Humla grows kaguno and chino millet, buckwheat, naked barley and potatoes, with walnuts and apricots in the mid valleys. Almost no rice is grown in the district. Rice reaches Humla as state-subsidised grain flown into Simikot and, since the road reached the district in July 2025, in part brought up by truck. That substitution is the largest change in the Humla diet in living memory.
What is actually grown in Humla
Humla is a district of narrow terraced fields at the bottom and thin pastoral ground at the top, and its crops are chosen by altitude before anything else. Around Srinagar and the lower Adanchuli valleys, at roughly 1,650 m, the terraces carry barley, finger millet and buckwheat. Higher, around and above Simikot at about 2,910 m, the growing season shortens to a single crop and the field list narrows to naked barley, buckwheat, potato and the hardier millets.
Two facts govern all of it. The first is that there is one harvest a year in most of the district, so a household has one chance to get it right and must store what it gets. The second is that the fields are small and steeply terraced, ploughed by oxen or dug by hand, and cannot be mechanised in any useful way. How terraced farming works in Nepal covers the engineering, and the Humla district guide covers the land it is cut into; what matters here is that it caps how much any household can grow.
Higher again, the cultivated ground thins to naked barley and potato on whatever sheltered land a village has, and the economy becomes progressively pastoral. Yak, yak crossbreeds, sheep, goats and horses graze the high pasture through the short summer, and the food that comes off that system is dairy and meat rather than grain.
Kaguno and chino: the two millets that carry Humla
Kaguno is foxtail millet. Chino is proso millet, also called common or broomcorn millet. Both are small-seeded, quick to mature, tolerant of poor thin soil and of drought, and both store for a long time without spoiling. Those four properties are exactly what a single-harvest district at altitude needs, which is why they have been grown here for as long as anyone has farmed these slopes.
Cooked, they behave differently from rice and are not a substitute for it in texture. Kaguno is usually boiled to a thick porridge or ground and cooked into dhido, the stiff flour paste eaten across the Nepali hills. Chino turns up in the same forms and also as a fermented base for local beer. Both are eaten with whatever vegetable and pulse the household has, and both are far more nutritionally serious than the polished white rice that is replacing them.
They are also the grains with the least prestige. Millet in the Nepali hills has long carried the association of poverty and of having no other option, and rice has carried the opposite. A household that can afford rice tends to eat rice and to serve rice to guests. That, rather than any change in the fields, is what is squeezing kaguno and chino out.
| Crop | Nepali name | Where it grows in Humla | What it does for a household |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foxtail millet | Kaguno | Lower and middle valleys, thin dry terraces | Drought-tolerant, quick, stores for years. Dhido and porridge |
| Proso millet | Chino | Lower and middle valleys, marginal ground | The shortest season of any grain here. Fallback crop and beer |
| Finger millet | Kodo | Terraces around the southern settlements | Dhido and local beer. Stores well |
| Buckwheat | Phapar | Throughout, including above Simikot | Fast maturing, tolerates cold and poor soil. Flour and greens |
| Naked barley | Uwa | The high northern villages | The high-altitude grain. Roasted flour, and the base of the northern diet |
| Potato | Alu | Throughout, heavily in the north | Calories per unit of ground, and it keeps through winter |
| Walnut | Okhar | Mid-valley villages, often around houses | Fat and protein from a tree that needs no field |
| Rice | Chamal | Not grown in any quantity | Bought, and mostly state-subsidised |
Naked barley and the northern kitchen
North of Simikot the grain that matters is naked barley, uwa, which is the hulless variety that grows where nothing else will. It is roasted and ground into flour, and that flour is the northern staple, taken with salted butter tea or worked into a dough by hand at the bowl. It is the same food system that runs across the Tibetan plateau, because the northern valleys of Humla are physically and culturally part of that plateau, a division set out in the guide to Khas and Lama Humla.
Alongside it comes dairy. Yak and yak crossbreed milk becomes butter and hard dried cheese, both of which store and travel, and butter goes into tea as a matter of course rather than as a curiosity for visitors. Meat is eaten but is not everyday food, and in Buddhist villages the household attitude to slaughter complicates it further.
Vegetables in the north are thin on the ground and seasonal. Potato does most of the work. Greens are dried or fermented for winter, in the same way they are throughout the Nepali hills, and by late winter a high household is eating a narrow list. Anyone travelling north from Simikot should expect the food to simplify with every day of walking.
Walnuts, apricots and what grows without a field
Walnut trees stand around the houses in the mid-valley villages and are a serious part of the food economy rather than an ornament. A walnut is fat and protein produced by a tree that occupies no terrace, needs no annual labour and survives a bad year in the fields. The same logic applies to apricot in the drier valleys, eaten fresh in season and dried for the rest of the year.
Foraged food fills further gaps: nettle, wild greens, mushrooms in the monsoon, and the seasonal harvest of the high pastures. In monsoon 2026 the lodges along the corridor were serving nettle soup regularly, because it was what was growing and it costs nothing but the walk.
The subsidised rice, and how it arrives
Rice is not a Humla crop. It arrives, and how it arrives is one of the defining facts about the district. Nepal operates a state grain supply into the remote Karnali districts, and for decades the only way into Humla was the air: rice flown to Simikot in cargo loads and distributed onward, at a delivered cost far above the market price down in the Tarai and sold below it.
