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Disasters and Reconstruction in a Mountain Tourism Area:
A Case from 2015 Nepal Earthquake in Solukhumbu, Nepal
Fukachi FURUKAWA
Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Global Society, Kyushu University
744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan
E-mail: furukawa@scs.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Abstract
A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, followed by its largest aftershock ofmagnitude 7.3 on May 12. This series of earthquakes killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000
others, damaging more than 800,000 buildings across Nepal. This paper provides ethnographic material on thesituation at the time of the earthquake and its aftermath in Village P, located in a mountain tourism destinationin the Solukhumbu District of eastern Nepal. By tracing the recovery process of the village, I argue thatrecovery from the earthquake damage was accomplished mainly through a network established by the tourism
industry and that several characteristics of mountain tourism destinations have positively affected the process.
Based on such data, I explain that the vulnerability that characterizes mountainous terrain is also linked to its
resilience and argue that disaster prevention measures, and development projects in general, in mountainous
areas should be promoted using an approach that takes advantage of the intrinsic resilience of mountainous
environments.
Key words: 2015 Nepal earthquake, disaster, Himalaya, Sherpas, tourism

1. Introduction
A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April
2015, followed by its largest aftershock of magnitude 7.3
on May 12. This series of quakes killed nearly 9,000
people and injured more than 22,000 others, damaging
more than 800,000 buildings across Nepal. The disasteralso caused significant damage to mountain communities
to varying degrees. The purpose of this paper is to provide
ethnographic material on the situation at the time ofdisaster and examine the recovery process in an area
serving as a destination for mountain tourism,
investigating the 2015 Nepal earthquake and the effects it
had on a Himalayan village.
At the moment of the initial earthquake, I was in the
Khumbu region of Solukhumbu District in eastern Nepal
for fieldwork. I stayed there for the next two months andspent time with the people during the tremors. How did
the earthquake damage Nepal’s remote mountainous areas,
how did the people respond to the earthquake, and how
did communities in the roadless mountainous terrain
recover? Based on research in Village P, located in themountain tourism destination of Khumbu in northern
Solukhumbu, this paper describes how the vulnerability
that characterizes mountainous terrain is also linked to its
Global Environmental Research
27/2023 125-132
printed in Japan

resilience and argues that disaster prevention measures inmountainous areas should be promoted using an approachthat takes advantage of the intrinsic resilience of
mountainous areas.

2. Literature on the 2015 Nepal Earthquake
Nepal is an earthquake-prone country affected by
Himalayan orogenic movements, with a history of major
earthquakes striking approximately once every 80 years.
A significant amount of literature has been published on
the 2015 Nepal earthquake since immediately after its
occurrence (e.g., Hossain et al., 2015). Some researchers
have analyzed Nepal’s vulnerability to the earthquake interms of societal characteristics, such as multi-caste andpatriarchal systems (e.g., Arora, 2022; Hülssiep et al.,2021). Regarding the reconstruction process, it has been
pointed out that the government’s centralized support
measures failed and that each village followed different
reconstruction processes (e.g., Daly et al., 2017).
Most previous studies, however, are based on
post-earthquake interviews, and there are no academic
articles that have described the situation at the moment of
the earthquake as far as I can ascertain. Also, many of the©2023 AIRIES126

F. FURUKAWA

previous studies focused on the damage to andreconstruction of urban areas. The importance of thispaper is that it provides ethnographic material on theearthquake and subsequent reconstruction process,specifically in an area at an altitude of over 3,000 metersserving as a destination for mountain tourism.
In terms of the impact on the tourism industry and its
destinations, Min et al. (2020) reported from amacroeconomic perspective that heritage tourism
destinations have strong resilience. Also, Ketter (2016)
found that the media strategy taken by the Nepal Tourism
Board (NTB) after the earthquake was shifted to target“crisis resilient” trekkers. On the other hand, Mishra et al.
(2017) pointed out that roads are crucial forreconstruction. Therefor another feature of this paper
is that it clarifies the resilience and reconstructionof a roadless mountain tourist destination, using
anthropological micro-observations.

