Mardi Himal People & Culture, Gurung Villages of Annapurna

§ 01 · Who lives here

Two indigenous peoples. One ridge.

The Annapurna mid-hills are shared by the Gurung and the Magar. They are different peoples, with different languages, different clan systems and slightly different religious blends, but they have lived on these slopes for longer than the Nepali state has existed. The Mardi Himal trail crosses both homelands, with Gurung villages dominating the upper trail and Magar settlements more common at the lower exit routes through Lwang and Pristi.

Tamu Kyi

Gurung (Tamu)

The Tamu trace their migration south from the Tibetan plateau, with linguistic evidence pointing to arrival in the central Himalayan hills around the 6th century. Their villages sit between 1,000 m and 3,500 m on south-facing slopes, with the clan system divided into four upper clans (Kle, Lam, Kon, Lem, rendered in Nepali as Ghale, Lama, Ghotaney, Lamichhane) and sixteen lower clans (the Sora Jat) of farmers and shepherds.

Endonym: Tamu (རྟམུ)
Language family: Tibeto-Burman, Tamangic
Population (Nepal, 2021): 543,790
Gandaki Province: 11.4% Gurung
Kaski District: 29.3% Gurung
Religion: Buddhism · Bon · Hinduism

Magar Kura

Magar

The Magar are one of the oldest hill peoples of Nepal, with archaeological evidence of settlement going back more than three thousand years. The community splits into the eastern Magar of the central hills and the western Kham Magar of Rolpa and Rukum. On the Mardi route you meet eastern Magar, especially in the lower-belt villages and in the Modi Khola valley below Landruk.

Endonym: Magar / Mangar
Language family: Tibeto-Burman (Magaric)
Population (Nepal, est.): ~1.9 million
Heartland: Palpa, Baglung, Myagdi, Syangja
On the Mardi route: Pristi, Lwang lower belt
Religion: Hinduism · Buddhism · Animism

Source: National Population and Housing Census 2021 (Government of Nepal), Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the linguistic record collated by the Endangered Language Alliance.

§ 02 · On the trail

Villages on the ridge.

The Mardi Himal route is unusually short on settlements compared to other Annapurna trails. The trail climbs out of the villages into uninhabited forest and herding country within a day, summits at an empty viewpoint, and then drops back into living villages on the descent. These are the places where the trek meets the culture, in order.

01
Trailhead1,770 mGurung
Kande
An hour by jeep from Pokhara, Kande is where most Mardi Himal treks begin. The village sits on the Baglung Highway above the Modi Khola valley. Farmhouses here have the classic Gurung layout: dry-stone walls plastered with clay and cow dung, slate roofs, and a low porch where the kitchen hearth doubles as the social centre.
02
Alt. trailhead1,650 mGurung
Dhampus
A large, old Gurung village on the parallel ridge, used by groups who start lower or who add a night before the climb. Dhampus has the fullest village fabric of any settlement near the trailhead: stone houses, school, gompa, and wide views of Machhapuchhre over the terraces.
03
Day 1 ridge1,900 – 2,100 mGurung-Magar mix
Pothana & Pritam Deurali
The first ridge teahouses sit on the saddle between Kande and the forest. Both villages are mixed Gurung-Magar settlements that grew up to serve the trail, with families running lodges that were built on family farmland. Deurali simply means the pass or ridge-top rest spot, a name that repeats across the Nepali hills.
04
Days 2–32,500 – 3,300 mTranshumant herders
Forest belt
From Forest Camp to Badal Danda the trail crosses oak and rhododendron forest with no permanent settlements. The high grazing meadows above the forest are used in the warm months by Gurung shepherds from the lower villages, who move yaks, sheep and goats up the ridge in spring and back down before the snow.
05
Day 33,580 mSeasonal lodge crews
High Camp
Not a traditional village, but a cluster of teahouses built since 2012, when ACAP opened the ridge as a trekking route. Crews are largely from the Gurung villages below and from Lwang. Most close for the winter and reopen in spring.
06
Exit village1,750 mGurung
Siding (Sidhing)
The classic exit point on the descent. Siding is a small Gurung village in a side valley of the Modi Khola, with houses arranged in terraces above the river. A jeep road built in the 2010s now reaches the village, so most groups drive from here to Pokhara instead of walking out.
07
Alternative exit~1,550 mGurung
Lwang Ghalel
A longer exit, two days from Mardi Base Camp, that passes through tea-growing country. Lwang is a community-tourism model village whose homestay program shares guest income across registered households. Ghalel, the second half of the full name Lwang Ghalel, points to the Ghale clan that founded it.
08
Lower belt1,400 – 1,700 mGurung
Ghalel & Kalimati
Small Gurung settlements in the lower Lwang belt, set among terraced fields and the tea slopes. They are quiet farming hamlets rather than trekking stops, but you pass through or near them on the western approach and exit, and they round out the homeland the trail crosses.

