ABSTRACT
In the first few years of the 1950s, Nepal experienced the first summiting of Mt. Everest, the overthrow of an over one-hundred year long dynastic domination and the arrival of Western aid and diplomatic entourages. Thus, from the very beginning, Western tourism and Western aid have been deeply linked in the history of the nation-state and, with the exception of the rising role of remittance funds, Nepal’s economic success has largely hinged upon the country’s successful navigation of its relations with these two foreign industries. The arrival of the new millennium brought a greater conjoining of foreign tourism and aid as a result of global changes as well as events specific to Nepal. The pressure to engage in moral acts as part of tourism to Nepal has its obvious and initial motive in the economic disparity that is inherent in the disjuncture between tourist-sending nations and Nepal, and that disparity is part of the attraction of the country as a destination as well. Yet, in this chapter I suggest that tourists who, in many different ways, seek to give back to Nepal do so under conditions they often misunderstand and their actions have unintended effects on Nepal, the development industry and the very idea of “ethical tourism” across the globe.
