Douglas Maclagan, owner of the Pavilions in Pokhara and founder of Right4Children - Episode 12

Joost:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 12th episode of the kimkim podcast. My name is Joost Schreve and I’m co-founder and CEO of kimkim. Today, I have Douglas Maclagan as my guest. Douglas is based in Pokhara, Nepal and is founder and managing director of the Pavilions Himalayas, a boutique style luxury eco-resort in a beautiful valley a few miles outside of Pokhara. Welcome to the podcast, Douglas.

Douglas:

Thank you very much, Joost.

Joost:

It’s early morning, I guess in the monsoon in Pokhara, right?

Douglas:

That’s right. Pretty overcast here. It’s half past 8 in the morning so I think probably about 12 hours difference with you.

Joost:

That’s right. In the monsoon over there, in the valley, I’m guessing it must be quite wet, right? Is that right?

Douglas:

Yeah. I mean, it’s very wet. Not the ideal trekking season, but it has other things because it’s got the low hanging clouds with the valleys and it allows you to plant rice so it’s very green and lush. Everybody is busy out on the fields and plowing the old traditional way with our oxen which in itself is quite romantic really.

Joost:

That’s great. Let’s start with your path in Nepal. Where did you come from and how did you get to Nepal eventually?

Douglas:

My background, I’m half Scottish and half Dutch and I grew up in such in Great Britain for the first 14 years of my life and then moved to Holland where I did my secondary school and stayed there until I was 28.

Joost:

We have that in common, the Dutch background.

Douglas:

We do, absolutely, yeah. I have been living in Nepal now for good 22 years. I came here in 1994 with the idea of staying here for 1 or 2 years and see what’s happened. I’m still here, and love the country, and literally have fallen in love not only with the country but also its people because I married a Nepalese colleague of mine who was working in one of the projects that I was doing in supporting children and young mothers.

Joost:

Wow. That’s great. I’d love to hear some more details about how you got started in Nepal and what kind of projects you were involved with.

Douglas:

Sure. My background is education. I’m a teacher. I did do some counseling for the youth facing difficult times in Holland at the time and I decided to go trekking in Nepal when I was 27 and as so often, you fall in love with these beautiful country, with immense hospitality of the people, the beauty and serenity of the mountains, the amazing culture and diversity of the languages and such.

I decided to extend my period of time by looking a little bit more in different Asian countries as well and when I went back to Holland, I felt that my contribution could be better more worthwhile in Nepal so I decided to pack up house and not sell everything immediately for sure. The idea was really just to go for 1 year maybe maximum of 2 and in February ’94, I went back to Nepal working with the government to assess the child mortality and the maternal mortality because this was very high in some regions in Nepal.

In fact, the area where I met my wife later on to be, the child mortality under 5 was 34%. For me, there was something morally very wrong with that because if children can’t celebrate their 5th birthday and it’s 1/3 of the child population, I think something has to be done about that. I went from a personal crusade to look at different ways how I could support the government to turn that around.

Soon I came up with an idea after about a year of research that we could create simple child caring facilities where children can be dropped off in remote mountain villages being cared for by the local women who would be trained up as early childhood development facilitators but also to train up a primary healthcare worker and a midwife in one of these villages as a model and to try to support the mothers during their pregnancy because also as I mentioned a lot of mothers would die unnecessarily due to pregnancy related causes.

That shocked me because if you take the mother away of a family, they really are the nucleus and especially in third sector poor countries, the mother is really the key to the family’s existence. You take that mother away and by and large the father will remarry and the stepmother doesn’t always want to accept the children of the previous marriage and therefore pushes their children away either willingly or unwillingly.

The children feel unloved and they come to the streets or they get snapped up by traffickers into prostitution or they become domestic slaves. For me, creating a daycare health center was what I did and it became successful and the government asked me to stay longer. I worked with my wife. I fell in love with my wife and we married in 1999. That’s really where the story continued from there.

Joost:

Wow. That’s quite a story. Those facilities were they full-time or I mean, did children live there during the day time? What were the mechanics of that?

Douglas:

Exactly. The whole concept was a very, very simple concept. It was really a releasing and freeing up the parents so that they could become more economically productive during the daytime working in the fields because of course it was pure 100% agriculture up in the remote areas. For the children to be in a safe place during the daytime from around 9:00 to about 4:00 and in the knowledge that the parents have their children in a safe place, as mentioned they can become more economically productive.