§ 03 · Belief

Three faiths, one ridge.

The religion you meet in a Mardi Himal village is not one religion but three, layered. The oldest is the Gurung shamanic tradition, which has its own priesthood, cosmology, and chants. Buddhism arrived from Tibet across the Annapurna passes and built monasteries and a Lama tradition on top. Hinduism climbed up from the plains and added the calendar festivals (Dashain, Tihar) and many of the household shrines. Most villages run all three in parallel without seeing a contradiction.

The three Gurung priests

Gurung shamanism (sometimes called Gurung Dharma) recognises three ritual specialists. They are not interchangeable: each handles different ceremonies, and most villages call on more than one over the course of a year.

Pachyu

also: Paju

Shaman of the living

The Pachyu is the everyday shaman. He performs healing rituals, communicates with local spirits, and reads omens for births, marriages and harvests. The Pachyu's chants describe a pre-Buddhist cosmology of mountains, rivers and ancestor spirits, and the role is hereditary within specific clans.

Khlepree

also: Klehbri / Ghyabre

Shaman of the dead

The Klehbri chants in an archaic register of Gurung that even fluent speakers no longer fully understand. The Klehbri is the priest of the Pae, the three-day death ritual that guides the soul through named landmarks, rivers and mountains to the land of the ancestors. The ritual is one of the longest continuously performed shamanic rites in South Asia.

Bonpo / Lama

also: Lama

Buddhist officiant

The Lama performs the Buddhist liturgies: prayers at Lhosar, monastery ceremonies, and the merit rituals that overlay the older shamanic frame. In many Gurung villages the Lama and the Pachyu work side by side at the same ceremony, each performing the part that belongs to their tradition.

Sources: Wikipedia (Gurung shamanism), Spirit Possession and Soul Guidance in a Gurung Death Rite(Macalester Himalaya journal), and Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf's tribal-cultures survey (1985).

§ 04 · Daily life

Language, dress, food, festival.

The texture of life in the villages: what people speak at home, what they wear at Lhosar, what they cook in a teahouse kitchen, and the calendar they keep. Gurung culture has held its shape here despite the trek, the cell-phone tower and the Gurkha pension cheques, but the shape is changing, especially in the younger generation.

Language

The home language in most Mardi Himal villages is Gurung (Tamu Kyi), a Tibeto-Burman language of the Tamangic subgroup. It is tonal, subject-object-verb in word order, and traditionally oral, with the written form using either Tibetan script or Devanagari. The neighbouring Magar (Magar Kura) is also Tibeto-Burman but not mutually intelligible. Almost every adult speaks Nepali as a second language, and on the Mardi trail your guide and most teahouse hosts will speak English at a working level.

A few useful phrases:

Gurung (Tamu Kyi)	Nepali	English
Lah so	Namaste	Hello / I greet you
Kya?	Sanchai?	How are you?
Khaba mu	Khanna milcha	Let's eat
Ngachi	Dhanyabad	Thank you
Tamu	Gurung	Gurung person
Klehbri	Jhakri	Shaman / priest

Traditional dress

You rarely see full traditional Gurung dress on the trail today; it lives at Tamu Lhosar, at weddings, and at the Pae. When it comes out, the shapes are old. Men wear the bhangra, a white nettle-fibre wrap crossed over the chest that doubles as a carrying pouch, with a knee-length kachhad wrap and a sash. Women wear the cholo blouse, the phariya skirt, a patuka sash, and the ghalek shawl tied across the body from shoulder to waist. Gold earrings, the muga-ko-mala (coral and bead necklace) and the tiki (forehead ornament) mark status, occasion, and sometimes age.

The fibre itself is part of the culture. Himalayan nettle (allo) is still harvested and woven in some lower-belt villages along the Lwang exit, and the rough nettle weave is what the oldest bhangras were made from before cotton became cheap.

Food on the trail

The teahouse menu on Mardi Himal is a small set of dishes that repeat for good reason: they travel up the ridge by porter, they keep, and they fuel a walking day. The Gurung versions lean millet-heavy, since millet (kodo) grows where rice doesn't.