3. The Research Site, 2015 Nepal Earthquake
and Related Damage
I have conducted research in Solukhumbu District,
especially in the Khumbu region in the north (Fig. 1). The
Khumbu region, located in the southern foothills of Mt.
Everest and home to the Sherpa people, has been
designated as Sagarmatha (Everest) National Park and is
now a popular mountain tourism destination, attracting
tens of thousands of trekkers and climbers annually.
There are no roadways in this rugged mountainous
terrain. Tourists typically fly into the airstrip built in thevillage of Lukla, located at an altitude of 2,840 meters.
The main trekking route is from Lukla to Everest BaseCamp (5,364 m) and back, which takes about 10 days to
two weeks. Nowadays, many residents of Khumbu work
as trekking guides and high-altitude porters. Namche(Namche Bazaar, 3,440 m), the largest village in Khumbu,
is a two-day walk from Lukla. This horseshoe-shaped
village now brims with more than 100 lodges and othertourist facilities. Village P (3,800 m), where I conducted
my research, is a half-day walk from Namche, with 450

Fig. 1

Map of Nepal and the Epicenters.

people and 90 households. Although the village itself is
not a major tourist destination, more than 50 Everest
ascenders reside in the village, and most households
receive some income from the tourism industry.
In Solukhumbu District, the death toll from the 2015
Nepal Earthquake was relatively low: 22 people died, 18
of whom were climbing Mt. Everest, including sevenforeigners (Government of Nepal, n.d.). However, theearthquake caused significant damage to the region’s
buildings, mostly built of stone, and resulted in landslides
that cut off trails, electricity and other infrastructure.
Furthermore, the tourism industry, which is almost the
only source of cash income for the region, suffered severe
damage and temporarily disappeared.
My methodology is cultural anthropologicalfieldwork based on participant observation and interviews.
I had lived in the Khumbu region for a total of one year
and nine months up to the occurrence of the earthquake.
My survey was primarily conducted in Nepali, with the
supplementary use of Sherpa and English.

4. Two Tremors of the Earthquake
In this section, the situation at the time of theearthquake is described in diary style, based on my fieldnotes, which were partly cited in my immediate report ofthe earthquake (Furukawa, 2016).
4.1 First Tremor
25 April 2015. Early in the morning, I arrived at the
Lukla airstrip and started heading toward Village P withmy Sherpa friend. As we walked along the trail, wereached the outskirts of Phakding village, which has acluster of tea shops. At 11:56 a.m., a familiar face spottedme and was coming out of a shop to shake hands with me
when a huge tremor hit us, making me unsteady on myfeet. People were jumping out of buildings one after
another, shouting, “It’s an earthquake (bhuincalo aayo)! A
house in front of me collapsed from the second floor withthe sound of wall stones rattling (Fig. 2). This slow
horizontal tremor seemed to last for about 30 seconds.

Fig. 2

Broken House.

Disasters and reconstruction in a mountain tourism area

When the tremor stopped, someone pointed across theriver, and we saw a white-gray line of sand crumbling ona shrubby green slope. A moment later, a thunderous roarfilled the air. People started shouting warnings like, “It’scoming again!” and “Stay away from the houses!”
We saw several groups of trekkers running down the
trail from the direction of Namche. It was the spring
trekking season, and there were many tourists in the area.
At this point, cell phone service was almost completely
disrupted, with only an announcement that the service wasto be used for emergency calls only. We passed
settlements along the trail where residents had come outof their houses and were anxiously standing by theroadside and talking to each other. We decided to headtoward Namche and exchanged what information we
knew with the people we met along the way. There wasmuch divergence, however, from one group to another.
Some said that Kathmandu had not suffered much damage,while others insisted that the city was almost in ruins. The
information was confusing. Then it started to rain.
Cracks ran along the mountain trail, and several
landslides had obliterated it (Fig. 3). This forced us toclimb up the mountainside to detour around them. As time
passed, however, new trails came to be stamped out bypeople and animals on the collapsed slopes, andimprovised footholds were created using wood scraps andflat stones.
We reached my friend’s house in the settlement of
Chumoa around 2 pm. When we entered the room, we
saw that about 20 rocks, each the size of a human head,
had fallen through the plywood ceiling (Fig. 4). We
decided to spend the night at this house. We removed thedamaged ceiling boards that were hanging overhead andstacked them up in the corner of the room. Then we threw
the rocks outside and created a sleeping place in the
middle of the room, away from the walls.
At 3:06 p.m., my friend’s family and I were drinking
tea inside when the house creaked again with anotherlarge aftershock, so we quickly ran outside. Next door,
several Western groups were taking shelter in a small
lodge. I saw a barefooted woman crying and a man, who
seemed to have rushed out of the lodge, comforting her.
Nepalese trekking guides told us that they could not

