Visiting the Tigers with Tiger Mountains Pokhara

Tiger Mountains Pokhara

Perched 1,000 feet above the Pokhara Valley with a spectacular Himalayan backdrop, Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge provides a perfect haven, the essence of tranquillity. Ideal for guests pre- and post-trek, or for those wishing to take day walks exploring local communities, bird-watching, gentle exercise, or just to relax in a typical Nepalese rural setting.

Tiger Mountains Pokhara Lodge is a member of Secret Retreats, Rare, Earthchangers and Kiwano, select groups of some of the world’s most special regenerative tourism experiences.

Tiger Mountains Pokhara believe in tourism with a conscience and are pioneers of regenerative tourism in Nepal’s hills. To validate their claims, they are independently verified by Yardstick UK. They are certified by GSTC affiliate Travellife with Gold Standard Audits in 2017 and 2019. Tiger Mountain is a member of Pack for a Purpose, an initiative that allows travellers to make a lasting impact in the destination community. Please click here to see what supplies are needed local schools in our community. Located on a ridge half an hour outside Pokhara, the lodge is an ideal base for guests to relax in a rural mountain setting, away from the bustle of Nepal’s cities. With a central lodge, bar and dining room, the comfortable rooms are arranged in clusters of cottages resembling a Nepali village.

Marcus Cotton grew up in a traditional, Buckinghamshire farming village in England. He began his career in insurance at Lloyds of London, but soon moved to Nepal to pursue his conservation interests. He was working to protect the environment in Nepal with sustainable community development. Marcus is now the owner of Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge, a sustainable hotel in Nepal focused on lifting the community around it while offering guests a rich experience in the country’s trekking capital.

He is a passionate advocate of Regenerative and Responsible Travel, is keen to promote Nepal and Tiger Mountain to travellers from India. He said, “The convenience of Nepal for travel from India, coupled with deep cultural ties makes it a natural destination for short breaks and holiday escapes. The exquisite beauty of the Himalayan foothills, the rich wildlife of the Nepal Terai is second to none.”

Q1. Can you share the vision and mission behind Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge's Regenerative Tourism initiative? And how does the hotel align its goals with sustainability and community support?

Underlying Tiger Mountain’s approach is the core belief that tourism must be a force for good. If any tourism project is solely established for the exclusive benefit of its shareholders or investors – and, sadly, too many are – then we can be pretty confident that environmental, social and cultural damage will follow.

In application of this core belief, we wish to ensure that we not only ‘do no harm’ but that we regenerate – we restore and enhance natural habitats to transition from existence / survival to thriving; we engage with adjacent communities and support local initiatives to enhance the community; we are ever mindful of are staff team to ensure their wellbeing.

In essence we do this by listening, engaging, conversing and being sensitive – not riding roughshod over dissenting views or local concerns. We also engage closely with our guests and aim to elicit their thoughts on how the lodge can enhance their experience of the middle hills of Nepal. Genius loci – the essence of locale – is all too often lost in bland, stereotyped tourist accommodation designed with the egotistical belief ‘that is what tourists want.’

Q2. What specific sustainable practices has Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge implemented to minimize its environmental impact? How do these practices contribute to the overall well-being of the local ecosystem?

There are a wealth of measures and actions – too numerous for a complete list here. To name a few:

