From salt-trade post to the town every trek passes
Before trekking, Namche lived on trade. Sherpa families from here and from Khumjung and Thame crossed the Nangpa La, a glacier pass west of Thame at about 5,700 m, to Tibet, carrying grain, paper and goods from the Nepal hills, and returning with salt, wool and Tibetan livestock. Namche's traders were among the richest families in Khumbu, and their large stone houses still stand on the bowl's lower terraces.
After 1959 the Tibetan border closed to most of that traffic, and for a few years Namche lost its purpose. Then came the mountaineers and, from the late 1960s, the trekkers. Lodges replaced trading houses. In 1976 Nepal created Sagarmatha National Park, with its headquarters on the hill above Namche at Mendalphu, and in 1979 UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site. The town became the park's market, bank and meeting place.
The Saturday haat bazaar keeps the old trading role alive. Porters and farmers walk up for two or three days from Solu, Okhaldhunga and the Rai villages below Lukla with rice, vegetables, eggs and live chickens, and Tibetan traders still bring goods across the border when it is open. They sell on the terraces from early morning, and by midday most are packing up for the walk home.