Fig. 3Landslide.

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contact their office, so they were planning to return to
Lukla and then head back to Kathmandu. After that, every
time an aftershock struck, people rushed out of thebuildings one after another. One of the guides murmured
in Nepali, “We won’t be able to sleep tonight,” and we alllaughed. Around 11:30 p.m., we felt a huge tremor.
Someone shouted, “Here it comes!” We all ran outside
again.
26 April 2015. Early in the morning, I saw manygroups of trekkers coming down the trail from Namche.
They told us that people in Namche had heard andbelieved rumors that another big earthquake would hit,
supposedly at noon, and all the residents had closed theirlodges and stores and fled. At this point, however, sometrekkers chose to continue trekking. I could see thatseveral groups were going in the same direction as we.
We arrived in Namche at around 1:00 p.m. and weretaking a break at a teahouse located at the entrance to thevillage. As we were resting, I felt a relatively large tremor,
which caused the building to creak and scream. When we
stepped outside, we noticed cracks running through thewall of the teahouse we had just been in. Looking acrossthe valley, I saw a large landslide occurring, with a cloudof dust rising from it. In the center of Namche, all thelodges were locked, and foreign trekkers, especially those
without a guide, were going back and forth looking for aroom to stay in. The elementary school was full of tents,
and people were staying in the middle of vacant spaces toavoid the town’s densely clustered buildings (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4Inside of a Broken Room.

Fig. 5People Staying Outside.

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F. FURUKAWA

Fortunately, I was able to find a room at a small lodge
owned by an acquaintance. In Namche, electricity wasavailable, but telephone service was still intermittent.
Just before 5:00 p.m., I was in my room when thelodge owner’s wife called me from outside. She said it
was time for another aftershock. I went out unwillingly to
see what would happen. As I expected, nothing happened,
and we all went back inside laughing.
At night, the lodge owner and his family left thelodge to sleep in tents at the elementary school. He toldme, “I would like to find a tent for you, but there are nospare ones, so you should run out if an earthquake strikes.”
In the middle of the night, whenever there was anaftershock, I could hear voices of cheer outside.
27 April 2015. We left Namche for Village P. On theway, people we passed on the way warned us that anotherlarge earthquake would hit at 1:00 pm that day, so we had
to reach the village before then, otherwise it would be
dangerous. When I asked them who had said so, they gave
vague answers such as “Someone heard it on TV.”We arrived in Village P a little after 1:00 pm. As weentered the village, we saw women sitting on blue sheetsin the middle of a potato field, chatting over tea. They
explained to us that it was time for an earthquake. They
also told us that their houses had been destroyed but
fortunately, no deaths or injuries had occurred in thevillage. Many of the village men who had been working
on Mt. Everest with foreign climbing parties were safe,
but some were stranded in high camps, waiting to be
rescued by helicopter. Although the extent of the damage
varied, the walls of all the houses were broken as far as I
could see. The villagers were using logs to prop up
slanting walls of houses, and tents had been set up here
and there in the fields. The villagers were starting torepair the houses that had suffered less damage.
At the time of the initial earthquake, the outlook in
Solukhumbu seemed optimistic. Although buildings had
been damaged, there was still some tourist traffic.
Residents of less-damaged houses returned inside after the
four-day aftershock warning period, allegedly reported on
TV news, ended. When I visited Namche again on May 4,
many lodges and grocery stores were already back inbusiness. A lodge manager said he planned to decrease thenumber of his staff, but the lodge would keep operating
until the next trekking season. Although the number oftourists was significantly lower than usual, I observedsome trekkers newly coming up the trails. At this moment,
I thought the area was gradually recovering to its
pre-earthquake condition.
4.2 Second Tremor
12 May 2015. At 12:55 p.m., my host family in
Village P and I had just finished lunch and were having
tea in front of their lodge. Suddenly, the ground shookheavily again, and the lodge building made a creaking
sound, with plaster peeling off from the walls. As I looked

