Yeshi Gyetsa - Founder and Chief
The driving force behind Khampa Caravan is Yeshi, with his breadth of cross-cultural experience and international management experience. He comes from a local family which has been deeply involved in the development and management of this area for generations.

Educated at a top US college, he worked in the financial industry in Switzerland for many years before founding Khampa Caravan. Yeshi began his career with a trading company in New York. He was instrumental in pioneering Sino-American joint-ventures in Tibetan areas, setting up a handicrafts enterprise in Lhasa, and building a resort hotel in Gyalthang. He has also led numerous treks and cultural tours in Nepal and Tibet for renowned international tour operators. Yeshi has two daughters, Uma Gawa (2002), Padme Paro (2006), and is a big soccer fan. His dream is to take on the Brazilian squad in his home turf on the Tibetan plateau. Portrait

Dakpa Kelden - Co-founder
Dakpa oversees Khampa Caravan's tour operations. His extensive tour-leading and operating experience, and his close relationship and commitment to his communities, is what gives Khampa Caravan its unique signature.

Dakpa spent his early years as a monk in India, undergoing a traditional monastic curriculum. He had a notorious knack for memorizing sutras - while his monk friends fretted trying to memorize the Prajnaparamitha, Dakpa chose to trek for miles to watch Bollywood movies and play cricket.

Following his return to Gyalthang, he worked in the Religious & Cultural Affairs Commission of the Dechen Prefecture (Yunnan). He was involved with Gyalthang’s travel industry from its infant days, going on to manage operations for a major local tour operator. His appetite well-whetted by travel, he went on to study at the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Salzburg, and studied English at the University of Oklahoma. Dakpa speaks - and sings - in Lhasan, Kham-Tibetan, Mandarin, Hindi and English. Gifted artist and raconteur, Dakpa has an innate passion for the outdoors. A better travel companion you will not encounter on the plateau.

Lobsang Tenzin - Co-founder 
Zealous in caring for all his group members, Tenzin is Khampa Caravan’s crucial link to many of our adventures in the remote regions of Kham and Amdo. Tenzin manages our staff and oversees our trek operations and training of our guides.

From a nomad family in the sacred Genyen valley of Lithang, Tenzin like most Khampas knows the land like no one else and has a remarkable ability in sharing the subtleties and insider knowledge of local culture and the land he lives in. He has travelled widely thoughout Kham and Amdo, first as a loyal attendant to the chief abbot of Genyen monastery, and later as a professional guide serving an international clientele.

Tenzin studied briefly in India, and speaks several eastern Tibetan dialects, Lhasan, Mandarin, and English, and can pull off some surprises when he gets his hand on a good horse. Besides being our in-house photographer, Tenzin is also a self-taught herbalist who is happiest in the wilderness, weathering storms, horse-riding, hunting for herbs or picking mushrooms. Indoors, he is captive to a computer play-station. Portrait

Yangdol Panglung - Co-founder
Yangdol is a knowledge manager and marketing specialist for a multinational corporation in Zurich. She is also Khampa Caravan’s business advisor and strategist.

Yangdol began her professional career working for Tibetan organizations in Switzerland. She subsequently lived in Gyalthang for several years teaching English in one of the middle schools, and regularly visits on Khampa Caravan work. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University and a Master’s from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. She speaks several European and Asian languages and dialects, and is particularly interested in contemporary Tibetan culture. She is married to Yeshi. In addition to their two children, the couple also has two dogs, Tibet mastiff Rabga and Tibet terrier Norga. Portrait

Kesang Jamyang - Manager  

Born in Nishar district just outside of Gyalthang, Kesang Jamyang has all the qualities to make him a local celebrity. Just like his forefathers who ploughed the old tea caravan routes to Lhasa and beyond, Jamyang learned early the merits of looking beyond ones own horizon.

 After finishing primary school in Gyalthang, he left for Lhasa for  
 the larger life and then traveled further south into where he
 continued his middle schooling and then enrolled in a university
 for a degree in tourism management. While there, besides
 learning a host of languages and dialects besides English, he
 stamped his authority with his basketball skills and captained the
 university team traveling to many places in South India
 undreamed of. Upon completion of his degree, options opened up to head westwards but his heart pointed to his roots in the Nishar – the valley where “the sun never ceases to rise.”  

