I started guiding in the Khumbu in 1998 as a porter’s son. By 2005 I had a lodge, a rope, four staff, and a small ledger book. Twenty years later I have a lodge, several ropes, twenty-six staff, and a slightly larger ledger book. That is on purpose.
We are asked, sometimes weekly, to grow. Franchise. Open regional offices. Add ten more itineraries. We politely decline. A house that runs eighty journeys a year can know every guest by name, every guide by their first summit, every porter by the village they were born in. A company of a thousand cannot. And so we remain a house.