over at the community center, which stood about fifty
meters away and had been leaning since the previous
earthquake, it was collapsing in front of us (Fig. 6).
The villagers all came outside, shouting to check on
the safety of their relatives. Walking through the village, I
saw that stone walls had collapsed in many places,
blocking the paths, and the damage to houses was
obviously greater than that of the initial earthquake.
People were gathered here and there by the side of thetrail. As I walked by, they moaned remarks like, “Nowthis village is completely destroyed,” and asked mequestions such as, “Did Japan ever have an earthquake
like this?” and “Why do earthquakes happen, youJapanese must know.” An old man stood still, chanting amantra while turning a mani-wheel.
Nevertheless, it being the second time, they had
already learned how to manage the situation. After half anhour or so, tents were set up again and those without tents
were building simple living quarters using wood, blue
sheets and stones in the fields. This time, the village’s
hydroelectric pump broke down, causing a power outage.
Throughout the night, we were jolted awake by several
small aftershocks.
13 May 2015. The sound of hammering was echoing
in the village from early in the morning. My host motherand her son told me not to enter the house between 1:30
and 2:00 p.m. when an earthquake was predicted to occur.
Then they went to help clean up another damaged house.
Meanwhile, my host father spread mats in the potato fieldand started drinking with three other men from thevillage.
19 May 2015. At 2:15 p.m., a few young villagers
were in front of the community center and called out
loudly to the whole village from there. The villagers
gathered and were told that tarpaulins and instant noodles
had arrived that day as aid supplies from the Himalayan
Trust. The villagers who had gathered paid Rs.60 (Rs.100
being approximately one dollar) per household intransport fees, and only those who needed tarpaulins tookthem. The instant noodles were distributed to elderly
persons living alone. I noticed that the villagers who had
gathered included many young people I had not met

Fig. 6

Collapsed Community Center.

Disasters and reconstruction in a mountain tourism area

before. They had temporarily returned home to avoid thedanger in Kathmandu, taking vacation from their schools
due to the earthquake.
23 May 2015. At 9:45 a.m., a few young men set up
desks again in front of the community center and called
loudly again for people to gather. This time, two membersof an American NGO that holds climbing school in thisvillage during the winter season, brought a relief fund.
Each household received Rs.5,000 and put theirthumbprint on the list. In return, the villagers put a katha(white cloth of gratitude) on the Americans’ shoulders,which grew bigger each time like a snowball (Fig. 7).
After the distribution was complete, the village youths
called out the names of the elder people from the list, andone by one they received clothing from Patagonia, an
outdoor equipment manufacturer. After a total of 44
people had received clothing, the young man announced
that tens of thousands of rupees had also been donated totemples and community centers for reconstruction, andthe villagers applauded. Later that day, a Sherpa couple
who had immigrated to the U.S. also came to the village
and gave Rs.5,000 each to needy households.
25 May 2015. On this day, I stayed in Namche again.
Although a few stores had opened, most of the lodges
remained closed, and I saw only one tourist. My friend
told me that most of the lodge owners had gone to theirown villages after the second earthquake. I was staying inthe same small lodge as before, lying on a wooden bed. At
around 9:30 p.m., I heard a lot of noise outside thewindow and saw people with flashlights passing by one
after another. As I lay there wondering what was going on,
one of the daughters of the lodge owners came calling tome and said, “We have to evacuate because it is coming(aauncha)!” I asked her what was coming, but she said
she had no idea. I insisted that I would stay, but the lodge
owner and his wife also appeared and ordered me to put
on my shoes. I reluctantly did so.
Our group, including the couple who owned thelodge, their two daughters and I, climbed the slope behindthe village. According to the owner, we had to escape to ahigher place because a glacial dam was about to burst. We

Fig. 7

Relief Money Distribution.