Shortly after his return in 2004, Jamyang joined Khampa Caravan, guiding and helping coordinate a resort project in Dechen. His travels took him to every corner of the Tibetan world sharing in the excitement of discovery his own heritage with his clients while always maintaining a high sense of responsibility and service towards their needs. In his community, Jamyang has become a role model for youth – an inspiration to study hard and to look beyond those hills that overlook Nishar.  

Jamyang has now become active voice in the tourism plans in Gyalthang and is frequently called up by tourism authorities for his take on eco-tourism and guide training initiatives in the region. He has regularly been invited by the government to represent the prefecture at promotional fairs in Shanghai , Kunming and other venues. Since 2007, Jamyang has taken on management responsibilities and runs the day-to-day affairs at Khampa Caravan. 

 
Doma Chudon - Caravan Leader
Doma is a Caravan Leader who’s firmly rooted in the greater Himalaya. Based in Kathmandu, she has been leading Himalayan adventures across the vast Tibetan plateau for the last six years - from her native Kham in the east, to Mt Kailash in the far west – as well as in Nepal.  

She studied Art at the University of Wisconsin and attended Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her creative talent has led her to work together with master artists in Nepal, India and Tibet, particularly in restoring Tibetan artifacts for museum collections and exhibitions in various European cities.

During her eight years in Lhasa as creative rug-designer with Khawachen Handicraft Centre, Doma was the hands-on, on-the-ground creative force in revitalizing Tibet’s rug-weaving heritage. She worked closely with village craftsmen to establish the "Gangchen" line of Tibetan carpets in the international market.

In addition to the expansive language repertoire of leaders and members at Khampa Caravan, Doma impresses people with her beautiful Nepali and, not surprisingly, a wonderful singing voice. She is also a passionate and elegant dancer of Salsa, Merengue, Tango, classical Indian and Tibetan folk dance.

`Numey` Sonam Phuntsok - Driver
Numey is the embodiment of patience and cares for all who sit with him in his van. After almost a decade of truck-driving on the narrow logging trails of Kham and transporting logs to Kunming and Chengdu, he knows the driving terrain in this part of the highlands inside out.

With the government ban on logging in 1998, hundreds of local truck drivers lost their main source of livelihood. After a year of helping out in his fields in Trinyi village and a few summers of mushroom picking, our “younger brother” (that’s what “Numey” means) joined Khampa Caravan in 2003 with an unblemished safety record. He now drives our international guests knowing the twists and turns as well as the great spots where one can catch the best views of the gorges and mountains of which there are plenty.

Numey is well versed in traditional dance and song and has also accompanied clients to many of the remote trekking trails as an assistant cook. When he is given the reigns to cook, Numey can produce the best “Thukpa” (noodle soup) in the wilderness.  

`Adro` Kesang Dhondup - Chief Cook
Hailing from Tari Gyab village adjacent to Lake Napa, Adro has lived to see and do much. He is the real Jack-of-all-trades but has a delightful personality to top it all off.

In the early 1970s Adro was sent to the Salween valley as a laborer on the 156 km road-building project to Gongshan. With the gradual opening of China after 1976, he returned to Gyalthang and opened the first shop in Trinyi village selling basic supplies to villagers.

When the Matsutake mushroom trade took off in the 1990s, Adro was in big demand for his self-learned accounting skills, his hardworking nature and his contacts in the remote villages. A big trader employed him, during which time Adro was commissioned to collect mushroom in Yangthang and Trinyi villages where he had a good community following. However, with the collapse of the Japanese economy, the mushroom trade was also short-lived and by the year 2000, he joined a restaurant run by an Austrian couple in Gyalthang. There, he added many Western dishes such as pasta and some great potato dishes to his already rich repertoire of Tibetan and Chinese cooking.

Adro is notorious in town for his distinguished puffy hair-style and his odd suits. He is also known widely to be an obsessive hygiene freak which is a rare but precious disorder for a Tibetan. When Adro is not trekking, he can be found at his home, gardening or scrubbing the floor. He is married and has a son, Kesang Dorje, who attends Kindergarten.

