TEV, a trekking guide in Nepal, was looking extremely pleased with himself. He had just returned from a week-long trip which had earned him the equivalent of HK$207 - sufficient to keep him, his wife and young baby for a month.
Tourism is one of Nepal's biggest currency earners, bringing in more than US$60 million in foreign exchange in 1992. But it's a money-spinner that comes at a high price.
Mounds of plastic bottles and other non-biodegradable rubbish are left on the mountainsides by visitors each year. The nearest plastic recycling plant is in India and the process is too expensive for Nepal to consider seriously.
Makeshift toilets add to the many water-borne bacterial diseases which kill tens of thousands of babies each year. Not for nothing are Nepal's most popular trekking routes known as ''toilet paper trails''.
Other signs of environmental devastation are less obvious to the eye. ''Garbage is more visible'', comments Ukesh Bhuju of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). ''But you have to go beyond the trails to see deforestation.'' The cause, though, can be seen immediately. Although tourists are no longer permitted to use firewood when camping, that does not prevent locals catering for them in the many tea lodges that line the paths.
Ninety-six per cent of Nepal's energy comes from wood, but the country's forests are disappearing at a rate of three per cent a year. Tourism is responsible for a large part of this.