Suka Maya Chepang and her daughter Chameli are busy cooking their morning rice in Danda Gaon. But theirs isn't a murky smoke-filled kitchen like the others one sees around Nepal.

It is clean and bright, and the reason is that the Chepang family has a new biogas stove.

"See, no smoke going into my house," says Suka Maya, "I haven't had a cough in the last nine months." The stove burns methane generated from an underground digester filled with manure from here two buffalos and six cows. The family doesn't need firewood, and the children don't get chest infections.

Apart from the biogas for cooking, Suka Maya also has a solar lantern for light. Earlier, she used to spend Rs 400 a month to buy kerosene for lighting, and although the solar light and battery cost Rs 2,200 it has already paid for itself.

Off the grid and far away from any roads, Danda Gaon with its 17 households is becoming a model eco-village. Money for the alternative energy sources came as soft loan from the government with support from Practical Action Nepal and villagers chipped in with labour.

Gorkha's eco village lights the way

Kul Bahadur, a teacher at Toman Danda Primary School, prepares class work by a solar-powered light which runs for seven hours using daylight charging.

In nearby Luprang, 43-year-old Lal Bahadur Chepang is working on the tomato field which he fertilises with the rich slurry oozing out of his biogas plant. The digester not just supplies methane for cooking but yields rich fertiliser that has boosted vegetable harvests, increasing income.

"Since using this manure we don't use chemicals anymore," says Lal Bahadur who now earns up to Rs 30,000 a year from selling tomatoes.

The villages around Bhumlichok are now getting ready to declare themselves a successful renewable energy VDC. They have wind and solar hybrid systems, biogas, solar lamps, smoke hood chimneys and are now getting ready to install a micro-hydro plant.

Dhruba Simkhada in Gorkha