Nepal Tours Get Local - NYTimes.com For those who want to meet local people as well as appreciate the grandeur of the landscape, the India-based tour operator Village Ways will introduce community-based trips to Nepal in 2014. Beginning in March, the new 10-night trips will explore the Sailung Valley, over six hours by car northeast of Katmandu and well away from the main tourist areas. Here, travelers will spend six days walking in view of the Himalayas at over 9,000 feet elevation in a region famous for its hundreds of hillocks, crossing a river by suspension bridge, visiting a 600-year-old monastery and looking for barking deer in the woods. Aimed at sustainably developing tourism as a means to encourage conservation, the guided trips shift focus nightly to the largely Buddhist villages of Solambu, Teksingh and Pasiban, where trekkers stay in simple community guesthouses, with one night in a tented camp. Meals feature local vegetarian fare grown by area farmers. Itineraries conclude with a full day in the relative metropolis of Kathmandu. Trips cost 847 pounds per person, about $1,360 at $1.60 to the pound, double occupancy from March 1 through June 15.