Dawa carried his first loads on the Annapurna Circuit at sixteen and was leading foreign groups by nineteen. A decade of watching day-hired guides absorb all the risk and none of the security produced the idea Go Trek is built on: the people who carry the loads and read the weather should own the business.
The founding promise
In 2006 he registered the company with three guides, borrowed duffel bags and one desk in Thamel. The rules set that year have never changed: every guide salaried and insured, every porter under 25 kg with proper gear, every quoted price the whole price. What changed is scale — eighteen full-time staff and nearly five thousand trekkers guided since.
“A trekking company is a promise-keeping machine. The itinerary is just the paperwork for it.”
What he does now
Officially: operations, route planning and a seat on the TAAN board, where he argues for the guide-wage standards we run on. Unofficially: he still checks every itinerary that leaves the office, still answers the desk phone when it rings past seven, and still walks one full EBC departure every autumn — unannounced, as the assistant guide.
Milestones
- 2006 — Founded Go Trek with three guides and one desk in Thamel
- 2011 — Took the company into restricted-area operations (Manaslu, Mustang)
- 2015 — Led the Langtang relief effort that became our longest CSR program
- 2019 — Capped group sizes at 12 in our biggest-ever season
- 2026 — Twenty years in; still checks every itinerary personally