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Ryan Ryu
Ms. Manning
English 9- E Block
31 October 2016
Q: How did Mount Everest affect the economy of Nepal?
In the 1970s, at the brink of fall, Nepal attempted to make a leap in their economic status
utilizing geographic advantages. Mount Everest, the tallest mountain at 8,848 meters high, is one
of Nepals biggest tourist attractions to this day. The book Into Thin Air shows a detailed
description of tourism experience on Everest. Since the 1970s, a boom of tourism occurred in the
region near Mount Everest, which has positively and negatively impacted the economy of Nepal
because of the inflation of the prices of products near Mount Everest due to a sudden increase of
demand.
The sudden increase of tourism in Mount Everest has increased the role of cash in the
economy of Nepal (Stevens, 8). As the tourism business grew bigger, demands for agricultural
products also grew, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, cheese, powdered milk, snack
foods, and kerosene (Stevens, 8). This caused an increase in the prices of those products,
resulting in an inflation. The residents that were involved in tourism businesses were not affected
by the inflation, but the inflation negatively affected the lives of people who have little or no

income from tourism (Stevens, 9). This negative side of tourism reveals another perspective
when reading Into Thin Air, because Into Thin Air only provides a view of tourist-populated
areas in Nepal, which makes Nepals economy look relatively better.

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Using the increase of tourism, Nepal successfully enlarged the market for local
agricultural products (Stevens, 6). The large population of tourists increased demands for
agricultural products, which resulted in an active agriculture business. Agriculture became more
widespread in the region, therefore the money earned from tourism left local hands (Stevens,
7). This resulted in an active rotation of money throughout Nepal, improving Nepals economy
as a whole. The enlargement of agricultural business also provides more background information
when reading Into Thin Air, because the book explains how and why the Everest is populated
with tourists, but not how the tourists affected Nepal as a whole.
Mount Everest was crucial to the boost of Nepals economy because it greatly inflated the
local prices of agricultural products, which had been extremely cheap before the sudden increase
in tourism. Even though the inflation had bad effects on the lives of local residents, it assisted
Nepals economy as a whole, which was extremely unstable before the increase of tourism in the
Mount Everest region.

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Works Cited
Stevens, Stanley F. "Tourism, Change, and Continuity in the Mount Everest Region, Nepal." The
Geographical Review 83 (1993): n. pag. Questia. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.
<https://www.questiaschool.com/library/journal/1G1-15204482/tourism-change-andcontinuity-in-the-mount-everest>.