In a Himalayan valley marked by the looming prospect of future tourism, the anticipation of development has significant socioeconomic effects. In contrast to the reactive and systemic notion of adaptation often highlighted in the literature on Himalayan locations, this article argues that the active, social practice of anticipation fundamentally shapes local experience and socioeconomic navigation within a highly uncertain process of rural transformation. Conceptualising anticipation as a moral and political economy, the article illustrates how anticipatory practices include not only economic investments in the future, but also negotiations of the political and moral grounds of the economy itself.