Three sisters who put women on Nepal's trails

In the early 1990s, three sisters ran a small lodge in Pokhara, Nepal, and heard the same complaint from female trekkers again and again: they felt unsafe or unwelcome with male guides. Lucky, Dicky and Nicky Chhetri decided to do something about it, and the result was an all-women trekking agency and a training charity.

Accounts differ on the exact dates. One account says the sisters founded Empowering Women of Nepal and 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking Company in 1994; another says the company was formally established in 1998 and the charity registered in 1999. We have not tried to settle the difference here.

The idea was not easily accepted. Reporting says that when they began, the idea of women leading treks was so unfamiliar that some local people suspected the agency was a cover for something else, and competitors tried to undermine it. The sisters continued, and the company is described in a Women's Empowerment Principles profile as the only trekking agency that specialises in trained female guides.

The charity, Empowering Women of Nepal, offers free vocational training, paid for by a share of the company's profits reported at 15 to 20 per cent. According to the same reporting, more than 800 disadvantaged or rural women have trained as guides and assistants, and the company employs nearly 200 women across Nepal in a trekking season. Lucky Chhetri was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2004, and was born in Darjeeling in 1965, according to Ashoka's profile.

For a traveller, the practical lesson is that who guides you matters. If you trek in Nepal, ask your agency how guides and porters are trained, paid and insured, and consider booking a woman guide, particularly if you are travelling solo.

This profile is based on published reporting. The numbers are drawn from different years and may have changed.