Where Tibetan salt met hill-country rice
For centuries salt was the most valuable thing that came over the Himalaya. It was dug from dry lakes on the Tibetan plateau and carried south on the backs of yaks, sheep and mules, down through Lo and the Kali Gandaki. Grain, sugar, cloth, iron and later manufactured goods went north the other way. Somewhere along the valley the two flows had to meet, be weighed and be taxed. From the 19th century that place was Tukuche, in the heart of the Thakali country the Thakali call Thak Khola.
In the second half of the 19th century, under the Rana government in Kathmandu, Thakali merchant families won the contract to collect customs on the salt trade through Thak Khola. With it came control over much of the trade itself. The leading families carried the title subba, built the great houses that still line Tukuche's lanes and sent their sons to study and trade in Kathmandu and India. For several decades Tukuche was one of the wealthiest villages in the Nepal hills, until the contract system ended around the late 1920s.
The final blow came after 1959, when the border with Tibet was tightened and Indian salt arrived by road and rail to the plains. The caravans dwindled and many Tukuche families followed the trade south, opening hotels, shops and the Thakali kitchens now found all over Nepal. The village population fell. Today some families have returned to restore their houses, run lodges and keep up the gompas, and Thakali from across Nepal come back for clan rituals and festivals. The great houses are still here, waiting.