Dal BhatRice, lentil soup, vegetable curry and pickle. The staple two meals a day, served unlimited in teahouses.
Kodo ko RotiMillet flatbread. The lower-elevation grain on the Mardi ridge. Often paired with chutney.
GundrukFermented leafy greens, dried and stored for winter. Served as a soup or a side.
Sel RotiRing-shaped sweet rice bread, deep-fried. Made for Tihar and Tamu Lhosar.
TongbaHot millet beer drunk through a bamboo straw from a wooden pot. Refilled with hot water until the malt gives out.
RaksiDistilled millet or rice spirit. The home-distilled version on the ridge is locally called daru.

Festival calendar

The Gurung year is run on three overlapping calendars: the twelve-year Lohokor animal cycle, the lunisolar Nepali Bikram Sambat, and the Tibetan calendar that anchors Lhosar. In practice this means a Gurung household celebrates more festivals than almost anyone else in Nepal.

Festival	When	What
Tamu Lhosar	15 Poush (≈ 30 Dec)	Gurung New Year. The most important Gurung festival, run on a 12-year animal cycle called Lohokor. Public holiday in Nepal.
Dashain	Sept–Oct	Nepal's longest festival. Tika and jamara are given by elders to younger family; even Gurung households observe it.
Tihar	Oct–Nov	The five-day festival of lights. The maruni dance, in which men in female costume go house to house, is a Magar tradition seen on the lower trail.
Sonam Lhosar	Magh (≈ Feb)	Tamang New Year. Some lower-belt households observe it through marriage ties with Tamang families.

The Lohokor cycle assigns each Gurung year to one of twelve creatures: garuda, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog, deer, mouse, cow, tiger, cat. The animal of the incoming year shapes the fortunes and predictions read at Lhosar.

§ 05 · At the table

Gurung food, and the rhythm of the kitchen.

Food in a Gurung village is shaped by altitude, by the farming year, and by what keeps through a hard winter. The grain is millet and buckwheat as much as rice, the protein is fermented and dried, and the kitchen hearth is still the centre of the house. This is the cultural picture. For the practical trail menu, what a teahouse actually serves and what it costs, see our food and menu guide.

Kodo / phapar

Dhido

The old hill staple, before rice came up the road. A stiff porridge of millet or buckwheat flour stirred over the fire until it pulls together, eaten by hand with gundruk soup, fermented greens or a little ghee. In a Gurung household dhido is comfort food and memory food, the thing the grandmothers still ask for.

Fermented greens

Gundruk

Mustard, radish or spinach leaves wilted, packed tight and left to sour, then sun-dried for the winter. Gundruk is how a hill family eats vegetables in the months when nothing grows. It turns up as a tart soup, a side, or stirred through dhido.

Festival bread

Sel roti

A ring of fermented rice batter deep-fried until it puffs and crisps. Sel roti is festival food, made in quantity for Tihar and Tamu Lhosar, and the smell of it frying is the smell of a holiday in a Gurung village.

The dal bhat rhythm

The household day is built around two meals of dal bhat, rice with lentil soup, a seasonal vegetable curry, and a pickle. One is eaten in the late morning before the work of the day, the second after dark. Between them people graze on tea, roasted maize and whatever the kitchen garden gives up. Guests in a homestay eat the same two meals the family eats, at the same hours, off the same fire. The phrase you will hear, dal bhat power, twenty-four hour, is a porter's joke, but it is also a fair description of how the hills run.

Millet, raksi and the still

Where rice will not grow, millet does, and millet is also what gets distilled. Raksi, the clear home-distilled spirit (called daru locally), is made in the village from millet or rice mash run through a simple pot still, and the milky fermented version, jaand, is drunk warm. Distilling is domestic work, usually a woman's, and a measure of raksi is part of hospitality, ritual and the Tamu Lhosar table alike. A bottle pressed on a departing guest is a compliment, not a transaction.

Note: home distilling is informal and unregulated; strength varies widely from house to house. The cultural role of raksi and jaand is well documented in Gurung ethnography; specific recipes are household-level and not standardised.

§ 06 · Staying in the villages

Lwang and Siding, up close.

Two villages carry most of the homestay culture on the Mardi Himal circuit. Lwang sits on the western approach through tea country; Siding is the quiet traditional village on the descent. Staying in either is the closest a trekker gets to ordinary Gurung life, and a little etiquette goes a long way.

