Faith, identity and a cable car: the Mukkumlung controversy explained
A planned cable car to the Pathibhara temple in eastern Nepal has become a flashpoint between tourism development and Indigenous Limbu heritage. Here's what's happening and what it means for visitors.
High in the hills of Taplejung, in Nepal's far east, a mountaintop draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year — and has become the centre of one of the country's most heated debates about how tourism should grow. Known as Pathibhara to Hindu pilgrims and as Mukkumlung to the Indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) people, the site is the subject of a contested cable-car project that pits accessibility and development against heritage and Indigenous rights.
Key facts
- Site draws roughly 300,000 pilgrims a year
- Sacred as Pathibhara (Hindu) and Mukkumlung (Limbu)
- The Save Mukkumlung campaign opposes the cable car
- 286 organisations worldwide have voiced solidarity
What is being built, and why
The proposed cable car would carry visitors up toward the Pathibhara shrine, which currently requires a steep walk to reach. Backers — including the developer and parts of the government — frame it as a tourism and accessibility project: a way to bring more pilgrims and trekkers, more easily, to a major destination, with the jobs and revenue that follow. Cable cars have become a popular development model across Nepal's pilgrimage sites for exactly this reason.
Why it is being opposed
For the Limbu community and the Save Mukkumlung campaign, the mountain is not a backdrop but a living sacred landscape tied to their Mundhum tradition. Opponents argue the project has advanced without the community's free, prior and informed consent, threatens both a heritage site and a fragile high-altitude ecosystem, and could mean felling thousands of trees. Protests have moved from Taplejung to Kathmandu, a World Bank accountability watchdog has been examining a linked project, and 286 organisations around the world have expressed solidarity with the opposition.
| Tradition | Name | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Hindu pilgrims | Pathibhara Devi | Wish-fulfilling goddess shrine |
| Yakthung (Limbu) | Mukkumlung | Sacred Mundhum heritage site |
What this means for you
Pathibhara/Mukkumlung remains open and is a worthwhile detour for trekkers in the Kanchenjunga and far-eastern region — but go as an informed, respectful guest. Understand that you are visiting a place sacred to two communities and at the centre of a genuine debate. Walking up, rather than waiting for any future cable car, is itself a quieter and more traditional way to arrive.
A bigger question for Nepali tourism
The Mukkumlung dispute is about one mountain, but the question behind it echoes across the Himalaya: who decides how a sacred place becomes a tourist destination, and who benefits when it does? As Nepal pushes hard to grow visitor numbers and build infrastructure, cases like this are a reminder that the most durable tourism is the kind local communities actually want. How Nepal resolves Mukkumlung will say a lot about the kind of destination it intends to be.
We take no side in a community's internal debate. But as guides who depend on the goodwill of the villages we walk through, we believe the people who call a place home should have the decisive voice in its future.
Source: Nepal News; Mongabay; Global Press Journal.
Cover photo: Sanjeevstha via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Source: Nepal News
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