Also the children answer subject to potential snakebites in the fields if the parents leave them in a field to play or that they leave them in the village and fall off high platform walls because there’s of course no fencings. For us, it was really to create a safe haven for the children to be and that concept really has become quite special because at the time when I set these daycare health center models up and then were asked to do more by the government and for me to ask the government in turn to support the facilitator’s salary, they basically laughed at me and they said, “This is not part of the educational curriculum. We only have schools for children aged 6 and above.”

I said, “Yeah, but your children, 1/3 of them die before they reach school going age so what’s the point?” They did agree. They said, “We don’t have a budget. It’s just not part of the curriculum yet. We hope one day, it will be. The good news is that since we’ve been building these daycare health centers since 1995, when we built a lot, we’ve been able to create a model that the government has realized works and now all those years later, about 5 years ago, they decided to take this project onboard and add the early childhood development theme into their mainstream educational system which basically now means that each government primary school has an early childhood development classroom with a facilitator that they pay for.

That really is sustainable development where you come up with a model, you create an idea which proves to work. You measure the impact and you ask the government to take it onboard. It’s  national project now. It’s fantastic millions of children are being supported and of course the average child mortality rate on the 5 has dropped drastically to a national average of less than 5%.

Joost:

That’s really impressive. This has been implemented nationwide in Nepal?

Douglas:

It is now being implemented nationwide, that’s correct.

Joost:

That’s great. From that great work to hospitality please tell us how you went from that to running a resort?

Douglas:

That’s right. It sounds strange, isn’t it, Joost, because here we have an international development aid worker who suddenly turns into a businessman and it’s the opposite route isn’t it. I feel it’s exactly the reason why I am trying to work in business because I do realize that the biggest, let’s say, flaw of social workers and non-government organizations not only in Nepal but worldwide, they are a good social welfare worker, an international development worker are usually very, very poor business people and business people are usually very poor social workers and don’t see really the need why you should give your money away.

I think now, things are changing worldwide. Things are becoming more globalized. People are travelling more and they can see that the small percentage of rich people abroad are just the lucky ones who have been born in that situation but let’s say about 95% of the people have been born poverty and it’s not due to their own testament and mistake. Sharing is caring. That’s of course something that people have become aware about and I think companies are aware that corporate social responsibility is very important and giving back some of your wealth makes the world go around.

That really was the fundamental grassroots of where I was coming from. I realized when I was fundraising abroad to try to fund the projects and speaking to business people and asking them for their money when I was young at 29, 30, 31 years old doing that, the businessmen were generally older than me. They were 40 years plus. As I got older, and they got younger, the ask became more difficult.

I asked myself how would it be if I put myself in their shoes and became a businessman myself and if I could prove that I was given the profits that I was making through my business to a very social causes that I believe in, i.e. local businesses in Nepal supporting local causes and in a fairly substantial way then it would be far more easier for me to go to the tiger economies in Asia such Singapore, Hong Kong, Middle East, Dubai, et cetera to say to them, “Look, I’m giving my percentages away.”

“This is actually providing me a good return because people are staying at my business which is a hotel because we’re giving money back. Actually, it comes back to me so the more you give, the more you get back.” With that philosophy, me and my wife who were very fortunate after we got married in 1999 to decide not to live in the city but to live just outside this city in this very nice valley surrounded by hills and forest with views of the mountains and to have an organic small farm to live.

Joost:

This is outside of Pokhara, right?

Douglas:

That’s right. It’s not far. It’s about 20 minutes from the airport which is in central Pokhara. It’s about from the airport. It’s about a 6-kilometer drive. It’s very romantic because it’s a bit of a rough road getting to us. Though, you’re actually very close to the city, you feel yet a million miles away. That’s really where the story started that we decided to create a small boutique high end resort would actually seriously be able to contribute and make a difference.

Joost:

Actually, a question about that because you mentioned self-confidence that you were going to be able to pull off transitioning from social worker so to speak to a businessman. How do you feel confident that you were able to do that?

Douglas:

I think, Joost in my upbringing, my mom came from a legal background and my father was working in London city as a stockbroker. I think I picked up the principles of business but it still wasn’t really me and when I came over here, I realized that dealing with communities and really working for my heart was one aspect of me and I’m born so I am a Gemini.

I also realized that there was another side of me that if I needed to take the interest of the heart done by people seriously, I would need to try to make money some way or another whether that be myself or be able to approach business people and to really rather than begging them for money, to actually look at a more from a business deal and really putting the proposal to them as such that it was investing in people rather than investing in a material product.