Western approach · ~1,550 m

Lwang (Lwang Ghalel)

Lwang is a Gurung village about 30 km northwest of Pokhara, best known for one of Nepal's earliest community homestay programs, started around 2009 and run through registered village households. Guests sleep, eat and spend the evening with a host family rather than in a teahouse, and income is shared across the participating homes rather than going to a single lodge. The village is wrapped in an organic tea garden worked by local families, a story owned by our region livelihoods guide; here it matters as the thing that gives Lwang its unusual mix of farming and tourism. Evenings often include a welcome of traditional dress, Gurung song and dance, and home-brewed raksi.

On the descent · ~1,750 m

Siding (Sidhing)

Siding is the quieter of the two, a traditional Gurung village in a side valley of the Modi Khola that many groups reach on the long descent off the ridge, roughly six hours down from High Camp through rhododendron forest and terraced fields. It has stayed off the busier Annapurna circuits, so a night here feels closer to everyday village life than to the trade. Households run simple homestays and cook organic food grown in their own gardens, and a jeep road built in the 2010s now links the village to Pokhara, so most groups drive out from Siding rather than walk the final stretch.

Staying in a Gurung home: the etiquette

A homestay is someone's house, not a hotel. A few simple customs keep the exchange respectful, and they line up with our wider responsible travel commitments. For the festivals you might be lucky enough to share a table at, Tamu Lhosar, Ghatu and the Rodhi tradition, see our seasonal events guide.

Shoes off, kitchen sacred

Leave shoes at the door. The hearth and the kitchen are the ritual centre of a Gurung house; do not step over the fire, food, or anyone seated, and wait to be shown where to sit.

Eat what the family eats

Meals are the family's own dal bhat, served from the same fire. Accepting seconds is a compliment. The right hand is for eating; the left is considered unclean at the table.

Pay through the program, not the pillow

Homestay rates are fixed and pooled through the village committee, so pay the set rate rather than slipping cash to individuals. A small gift for the children or the household (fruit, a notebook, something from home) is welcome where a tip can feel awkward.

Sources: Lwang Community Homestay listings and itinerary operators (program start ~2009, registered households); Siding village descriptions from Mardi descent itineraries. Household counts and exact altitudes vary slightly between sources; figures here are presented as approximate.

§ 07 · The Gurkha story

Why so many villages look prosperous.

If a Gurung village on the Mardi route has a new school, a tarmac path between the houses, and a half-dozen well-built stone lodges, the most likely reason is a British Army pension. The Gurung, along with the Magar, supply the majority of the soldiers in the Brigade of Gurkhas: the British, Indian, and Singaporean military units that have recruited from these hills continuously since the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816.

The recruitment system is selective and brutal. Each year, roughly 200 places open in the British Gurkhas. Around 25,000 young men apply. The selection runs in stages (the village hill run, the maths and English tests, the centralised selection at Pokhara) and is one of the most physically demanding military entries in the world. The ones who get through serve for 15 to 35 years, draw a UK pension, and since 2009 have the right to settle in Britain with their families.

The effect on the villages is visible. Slate roofs are kept up, kids go to private school in Pokhara, and many of the older men in the teahouses you'll stay in have lived years of their lives in Hong Kong, Brunei, the Falklands, or the Helmand valley. Ask them. The answers are not in any guidebook.

§ 08 · Where this comes from

Sources, not opinion.

Everything on this page is grounded in published research, official census data, and ethnographic documentation. Where claims are contested or vary between sources, we note it inline. Where language is technical, the spelling follows the source publication.

§ 09 · Keep reading

From culture, to trail.

The route, day by day

Read the mountain, then come walk it.

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Two indigenous peoples. One ridge.

Villages on the ridge.

Kande

Dhampus

Pothana & Pritam Deurali

Forest belt

High Camp

Siding (Sidhing)

Lwang Ghalel

Ghalel & Kalimati

Three faiths, one ridge.

The three Gurung priests

Language, dress, food, festival.

Language

Traditional dress

Food on the trail

Festival calendar

Gurung food, and the rhythm of the kitchen.

Dhido

Gundruk

Sel roti

The dal bhat rhythm

Millet, raksi and the still

Lwang and Siding, up close.

Lwang (Lwang Ghalel)

Siding (Sidhing)

Staying in a Gurung home: the etiquette

Shoes off, kitchen sacred

Eat what the family eats

Pay through the program, not the pillow

Why so many villages look prosperous.

Sources, not opinion.

From culture, to trail.

Mardi Himal Trek Itinerary

Responsible Travel

Best Time to Trek

About Mardi Himal

Read the mountain, then come walk it.