Where Nepal tried a new kind of conservation
For generations Ghandruk was a Gurung farming village, growing millet, maize and potatoes on terraces, grazing sheep and cattle on high pastures, and sending its young men into the British and Indian Gurkha regiments. Army pensions paid for stone houses and helped fund schools, and retired soldiers became leaders on village committees.
By the early 1980s trekking was booming, and so was the cutting of forest for lodge fires. In 1986 the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, now the National Trust for Nature Conservation, launched the Annapurna Conservation Area Project with Ghandruk as its pilot. The idea was new for Nepal: no fences or soldiers, but village committees managing forests, lodge standards and permit income themselves.
With the project's help, villages built small micro-hydro plants, kerosene and later gas replaced firewood in many lodges, and community forests recovered. The Annapurna Conservation Area grew to 7,629 km2, Nepal's largest protected area. Since 2015 Ghandruk has been part of Annapurna Rural Municipality, and a road now reaches it. The village is busier, with new concrete lodges among the stone, but the upper lanes and the mountains are unchanged.