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walked quickly along the trail heading for the owner’s
natal village. When I turned back, I saw a line offlashlights of myriad people lighting their way. After twohours of walking, we finally reached his village and sleptin the field. After returning to Namche the next day, I
confirmed that a rumor had broadly circulated in thevillage the previous night and caused panic.
Subsequently, I experienced no large tremors or otherincidents of significance. Nonetheless, on 27 June 2015,
the final day of Dumji, the most prominent festival in
Village P, many participants rushed to the exit of thetemple after someone shouted, “Earthquake!” The impactof the earthquake permeated daily life. In Solukhumbu,
the damage inflicted on houses by the second earthquake
surpassed that of the first, and numerous villagers werestill residing outdoors when I left the area on 4 July 2015.

5. The Reconstruction Process andInternational Connections
As seen in the previous section, the village received
significant amounts of relief supplies immediately after
the earthquake on 12 May. I was able to confirm thefollowing funds and materials received in 2015 (Table 1).
Support from abroad continued in the years that
followed. For example, during my revisit to the village in
September 2016, a Spanish trekking group brought
clothing for children and donations for households inneed.
In Village P, a group of youth voluntarily organized
an “Earthquake Relief Committee,” which prioritized the
distribution of aid supplies to households in need, such as
the elderly, single women or people without connections
to the tourism industry. They also helped clear and repair
houses lacking able-bodied inhabitants and wrote
documents on behalf of those who were illiterate.
The demand for house reconstruction created asignificant income opportunity for workers who camefrom lower regions. In this village, the reconstruction ofhouses began well before the government decided to fundearthquake-resistant house reconstruction. In the Khumbu
region, the daily wage for a laborer is Rs.1000, or
Rs.2000 for an engineer, which are higher than the rates inother regions (Minami, 2017). When I left the village atthe end of June 2015, I saw several teams of carpentersfrom the lowlands heading toward the Khumbu villages.
The higher wage was profitable for the carpenters, whothemselves were also victims of the disaster.
Also, there were more porters than usual in the same
season (Furukawa, 2017). Typically, the Spring trekking
season finishes at the end of April, after which there willbe less cargo and porters. However, after the earthquake,there was high demand for building materials, which led
to an increase in work for porters. Most of the porters
came from lower regions and they explained to me thatsoon after the earthquake hit the first time, they returned

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F. FURUKAWA
Table 1

Relief supplies received by Village P in 2015.

-For the entire village-Himalayan Trust (May 19): 100 tarpaulins and 5 boxes of instant noodles.
-Climbing School K (May 23): Rs.5,000 for each house and 44 items of Patagonia clothing.
-Climbing Agency I (June 26): Rs.28,000 for each household.
-Government (July and November): Rs.25,000 or Rs.3,000 in total for each house, depending on the level of damage.
-Monastery K (July 2015): 100 tarpaulins.
-For some households-A Sherpa who had emigrated to the U.S. (May 23): Rs.5,000 each for 10 elderly people.
-Climbing Agency A (August 3): Rs.155,000 each for its employees (9 households).
-Climbing Agency I: House reconstruction budget for its employees.
-NGO S: Reconstruction of houses for several needy households.
-For public facilities-Himalayan Trust: Rs.840,000 for the school and Rs.200,000 for first aid at the village temple.
-French philanthropist: Rs.800,000 for the water supply.
-Climbing Agency N: Rs.1,500,000 for reconstruction of the village temple.
-Climbing School K: Rs.300,000 for reconstruction of the community center, $1,800 for the stupa, etc.

