Meet the Women Rewriting Nepal's Trekking Industry — and the Four AFL Stars Who Just Joined Their Trail
In 1993, three sisters in Pokhara trained Nepal's first female trekking guides because none existed. More than 2,000 women later, four AFLW athletes just trekked Nepal with an all-female crew as women-only bookings jumped 32% in a year.
At a glance
- Published
- TopicRecords & People
- Verified againstTravel Weekly Australia
- Treks coveredGhorepani Poon Hill Trek — 4 Days, Mardi Himal Trek — 7 Days, Annapurna Base Camp Trek — 9 Days
In 1993, when Lucky Chhetri and her two sisters, Dicky and Nicky, decided to start a trekking company out of their family lodge in Pokhara, there was one problem with their plan: there were no female trekking guides in Nepal to hire. Not a few. None. So the sisters trained their own, launching 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking as the country's first women-run, women-guided trekking operator — a decision that has since put more than 2,000 Nepali women through guide and porter training.
Key facts
- 1993: Lucky, Dicky and Nicky Chhetri found 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking in Pokhara — Nepal's first all-female trekking company
- The venture grows into Empowering Women of Nepal, a nonprofit teaching navigation, wilderness first aid and licensing to prospective guides for free
- 2,000+ women have completed the training since; some 3 Sisters guides have led treks for 20+ years
- August 2026: Intrepid Travel and the AFL Players Association send four AFLW athletes on a Nepal Women's Expedition with an all-female porter and guide team
- Intrepid reports its women-only Expeditions range grew 32% in 2025
For decades, the maths in Nepal's trekking industry ran one way: trekkers arriving in Pokhara or Kathmandu were routinely handed a male guide by default, because that was almost the only option on offer, and female travellers who wanted a woman leading them into the mountains often couldn't find one. The Chhetri sisters built the alternative from scratch, and the ripple effect has been slow but real — Nepal's trekking industry now has a genuine, decades-deep bench of licensed, experienced women, not a novelty booking.
Lucky, Dicky and Nicky Chhetri launch Nepal's first women-run trekking company after finding zero female guides to hire.
Free training in wilderness first aid, navigation and licensing turns a single business into a nationwide pipeline.
Some of the original guides are now 20-plus years into leading treks across Annapurna, Everest, Langtang and Manaslu.
Intrepid Travel reports its Women's Expeditions range up 32% worldwide, part of a broader surge in women-only travel bookings.
North Melbourne's Ash Riddell and Jasmine Garner, Collingwood's Ruby Schleicher and Carlton's Darcy Vescio join an Intrepid Nepal Women's Expedition with an all-female local crew, timed to the new AFLW season.
That last entry is this month's fresh hook, and it is a useful measure of how far the idea has travelled. Intrepid Travel, working with the AFL Players Association, North Melbourne Football Club and Purpose Impact Agency, brought the four athletes through Nepal alongside a local leader, assistant guides and an all-female porter team — a lineup that, in 1993, would not have been possible to assemble at any price. Intrepid's Australia and New Zealand general manager, Yvette Thompson, framed the trend simply: women's sport and women's travel are both, at their core, about creating opportunities and challenging what people assume is possible.
What this means for trekkers
If you're an international woman weighing whether to book a Nepal trek — solo, with friends, or on a dedicated women's departure — the practical answer has changed. This is no longer a scarcity you have to work around; it's an established part of the industry, concentrated especially around Pokhara and the Annapurna region where 3 Sisters and Empowering Women of Nepal are based, but present on guided routes across the country, including at agencies like ours, where women now sit on the guide roster alongside men.
What this means for you
If a female guide matters to your decision to book, say so when you enquire — it is rarely automatic, but at an established operator it is almost always arrangeable, especially on classic routes like Annapurna Base Camp, Ghorepani-Poon Hill and Mardi Himal, where women-led groups are now common rather than rare.
Source: Travel Weekly Australia, August 11, 2026.
Cover photo: Pew Nguyen via Pexels (Pexels License).
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