1. Environment - We currently have zero waste to landfill by reducing, reusing and recycling as much of our waste as possible. The great bugbear if plastic – we have removed all single use plastics under our control and are left mainly with plastic bottles (recycled) and plastic wrap on inward supplies (minimised and stored pending a solution to disposal). We engage with suppliers and distributors to challenge the need for such wrap. We are a founder signatory of UNEP/UNWTO Global Tourism Plastics Initiative, a worthy effort to drive single use plastic out of tourism operations. We are also signatories to the UNWTO Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency supporting efforts to reduce the CO2 emissions in tourism. Some relevant carbon data is shown below. In the housekeeping side, we have removed complex chemicals from our cleaning inventory and use vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and similar simple compounds. In the lodge grounds we have rewilded, letting the hilltop site evolve in its natural state to grasslands (which were and continue to be harvested annually for thatch) and Schima Castanposis forest typical of the area. We do not have manicured, imported lawns or exotic species outside the vegetable garden.
2. Staff - We have a remuneration and welfare package among the best in country with inflation-plus increments, full family medical reimbursement, etc. Even though we are a small owner-managed business, the senior staff recommend the pay increments and then the directors review and normally approve it. I think the proof of the pudding is that, at the 25th Anniversary of the lodge, over 80% of the staff were still working who had been working on day 1. The Regenerative Action Advisory Group (RAAG) is a staff forum free for anyone to join to recommend action and monitor works undertaken under our regenerative approach.
3. Community - our priority is both to maximise local employment from the communities around the lodge and also to source as much local supply items as possible. The Community Support Partnership Programme (CSPP) is led by local staff and works with the local community to ascertain community-based and -led projects espoused by the village for socio-economic upliftment. Historically these have focussed on some health and mainly education projects. We also provide an annual subvention to the Community Forest User Group (CFUG) to support their management of the forests around the village for productive use, regeneration and habitat conservation. We had a farm to fork approach long before it was not merely fashionable, but normal. Much of our food supply is form the local area and we encourage farmers to keep us informed of what is available so we can buy.

Q3. In what ways does Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge engage with and support the local community? Can you provide examples of successful community partnerships or projects initiated by the hotel?

Our engagement with the community is multi-layered – over 50% of our staff are from the village and that provides a wide-ranging source of natural feedback. Then we have the CSPP as noted in the previous question. This is led by one of our guides, Hari, who is from the village and seeks to ensure that the community retains fullest ownership and endeavour in any community activity – all too often in developing countries, the donor tail can wag the dog. In that sense we never initiate projects but respond to community-based and -led initiatives. Our focus for many years at the behest of the community is education through a range of support for the two local schools.

For example, we have provided capital funding to help add an upper storey to the secondary school; we have funded the fit-out of a computer lab, the hardware being provided by another charity, Room to Read; we have supported Project Hello World in their pilot programme installing public access computer hubs in rural communities – with one in our local primary school and another in a more isolated settlement within the village. We also provide annual funding to the primary school to assist with teaching provision – government budgets providing too few teachers – and meals for the pupils in a fine partnership between the teachers, Mother’s Groups and Youth Clubs. In partnership with People and Places, the gold standard in volunteer tourism, we used to arrange teachers to stay for a month or more to mentor teachers at the local schools to enhance pedagogy and help with English-language teaching methods.

As noted above, we provide funding to the Community Forest User Group and are currently working on a Memorandum of Understanding to pave the way for a conservation advisory partnership with the forest group – a first for Nepal. This is part of our commitments made when joining the world’s leading regenerative tourism body, The Long Run, where we are an aspiring Fellow Member and hope to gain full fellowship next year.

Q4. How does the hotel educate its guests about the principles of regenerative tourism and sustainable practices? Are there any initiatives in place to encourage guests to participate in sustainable activities during their stay?

We do not want to force-feed guests and harken back to the 1970s concept of hair shirts and open sandals. As the old adage goes, any fool can be uncomfortable. The key for us is to make regenerative tourism a comfortable, nuanced and sophisticated experience. For example, we do not put waste separation bins in guest rooms – our stewards do the segregation when emptying the bin. Our information book in the rooms goes way beyond the norms of towel reuse and laundry reduction.

It provides information about the country, local community, the Gurkhas, our local sourcing policies and much more. We aim to ensure that our guests are offered sustainable activities – paragliding over microlight flights for example – but if guests do not have time to trek, then we can organise a helicopter flight to Annapurna’s heights. We would encourage guests, at least, to offset the impact. We have the option of guests to engage in our regenerative tourism practices with a Back of House walk with our Regenerative Tourism Manager, Ishwar.