Senga, Cash Manager
Tucked warmly inside her father’s fur Chuba (Tibetan gown), Senga was brought to Lijiang on horseback by her father when she was barely five months old. She joined her childless and widowed aunt there and remained there until completing her schooling.

Natives of Chatreng, Senga's parents and her numerous uncles and aunts moved around actively with the trade caravans linking Lijiang, Gyalthang, Chatreng and Bathang. In Lijiang the big city, it was thought Senga would find a brighter future than her two sisters back in Chatreng who led hard lives typical of a farming family.

After completing her schooling in Lijiang and then continuing her education at Kangding Accounting School in Dartsedo (Sichuan) in the late 90's, she spent a few years working as a cashier in Lhasa for a government guest house. In 2002, when she was just 22, her father decided it was time for her to return to Chatreng and be married off, still a common fate faced by many girls in this somewhat Macho town. She resisted and instead moved to Gyalthang where she joined Khampa Caravan to apply her cash-management skills and to hone her flair for numbers.

Senga finds it a challenge reconciling the numbers in a field where every little expense is disbursed in cash and often with no receipts to show for them. While she revels in this task, she is also game on sharing her inside knowledge of Chatreng for future tours and trekking programs.

Kesang Lhamo, Domestic Sales
Born in Chanag, a village just outside Gyalthang, Lhamo remembers many summers spent in the mountains herding her family's animals with her twin sister. In autumn, she remembers hiking from dawn to dusk in search of pine mushrooms. It seemed her life would forever be in those mountains, when at the age of six, her parents decided to send her to school and left her sister to inherit the traditional lifestyle devoted to the land and animals.

Lhamo completed her primary school close to her family and village but later moved to the city area where she completed high school in 1997. Soon she began work at the Gyalthang Dzong Hotel rotating between kitchen, restaurant, housekeeping and front-office tasks. It was here that she was able to learn her English.

Lhamo joined Khampa Caravan in 2003 where she did all the group bookings and reservations. Since 2004, she has been given the task of promoting trekking trips to domestic clients a challenging proposition. "Most domestic tourists seek pleasure and comfort. It's only a small fraction and younger Chinese who are adventurous," she says. “We need to target them.”

Lhamo lives in the centre of town with Senga as her roommate. On weekends, she bikes back to her village to spend time with her twin sister and her six year-old nephew to whom she has begun teaching English and the value of education in a fast-changing economy.

Lobsang Dolma – Customer Service (Diqing, Kham, Amdo, Lhasa programs)
Born and brought up in a remote valley tucked deep along the Mekong , Lobsang Dolma’s life took a dramatic turn when she was selected among a handful from Gyalthang to study English at Qinghai Normal University in Xining thousands of miles away. Being the youngest in the family and just a teenage girl at that time, it was a difficult decision to leave the protective surroundings of family, community and loved ones and the familiarity of Gyalthang.

After thinking of the common plight of young girls in her village and the rare opportunity to learn, Dolma and her family decided to take on the challenge. Dolma’s outward journey began one fine morning after hugging her parents goodbye on a long train journey for several days to the big city of Xining . Not knowing what to expect, Dolma was pleasantly surprised to be welcomed into a diverse family of young students from every corner of coming from varied backgrounds and experiences and a desire to learn. 

Dolma would spend four full years in Xining learning, communicating and exploring ideas that she never would have experienced in her hometown. To top it all up, she and her classmates were surrounded by a group of teachers from all over the world who inspired them with new ideas, new subjects and new methods of teaching that taught them to think independently and understand one’s own worth. With classes in sociology, world literature, ethnography and anthropology, Dolma learned to question the existing norms even her own village such as position and workload of women which deprived them of education. 

Lobsang Dolma joined Khampa Caravan in 2006 winter after graduation, her desire to learn is unwavered. Dolma’s on-the-job duties addressing the communication and service needs of clients from all over the world has been an eye opener. With the hands on experience, Dolma is poised to take on the tourism challenges that Khampa Caravan and the region faces.