There is no proven recipe/formula for returning to Nepal for good.

Each decision to return to Nepal is personal and different, and we have to respect individual circumstances/interests/goals. 

Who is any one of us to sit on judgment on why anyone else should return or not, right?

After all, every life is too complicated to make sense of it from the outside.  

For various reasons, not everyone wants to return, and that's perfectly fine. And those who return are not necessarily morally or otherwise superior to those who do not, and vice versa. . 
 
So, in both directions, it's hard to generalize from a few people's success (howsoever perceived) or failures (again, howsoever perceived). Like I said, each story is  different, and successful person is s/he who makes the best of what s/he has to be happy and productive in any part of the world.

But some general observations (about/in Kathmandu):

1. There are many, many phoren-returnees in Kathmandu today: from the UK, from Australia, from other countries, and from the US. Those who have returned from Australian or German universities, for instance, 
have their own various organizations, and they have regular get-togethers, etc.

2. Except for one's family members, the rest of Nepal does NOT care all that much about where you have returned from and why. Kathmandu is no longer an overgrown village which it once was: in the last 10 years, 
it's fair to say that it's become an impersonal, big and noisy metropolis which affords you some degree of anonymity, if you wish. In any case, people here are increasingly too busy doing their own thing to worry about you and your welfare (beyond the first two minutes!). 

3. If you have worked for well-known companies in the US (say, Goldman, Microsoft, Citigroup etc), it's quite possible, on the strength of your employers' name, to set up appointments with top bankers, software CEOs, etc to see how you can work with them in Nepal, etc. The people here are always looking for new ideas, contacts, know-how and business opportunities. 

4. Working with the government is difficult unless you have top-level political contacts. Even then, it requires a lot of back and forth, and uncertainty.

5. In the last 10 years, private colleges in Nepal have gotten better and better: on the whole, their students/graduates are very sharp, hard-working, well-trained and my sense is that their top students could have gone anywhere in the US, the UK and elsewhere, if only they had the means to do so. 

Local employers (established banks and companies) already have recruiting ties to these colleges, and it can often be hard for a fresh US-returnee to stand out (during the recruiting cycle) until there's something positively compelling about the returnee. When a foreign-returnee competes for jobs in Nepal, s/he will also be competing with other foreign returnees and top local college graduates. 

6. On the other hand, entrepreneurship seems to be booming in Nepal. In part, this is due to a high number of young people and a lack of jobs: enterprising young people in their 20s and 30s then see opportunities and create their own jobs! Through a group called Entrepreneurs for Nepal (E4N), some friends and I volunteer our time on week-ends advising start-ups and small companies. If you like uncertainty, challenge and (tech) entrepreneurship, Nepal can be a pretty good laboratory (and feel free to contact me if my contacts, networks and know-how help you in any way -- I'll be happy to share what I know, as I have been sharing with many Sajha friends over the years!)

7. If your experience/education allows you to add value at a higher level, i.e. how to help develop capital markets (private equity, bond market, investment banking, currency trading, etc), how to regulate banks and industries, how to run companies that have transnational ambitions, how to find and work with international investors and bring them to Nepal for long-term collaboration, how to 'design' and run small towns (bijuli, paani, systems, etc) and municipalities etc -- these skills and others are in very, very short supply.
         
8. Pokhara seems to be a happening place: the young business people there are very driven and entrepreneurial. They have lots of ideas and are trying to put Pokhara on the map for business. I'd find ways to connect with some of them.

Just some thoughts.

oohi
ashu