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|  | By Charles Haviland
BBC correspondent in Kathmandu |
As breakfast - pancakes and fried eggs - is cooked in the kitchen of the Annapurna Guest House in the village of Ghandruk, dawn breaks over the majestic Annapurna range.
Ghandruk is a day's hike into the mountains on one of Nepal's most popular treks for foreign tourists. 
But this extraordinarily picturesque village in the land of the Gurung people is now a battleground in the Maoists' war against the state.
While the Maoists are not targeting tourists, the war has started directly hitting the tourism sector - Nepal's most important industry.
Young foreign visitors I met at the guest house were aware of the conflict but had seen nothing at first hand.
"You do think about it, but it's all part of travelling," said Julie Phillips from Bristol, England. 
Every day, every moment, I weep, looking at his picture, hoping he'll come back 
Mother of Maoist victim
"You have to take the rough with the smooth - you just hope that you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Iciar Melia from Madrid, Spain, had done some research in internet chat rooms and found that some trekkers had met Maoists, who had asked them for money.
Once they paid up, "they didn't have any more problems".
Killings
The travellers didn't know that in May this year Ghandruk was briefly infiltrated by the Maoists.
Money extorted from tourists may even have funded the weapons used to kill local people involved in the tourist trade. 
In her home just a stone's throw from the guest house, Shiva Kumari Gurung is still in deep distress over the murder of her son, Iswor.
"Every day, every moment, I weep, looking at his picture, hoping he'll come back," she says.
Iswor ran the local telephone booth, where trekkers would flock to phone home.
We're in the middle, between the army and the Maoists
Owner, Trekkers' Inn
The Maoists killed him.
His father, Chin Bahadur Gurung, says they did it because army personnel once came and borrowed his phone.
"But my son had nothing to do with the army. He was a private man, just working for himself."
The Maoists tortured and killed Iswor and a local hotelier just a few months after two Maoists were killed by the army with equal brutality.
On another occasion the army, failing to track down any Maoists, shot a local boy working on a farm.
Tourist trade hurt
A few hundred metres onwards from Iswor's house is the Trekkers' Inn.
Hari Maya Gurung owns it with her sister, but it's been padlocked, shut down by the Maoists who said her sister was passing information to the army. 
Hari Maya says the tourist trade is being put in an impossible position.
"We're in the middle, between the army and the Maoists," she says.
"We don't support anyone. We're really worried - the tourists are already staying away from here because they're scared."
High-end hotels have been targeted too.
Down in the valley, in the tourist hub of Pokhara, rebuilding work is forging ahead at the Fishtail Lodge.
It was bombed by the Maoists in May, seemingly because of its links with the royal family.
There was a warning and no one was hurt.
But it was a shock for general manager Jagmag Basnyat, who remembers the moment when about 15 young guerrillas, three of them girls, came out of the dense forest, herded staff and guests into one end of the hotel and then bombed the dining room at the other end.
"We really did not think about such a thing happening," says Mr Basnyat.
"Being a tourist spot, where there could be so many people from various countries, we did not really feel they would make us a target."
Business is picking up again now at Fishtail, which has a beautiful lakeside position and panoramic Himalayan views.
The town seems calm with plenty of young tourists.
Across Nepal, the Maoists have even gone out of their way to say tourists are welcome and won't be harmed.
Tourist arrivals up to July have in fact been well up on last year. 
But in some ways the tranquillity is deceptive.
In Kathmandu in mid-August a five-star hotel was bombed, causing no casualties but sending fresh jitters through the tourist trade.
And in rural areas, the Maoists' collection of money from travellers and the targeting of local people involved in tourism have brought the war one step closer to visitors.
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