfast is usually tea with Tibetan bread, porridge or boiled potatoes. If you are staying two nights, ask your host to show you how dhindo is made; stirring the thick porridge takes strength and practice, and your attempts will be a source of good-humoured laughter in the kitchen.