The Nepal Valley Where It's Illegal to Kill Anything — Even a Fish

In 1920, long before conservation area or wildlife reserve existed as concepts in Nepal, the eleven villages of Upper Tsum Valley made a collective decision: nothing in the valley would be killed. Not hunted, not trapped, not fished, not even the wild bees robbed of their honey. A century later, that promise — known locally as Shyagya — is still the law, and it's now backed by an actual act of Nepal's local government.

Tsum sits in the Gorkha district of northern Nepal, a U-shaped glacial valley wedged against the Tibet border beside Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest mountain. Locals call it a beyul — a hidden sacred valley in Tibetan Buddhist tradition — and for most of the 20th century almost nobody outside it had heard of the place. It stayed closed to foreign trekkers until 2008, and even now you need a special restricted-area permit and a licensed guide to enter; independent trekking isn't allowed.

The non-violence declaration traces back to a lama, Dukpa Lama Sarp Dorje, who asked the villages of Tsum to commit to it on Buddha Jayanti in the Nepali year 1977 BS — 1920 on the Gregorian calendar. Lower Tsum's 22 villages didn't formally join until 2012, at a Shyagya festival where villagers handed over 58 illegal firearms to government authorities as proof of the commitment. In 2022–23, the local municipality went further and passed the Tsum Shyagya Act, using powers granted under Nepal's constitution to turn a century-old spiritual vow into enforceable local law.

The valley now sits inside the Manaslu Conservation Area, and the century of protection shows: Tsum is home to Himalayan tahr, blue sheep and snow leopards, at altitudes ranging from around 1,900 metres near the valley entrance to over 4,000 metres near its glacial head. The Buddhist saint Milarepa is said to have meditated in caves here, and the valley's two major monasteries, Mu Gompa and Rachen Gompa, still anchor a religious life that predates the trekking permits by centuries.

What this means for trekkers

Tsum is usually walked as an extension of the Manaslu Circuit, sharing the same restricted-area permit system. Our guides run both the standalone 16-day Tsum Valley trek and the combined 19-day Manaslu Circuit with Tsum Valley, which links the high pass of Manaslu with the valley that's been off-limits to violence for a century — and to trekkers for most of it.

Source: The Himalayan Times — Sacred Tsum Valley promulgates non-violence charter

Cover photo: Julia Volk via Pexels (Pexels License).