The pool is sanitised with Nepal rock salt – in explaining this to guests we create a conversation about reducing complex chemical usage. Similarly, during covid and whenever we deep clean, we use Hypochlorous acid (made in Nepal by electrolysis of brine). This is a powerful disinfectant but reverts to brine.

Our walks from an hour to a full day, mini-trek are guided by staff from the village providing unparalleled access to the community to participate in whatever festivals, ceremonies or other rites of passage may be happening, or just to exchange pleasantries with locals over a cup of tea. Nothing is pre-organised or staged, if there is nothing specific going on, then that’s what the guests experience. It is a rare occurrence! Similarly, our nature walks enable great opportunity for conversation with guests about the natural environment, conservation and climate change. We welcome interested guests and staff to join the guides when doing bird counts or butterfly monitoring. The lodge has led the annual Pokhara Valley Lakes waterfowl counts for Birdlife International since 2004 and is a regular participant in bird counts on Cornell University e-bird, Bombay Natural History Society and Bird Conservation Nepal bird counts. Monthly butterfly counts take place in the lodge grounds and have been done since 2005 yielding a unique dataset for Nepal. Bird and Butterfly checklists are shared with interested guests, local and international researchers on request.

Q5. How does Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge measure the impact of its regenerative and sustainable initiatives? Can you share any key metrics or success stories that highlight the positive outcomes of these efforts?

We started measuring impact when a postgraduate researcher stayed at the lodge to study ways of preventing greenwashing. Perhaps an indication of the timeline is that I now have no need to explain what greenwashing is! Jenefer Bobbin worked closely with the team for several months and this started a relationship that continues today. After her Master’s degree, she went on to develop monitoring tools evolving from Excel spreadsheets to online tools such as her Yardstick. We have worked together developing and testing these with her. Alongside Yardstick, we are also starting to use Weeva, a new platform developed in South Africa but truly global in its abilities. Due to constraints imposed by covid and the subsequent recovery our uploading to Weeva is taking longer than Ishwar or I would like, but we are plugging away and will get there in the end!

Metrics – in pre-covid years our employee philanthropy equated to funding three full time teachers. We have zero waste to landfill. We buy in no raw single use plastics (see above – we sadly have yet to crack the issue of plastic wrap on essential supplies). We have removed all our kerosene pathway lighting that has saved significant amounts of kerosene – see below – and detergent (washing the lantern glasses), not to mention freeing up stewards time for more productive activity. We have installed a bio-gas digester for the staff kitchen and this contributes significantly to reducing LPG purchase. Nepal Electricity Authority is as of 2023 self-sufficient in supplying domestic electricity demand. The majority of power generated is from hydroelectric plants – indeed several hundred megawatts are exported annually to India making a significant contribution to Nepal’s economy and balance of payments. We will shortly be making the brave leap to EVs for the lodge very soon and already priorities EVs for guest transfers and sightseeing in Kathmandu Valley.

SK is the staff kitchen and you can see how 546kg of LPG has been reduced by the bio-gas plant (approximately 32 cylinders of gas) with all its refining and transport impacts too. Kerosene reduction of 57% by replacement pathway lighting and electric heaters in guest rooms. Generator diesel reduced by 17% due to better electricity supply and more mindful generator usage. A 22% rise in electricity is the offset but, as noted above, all NEA power is from hydropower.

The interesting start of this monitored journey with Jenefer was that where we thought we were pretty good, the metric said otherwise and, where we were concerned at our failings, the metrics told us we were better than we realised. This was a salutary lesson in trusting your instruments over your instincts.

As a means to ‘lock in’ our ongoing commitments, we are working through the complex processes to be admitted as a B Corp listed business. We hope to submit in the new year with listing, hopefully, in 2025.

In conclusion, we are all aware that regenerative tourism is a journey without an ending – there is always more to be done; more being done that can be done better and more new technologies that can help us all care for this amazing planet. Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge is committed to staying the course.

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