The rocky trails leading to Mount Everest are a busy highway of porters carrying expedition equipment, tourist luggage and bottled beer.
Despite the region's wealth, the true workhorses of the booming Everest industry are often exploited and at risk. Without proper clothes or footwear for the cold, they sometimes carry more than their body weight for a few dollars a day.
'Foreigners assume that we will stay in a good place, but we end up sleeping in a cave,' said Balaram Puri, 46, who has carried tourists' gear for 20 years.
Most porters are not Sherpas, who once dominated the trade, but members of poorer ethnic communities from neighbouring regions.
Nepal's former rebels, the Maoists, who are part of an interim government, have tried to regulate the business. As porters leave the village of Lukla at the beginning of the trek, members of a Maoist trade union weigh their loads and record their ages and salaries.
Under the rules they are trying to enforce, no load should exceed 30kg, no child should work as a porter and everyone should receive US$9 a day. 'Porters are cheated, hired on a one-off basis without rights,' said Mukhunda Pokharel, a local Maoist.
Everything that travels through the rugged landscape is carried on the backs of men or, less commonly, yaks. Porters haul anything from the heavy timbers and sheets of plywood for hotels to the stock in the shops.
