Nepal, Nov. 21 -- In 2011, Nepali student Utsav Pathak and German backpacker Julius Seidenader met at a cafe in Pathak's hometown of Charikot. Neither of them knew that this encounter would spark a movement teaching hundreds of people in Nepal how to ski.

The two young men bonded over their passion for music. Pathak showed the foreigners around in the area, and they became good friends. When Seidenader left after a week, they stayed connected on social media.

In 2015, Pathak, then 20, decided he wanted to try something new: learn to ski. He knew the sport only from television. "Nobody in Nepal was doing this. There were only a few tourists who climbed mountains and skied down," he recalls.

On Facebook, he saw that his friend Seidenader...