to their villages and immediately came back to work toearn money repairing their houses. The shopkeepers who
were hiring porters found a business opportunity, raising
the porterage fee per Kg to encourage them to keep
working while passing the cost along to the price ofbuilding materials. Speaking somewhat metaphorically,
aid from abroad to the mountain villages flowed down to
the foothills through labor.
The government, on the other hand, was slow toprovide support. The Nepalese government distributed
Rs.25,000 or Rs.3,000 to every household, depending onlevel of damage, as “temporary relief” in 2015
(Kathmandu Post, 2016). In October 2015, thegovernment decided to provide Rs.200,000 (later
increased to Rs.300,000) to households that built
earthquake-resistant houses. The funds were to be
distributed in three stages: Rs.50,000 upon application,
Rs.150,000 upon the start of construction, and Rs.
100,000 after completion (The Asia Foundation, 2016). In
Village P, thanks to the efforts of the committee, allhouseholds were promised to receive Rs.300,000. In
September 2018, though, the completion rate for
distributing the first Rs.50,000 had not even exceeded
50%; in March 2020, distribution of the last installment of
100,000 still had a completion rate of only about 50%.
Moreover, due to the high cost of transportation in
mountainous areas, the Rs.300,000 provided by thegovernment could only partially cover the costs of
rebuilding residences. In some cases, the cost ofreconstruction of a destroyed house exceeded
Rs.2,000,000, while in other cases, a half-destroyed house
could be made “earthquake-resistant” with less thanRs.100,000. The policy of providing funds uniformly forearthquake-resistant houses regardless of level of damage
and income has sometimes been criticized for its
inequality. For example, I heard someone saying, “Thepoor receive money from foreign donors, the rich receive
money from their foreign clients (of tourism), and the
middle receive the least amount of money.” In fact, thelarger lodges and houses that had been built strongly
tended to suffer less damage and received more support
from clients, while some households with lessparticipation in the tourism industry were forced to sell
their livestock to finance the rebuilding of their homes.

6. Discussion
Village P was probably one of the most fortunate
communities affected by the disaster. When I visited thevillage again in September 2016, people observed thatmost of the houses had been reconstructed and repaired
well, even without the delayed government aid. One
volunteer from Germany expressed her impression, “I wasamazed at how quickly the houses were reconstructed.
The village seems to be better than before.” When I asked
a village woman if the earthquake had changed anything,
she replied bluntly, “Nothing has changed, the earthquake
has gone.” Although the absence of fatalities despite thedestruction of the houses might be one factor in the quick
recovery, I would like to consider two more perspectives:
efficient distribution of relief supplies and the resilienceof mountain tourism destinations.
The village was also fortunate in that it did notexperience the social divisions that are commonly seen in
Nepal. Arora (2022), for example, pointed out of Nepali
women’s intersectional vulnerabilities that originatedfrom a combination of the caste system and patriarchy.
Hülssiep et al. (2021) also noted that the patriarchy had anegative impact on reconstruction and that households
whose head was working abroad faced difficulties in theprocess. While these observations are true, all households
in Village P, except for those of an elementary school
teacher and two grocery stores, were Sherpa households,
thus precluding caste exclusion and increased social
inequality. Also, ethnographic reports have suggested that
Sherpa society is relatively egalitarian in terms of genderand household hierarchy (Fürer-Haimendorf, 1964).
Indeed, in the many village meetings held after theDisasters and reconstruction in a mountain tourism area