To show them and to prove to them that I was capable and that my nonprofit company was capable of managing their funds well, showing the impact that it was creating according to the targets that we had set. I think that approach they really liked. I hope that answers your question.

Joost:

You were basically already embodying some of the business thinking into your early work into social spaces, right?

Douglas:

That’s correct, yeah.

Joost:

How did then did the Pavilions come about? I think there were a few steps in between the hospitality space, is that right?

Douglas:

That’s right. As you mentioned, early on when I set up my first NGO in Nepal called Child Welfare Scheme Nepal, the concept was right,  let’s take funding from the business people abroad and get them onboard as partners to invest in the daycare health centers that we were setting up but let’s try and stimulate then to give more simply because if I could prove that a very high percentage of their actual funds that they were donating go straight to the people, rather than on administrational costs, that would stimulate them to give more.

How would we cover the other administrational costs? I came up with the idea that where I was based in Pokhara, it is actually the gateway to the Himalayas and the beautiful Annapurna mountains. It’s really where the vast majority of treks start in Nepal other than really the Langtang, and Helambu, and Mt, Everest trek. All other treks start from our area.

Let’s try to create small trekkers lodges where I could try my hospitality talent if you wish and provide trekkers with nice comfortable services but nothing flash at that time and try to get in contact with those people that were staying with me to become aware of what I was doing with Child Welfare Scheme Nepal and maybe even donating some additional funds in the donation boxes and maybe even if they have particular skills that they could contribute as volunteers that we could benefit from them as well.

It was really a 3-tier approach. We started the Nature’s Grace Lodge in 1996 and that became quite well known. It was an 8-room lodge and due to its success we expanded to another lodge in the same street called Butterfly Lodge in 1999. That went actually very well but sadly at the time the political upheaval in Nepal was quite hitting by 2001, 2002. By 2005, I realize that the whole purpose of the hotel actually contributing to Child Welfare Scheme Nepal was not happening anymore due to the lack of tourism.

I decided to close both of the lodges down. That was really my background in hotel management and then later in 2007, when we expanded the farm, one of the farm owners next to us who wanted to sell-off said, “You can have my land to join your land but my little home in the village, you’ll have to take that as well.” That was a cute cottage and we decided with a separate compound, we decided why don’t we take that onboard and create a beautiful home stay.

Very comfortable with its own compound, with a Nepalese person from the village being able to cook for you, keeping your house tidy and also acting as a guide. That went really well. Lots of families in particular really love the little family cottage that we’d set up and from there, the pavilions grew from there. We started building pavilions about 3 1/2 years ago and we opened in November of 2015 so just 7 months ago.

Joost:

That’s right. In the period of mid 2000, the country went to a hard time and tourism collapsed and did it slowly start coming back which give you the confidence to start a new hospitality concept just trying to understand a little bit of background of how Nepal developed in the time.

Douglas:

Absolutely. We’re going back in recent history. You see Nepal became a democracy in 1990 and new and young democracies always suffer from political parties trying to find their way and trying to obviously control certain aspects of the country. That, you could see happen with 2 main parties. The more right wing Nepali congress and the more left social wing UML, United Union of Marxist-Leninist.

We could see that by 1996, 1997 that the Pokhara people who didn’t really have much to say, they were left behind. A new group of political arm called the Maoists, they started gaining momentum. By 2001, more people started take these group seriously because they were not a peaceful movement. They were actually using force and arm clock conflict as their means to have their voice heard. At the same time, we had the royal massacre which you may recall.

Joost:

For sure, absolutely.

Douglas:

That happened on June 1st, 2001 and it was a disaster because literary overnight the whole royal family except the brother of Ben King and his son and his wife were massacred . It was really the beginning of the end to the monarchy and the king that then came in power, the brother, he acted more in a dictatorial way which the people didn’t like because they were trying to establish themselves overseas still as a democracy.

You can imagine to how this all compounded that if you got a king that’s unloved, the instability that has been created by the political situation and then on top of that, a militia called the Maoist trying to gain momentum, it really was political mayhem and by 2006, it really came to ahead where it was really a standoff between the king who had the army rule and trying to push the political parties down and then amazingly what broke the deadlock was really the Nepali congress and the UML and the other parties working together with the Maoist and saying, that let’s put our troubles behind us. Let’s work together and fight the king.”

The overthrew the king. Then they decided with the support of the international community and United Nations to hold elections which they did in 2007 and to go ahead peacefully and to down arms. From that day onwards from 2007, I think that’s when it was a breath of fresh air and relief to the whole tourism industry which is the largest foreign US dollar income sources that Nepal knows and has.

