This thesis examines the relationship between tourism, vulnerability, and adaptation to changing social-ecological conditions in two Indigenous mountain villages in Nepal. Between 2003 and 2006, the Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme (TRPAP) created the Tamang Heritage Trail (THT) trekking circuit in Rasuwa District. Guided by a community-based pro-poor approach, the TRPAP sought to reduce poverty and promote socioeconomic development through ethnic heritage tourism. Drawing on mixed-methods research in the villages of Briddhim and Gatlang, this study investigates how tourism has transformed rural life and livelihoods over the past two decades. It analyzes the effects of tourism at the community level and whether household tourism participation decreases vulnerability to socioeconomic and environmental shocks and stresses, enhances adaptive capacity, and helps build sustainable livelihoods. Compared to non-tourism households, tourism households had higher exposure to shocks but lower sensitivity and greater adaptive capacity, resulting in lower overall livelihood vulnerability. While tourism has sparked conflict, deepened socioeconomic divisions, and created new precarities, it has also enhanced local quality of life and given participating households and communities new resources and capabilities to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. By creating options under conditions of increasing social, cultural, economic, and ecological uncertainty and change, tourism provides some people in Rasuwa remarkable agency to determine what they want their communities to be like and work toward their desired futures.