earthquake, I often heard women express their strong
opinions about the reconstruction process. In addition, theyouth committee helped those households where the headof the household was absent or unable to read or write.
However, it happened in some cases in Village P thatthose who had enough capital were able to receive
additional support (Hülssiep, 2021).
In terms of the resilience of mountain tourism
destinations, this case study has demonstrated that the
infrastructure in the mountains was vulnerable, yet at thesame time exhibited strong resilience, such as trails being
quickly rehabilitated after landslides. For example, westarted walking right after the earthquake, and when we
passed a settlement called Toktok about an hour later, wefound that stones had already been placed as footholds atthe site of a landslide, allowing people to pass through.
Moreover, at least before the big aftershock of theearthquake, there were tourists still continuing theirtrekking. As Ketter notes, “The NTB was aiming at a newaudience segment, one that is much more crisis resilient,and can better cope with the current situation in the
country” (Ketter, 2016). This underscores the resilience of
mountain tourism itself too.
Furthermore, certain features of mountain tourism
worked positively at the time of the disaster. For example,
work opportunities in the mountains kept young people
from leaving rural villages, and they worked effectively as
a force for reconstruction. The seasonality of tourism
favored continuation of existing potato cultivation andyak herding, preventing an immediate livelihood crisis. In
addition, the availability of tents and other climbing
equipment enabled people to evacuate rapidly.
Panday et al. pointed out that “These (remote)communities often lack adequate road networks and have
limited access to external development services, which
are crucial in building resilience after a major disaster”(Panday et al., 2021). This village certainly lacked roads
and support from the government, but the remoteness ofthe mountains enabled them to connect with tourism
networks around the world directly. In addition, unpaved
mountain trails are not necessarily a problem here. As wesaw in this case, trails that had been damaged bylandslides could reopen soon because the people knew
how to repair the trails. If, for example, the trails had had
to be cemented together, the repair work would have beenleft to specific technicians, and the attractiveness of thearea to “adventure-oriented” tourists would have been
reduced. Therefore, disaster preparedness strategies
should consider the unique characteristics of mountains
and mountain tourism.

7. Conclusions
This paper has reported the impact of the 2015 Nepal
Earthquake on an area serving as a destination for
mountain tourism. It has also traced how a village

131

recovered with the help of a tourism network rather thangovernment support, and how the characteristics ofmountain villages have encouraged relatively egalitarian
distribution. This paper has aimed to describe myexperience of an earthquake in a village from a cultural
anthropological perspective, and is not intended toprovide any specific proposals. Nevertheless, the data
presented above may allow me to offer some generalobservations:(1) The existence of the “Earthquake Relief Committee”
organized by the youth in Village P effectively
facilitated the process of relief-supply distribution
and house reconstruction. Although the situation
would be more complex in a multi-caste community,
it would be effective in times of emergency toprepare a disaster response committee that includes
people who are often marginalized in normal times(Arora, 2022).
(2) What the Khumbu case also indicates is that a lack ofroadways does not necessarily lead to vulnerability.
After the earthquake, cement paving of mountain
trails rapidly progressed in this area, although thiswill not only reduce the resilience of the trails but
also have a negative impact on the area’s image as a
tourism destination with an unspoiled naturalenvironment. Disaster prevention measures, anddevelopment projects in general, in mountainous
areas should be promoted using an approach thattakes advantage of the intrinsic resilience of
mountainous environments.
(3) As this case study shows, there may be many rumors
circulating during a disaster. Also, being from theoutside, I was frequently asked about the cause ofand prospects for the earthquake. Therefore,
providing “correct” knowledge of what cannot be
fully interpreted in the local context would be an
important contribution from the outside. On the other
hand, this case study also confirmed that asreconstruction progresses, the lessons learned fromthe earthquake fade away. It will be necessary tocreate a system to prevent people from forgetting
what they learn from earthquakes.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants
16H05692.
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Fukachi FURUKAWA
Fukachi Furukawa is a lecturer at the Graduate
School of Integrated Sciences for Global
Society, Kyushu University. He received his
Ph.D. in Human Sciences from Osaka
University in 2018. He majored in cultural
anthropology and Himalayan studies and has
been conducting fieldwork in Solukhumbu, Nepal since 2010. His
research interests covers mountain cultures, trekking tourism,
infrastructure and bodily movement. His research results to date were
published in 2020 as “Sherpa” to Michi no Jinruigaku (Anthropology of
the “Sherpa” and trails).

(Received 18 May 2023, Accepted 31 December 2023)