Joost:

Nepal went through tough times I guess through the years when tourism was really down, right?

Douglas:

That’s right. Obviously, agriculture being the number 1 earner but tourism certainly touching a shared number 2 with general soft industry and then number 3 now actually or gaining momentum now is actually the remittance earners, basically the export of young labor to in particular the Gulf and India. You can imagine that is actually telling, isn’t it, because it’s not like time where you got opportunities.

Here the young people do not have work opportunities. It’s all exports labor and with the consequences of course of abuse and bonded labor abroad where passports being confiscated and worse. We see a very clear example of that in the young Nepalese boys and girls working for instance in Qatar on the football stadiums that are being built to host the World Cup in 2022.

Joost:

The conditions are horrific where many of them die and working in very harsh conditions.

Douglas:

Exactly. The sadness of all this is, is that what Nepal needs is it needs it’s Tourism back. It’s safe country to come to. There’s absolutely no doubt. Yes, it was shaken up again by the earthquake. A couple of earthquakes and more than 400 aftershocks last year as the world knows. All I can say is I live here with my wife and 3 young children and it is absolutely safe and it’s a country that really needs the confidence of the international community so that they can regain their jobs here in the tourism sector and obviously provide the hospitality that they’re so famous for.

Joost:

Exactly. It sounds like the Pavilion is an example where you leverage the strength of the country which is it’s beautiful nature. It’s also hospital and the people are great so it’s definitely an effort that aligns very well with what Nepal is great at. I’d love to hear a little more about the Pavilions. I’ve been there actually. I passed by a few months ago. It’s actually beautiful and it’s quite well put together. It’s luxurious. It’s own food supply and everything. I’d love to hear your vision a little bit about that and how you put it all together.

Douglas:

Sure. Thank you for that. I’m glad that you made it over, Joost. The concept was as I mentioned earlier, really to have local businesses support local social causes and to create like we did all those years back with the daycare health centers and model that the government would copy. Now, I would like to create a model that the tourism industry can copy.

Not only in the tourism industry but also generally the business houses, how cool would it be if the business houses in Nepal that earned a lot of money and some really do that they give some of that wealth away through understanding that corporate social responsibility actually does work and even if it’s just for the good feel factor, it’s worth seriously contemplating and doing but sometimes, there are companies that have to take the lead on this and show the way.

I think the first philosophy is that Pavilion Himalaya has been set up to show that corporate social responsibility is important. It supports the country that we don’t always need international funding to bail the poverty out of Nepal. We have to start within our own circles and that’s what really Pavilion Himalaya is about. It’s a combination of providing a first class facility for visitors from abroad and alike local Nepalese who have money to spend to provide a really unique experience for the guests to enjoy.

From our place, they can see the mountains. They can see the Manaslu Range, and part of the Annapurna range. We are surrounded by hills and forests but we are nestled on a working farm which me and my wife had set up all those years back when we bought the land after we got married in 1999. We got buffaloes, cows, chickens, goats, wild boar. We’re just planting rice today.

When you come out of your villas which itself quite unique because one room is one villa. You walk out of your villa and your strengthen the fields. We haven’t put fences around your villas. We haven’t put fences around the whole compound of the resort. The idea obviously is not to keep the people out because you as a visitor, as a tourist, come here to experience Nepal, to experience the village people, to experience the culture.

We’re quite unique in having set up a eco green organic farm resort where everything is harvested onsite for you. The idea of each villa having its own water supply harvested through the rain water collection then filtered and then this water being used for your showers and your bath and your hand washing. We provide our own organic biodegradable shower gels and shampoos and body lotions so that when it’s mixed with the water, it’s collected again and filtered through something of what we call a wet land garden filtration system tank and that has 5 different filtration units within the tank.

That water when it’s clean, it’s called gray water and that gray water then goes back to the flushing of the toilets and that water which we call black water then goes down, the hill through piping and is added to the biogas. The biogas plant is then substituted with the manure from the animals, from the cows the goats, the buffalos and that provides the methane gas that goes back up to the kitchen which is our restaurant kitchen and that cooks the food that we grow on the farm and then it’s straight fresh on your plate.

Then the slurry basically, the manure slurry leftover from the biogas plant, that goes back on the field as manure. You can’t actually have a more green approach than that and the electricity is harvested through solar so we heat our water through solar, but if on cloudy days it doesn’t work, that doesn’t also matter because we have the heat exchange system where we have heat pumps and that’s a reversed air-conditioning idea, but powered by solar, so again eco-friendly

Joost:

Great. Whole ecosystem that sustains itself it many ways.