Since the Bailey bridge at Kharpunath closed the last gap in the road from Surkhet in July 2025, some of that supply comes up by truck instead. Road freight is cheaper than air freight by a wide margin, and that difference reaches households as lower prices on everything the trucks carry. But the track is unpaved, single-lane and cut from cliff, it closes with weather, and flights remain the dependable route. Humla has not swapped air supply for road supply. It has added a second channel that works some of the year.
What the rice costs in the shops in any given month is not something to publish. It moves with the season, with the road, with the state of the airstrip and with which channel the last consignment came through. Ask in the bazaar in Simikot on the day.
What the rice displaced, and why it matters
The substitution runs one way. As subsidised rice became reliably available, households ate less millet and less barley; as they ate less, less was planted; as less was planted, the seed stock, the terraces and the knowledge all narrowed. This is a well-recognised pattern across the Nepali hills and Humla is a clear case of it.
The trade is not obviously good. Polished white rice is lower in protein, fibre, iron and calcium than the millets it replaced, and a district with high rates of undernutrition swapped a nutritionally dense local grain for a nutritionally thinner imported one. It also swapped a crop that grows in Humla for a crop that must be delivered, which converts a food supply into a logistics problem. When the aircraft do not fly and the road is shut, the millet in a household store is what is left.
There is a counter-argument and it deserves stating plainly. Rice is easier to cook, needs less fuel and less labour than dhido, keeps well, and is what people want to eat. Telling a Humla household to go back to kaguno because a visitor finds it more authentic is not a serious position. The useful direction is the one being pushed by agricultural programmes in Karnali now, which is to keep the local grains in the rotation and give them a market rather than to reverse the clock.
What a traveller will actually be given to eat
On the main corridor, dal bhat. Lodges and teahouses cook rice because that is what is bought and what visitors expect, and along the route between Simikot and the border the menu narrows to dal bhat, thukpa, noodles, eggs, potato and tea. It is repetitive and it is adequate, and it gets simpler and more expensive with every day north of the road head, because everything in the kitchen has been carried there.
To eat what Humla actually grows you generally have to ask, and to ask a day ahead. Dhido made from kaguno or kodo is household food rather than menu food, and in a homestay it can usually be arranged if the request is made when you arrive rather than at the point of sitting down. Homestays in Humla is the place that request is most likely to be met.
Two practical notes. Butter tea is salty, not sweet, and refusing a second bowl politely is normal. And carrying your own tea, sugar and a few spices is a courtesy in the high villages, where those things are expensive and have come a long way. Mule caravans out of Simikot is how a great deal of it got there.
Before you travel. Humla is a restricted border district and conditions change without notice. Roads close, flights are cancelled, permit rules and fees are revised, and the Hilsa crossing opens and shuts to different categories of traveller. Confirm the current position with the District Administration Office in Simikot, the Department of Immigration, or a registered local operator before you commit to a route.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is kaguno in English?
Kaguno is foxtail millet. It is a small-seeded cereal grown widely in the Nepali hills, valued for maturing quickly, tolerating drought and poor soil, and storing for years without spoiling. In Humla it is eaten as a thick porridge or ground and cooked into dhido.
What is chino?
Chino is proso millet, also called common or broomcorn millet. It has one of the shortest growing seasons of any cereal, which makes it the crop a household falls back on when the season is late or another crop has failed. It is eaten in the same forms as kaguno and is also used as a base for local beer.
Is rice grown in Humla?
Essentially no. The district is too high and too dry, with too short a season, for paddy. Rice eaten in Humla is brought in, much of it through the state subsidised grain supply, historically flown into Simikot by air and since July 2025 partly trucked up the road from Surkhet.
What do people eat in the northern villages of Humla?
A barley-based diet close to that of the Tibetan plateau: roasted naked barley flour, salted butter tea, potato, thick soups, and yak dairy in the form of butter and dried cheese. Dal bhat appears where rice has been carried in, which on the trekking corridor is most lodges.
Can I get millet dhido as a traveller in Humla?
Sometimes, and more easily in a homestay than in a lodge on the main trail. Lodges cook rice because that is what is bought and expected. Ask on arrival rather than at the meal, and expect it to be made from finger millet or foxtail millet depending on what the household has stored.
Why is food so expensive north of Simikot?
Because every item in the kitchen has been flown to Simikot or trucked up a seasonal road, then carried onward by mule or by porter for one to several days. The price reflects transport, not profiteering. It rises steadily with each stage north and is highest in the settlements nearest the border.
Is the food in Humla safe for visitors?
Cooked food served hot is generally fine. Treat all water, including water offered as drinking water in a lodge, either by filter, by chemical treatment or by boiling. Raw salad and unpeeled fruit are the usual things to avoid. The bigger risk on this route is altitude rather than the food.
Should travellers bring their own food into Humla?
Bring what you specifically need rather than a full supply. Buying locally puts money into the villages you pass through and is the point of being there. What is worth carrying is anything with no local supply at all: your own water treatment, any medication, high-energy snacks for pass days, and a little tea and sugar to leave behind.