Douglas:

Exactly. Even all the electricity. Of course we have a backup generator but we try not to use that at all and in principle, the whole system is run on solar power.

Joost:

That’s great. I definitely recommend everyone who’s listening when you have a chance to make it over to Nepal, certainly check out Pavilions and try to stay there if there’s availability. It’s a very special place for sure.

Douglas:

Thank you very much.

Joost:

Douglas, other than of course staying at the Pavilions, what would you recommend travelers would do if they want to come to Nepal and make a positive contribution. It’s probably a balance between having a great experience for themselves, but how can people combine it with helping Nepal.

Douglas:

One has to be really, really careful so I’m really glad that you ask that question because a lot of people they really want to contribute. It comes from their heart and sometimes the support that they want to give from their heart, from their passion, from their emotion isn’t always constructive support. We could see them actually with the earthquake. When the earthquake happened, there was of course worldwide coverage about what happened in Nepal and you could see that the people we’re trying to contribute in ways for example will send secondhand clothes.

We will send blankets. We will send tents. We will send medicine. You name it, it was sent. Very sadly, this got stockpiled at the airport. A lot of the aid material goods that were sent actually had to be again incinerated and sent back to Bangladesh because there weren’t incinerators here. An example is the medicine.

The medicine was often sell by date at past or it was medicine that had a prescription in Russian language which people of the village can’t of course read so you could get dosage mistakes and could become dangerous. Culturally, people, they don’t really like to wear secondhand clothes here. They would prefer to for instance have their own economy support.

What would have work better is that for the same money that you pay for the weight on airplanes for the freight charge is that you use that money to buy new clothes in Nepal supporting the local shop keep and the economy and providing those clothes to be distributed to the places where it’s needed.

That’s just an example. When tourists come here now, post-earthquake, I would say the first thing is when you book your holiday for example through different agents like kimkim and others, you make sure that you choose wisely. Make sure that the travel agents that you use abroad really truly do contribute and support the local providers on the ground.

For instance that they work together with trekking companies on the ground that are local, that they support the local teahouses. During their treks, they support the local hotels. That’s one way. The second thing of course is if guests are going to book their holidays, best qto try to do a little bit of extra research and to try and find the hotels that they want to stay and then be sensible and book directly with the hotels or with the restaurants or with the trekking companies because in that way there’s no commission.

For example, Booking.com or Agoda or Expedia, of course the take a lot of commission that the local people will not see and therefore … That’s another way that you can do it as you are planning your holiday. Once you are in Nepal, it is important that if you … To note for example fall into the trap of a very clever, cunning beggars on the streets. You will not help a street child who wants to actually leave the street by giving him or her money when they’re begging on the street because this will provide success for them and that will keep them on the street.

We must not promote people coming to the street and people staying on the street. That’s important. The other thing in terms of child care, be very careful not to fall in the trap of supporting orphanages. The vast majority of children who are currently in orphanages and I’m talking the vast majority about 82% of children that are currently in orphanages are not orphans.

Therefore we call this the orphan business. It’s a very easy way for Nepalese businessmen to earn a very fast buck by promoting that they are helping children through private boarding school education please sponsor this child. Then what they do is they’ll sponsor this child maybe multiple times. In fact some orphanages that we’ve been checking on have been supporting the same child 12 times.

If you have a thousand US dollars support for one child, which includes lodging, food, education, and clothing, you can imagine that if they charge a thousand US dollars for one and they do that 12 times, it’s $12,000 and if you got 60 children in your home, that’s big business. Please, please, please don’t do that. Be very careful where you provide your support. Of course when you’re in Nepal, support the local businesses. Do go shopping. Do try your skills at the local bargaining. It’s fun and it support the local economy.

Joost:

I think in short, come to Nepal and travel and do as much local as possible, spend your money locally, I think probably is a practical way that travelers can travel responsibly.

Douglas:

Absolutely.

Joost:

All right. I think it’s time to wrap up. It’s very interesting to hear your path. Lots of amazing insights and experiences. Personally, I certainly hope to be back in your near Pokhara and meet in person and I really hope that a little of our listeners can also can come to Nepal and potentially also visit the Pavilions. It was really a pleasure to talk to you Douglas.

Douglas:

Thank you very much, Joost to be interviewed. It’s a great pleasure and it really does help Nepal and thank you for this opportunity. Much appreciated.

Joost:

Great. My pleasure. Take care.