Thoughts of a hydropower plant near the tiny village of Galyang on the trail (later road) between Tansen and Pokhara had been percolating in Odd Hoftun's mind for literally decades before planning for the Andhi Khola project began in earnest in the late 1970s. Standing on the ridge at Galyang bazaar in 1959, Hoftun noted how close the Andhi Khola, flowing on one side of the ridge, was to the Kaligandaki River, flowing on the other side. A tributary of the Kaligandaki, the Andhi Khola's riverbed was considerably higher than the Kaligandaki’s: a tunnel bringing water through the relatively narrow ridge would have hydropower-generating potential. In 1966 Hoftun asked the United Mission to Nepal (UMN) surveyor who had mapped the Tinau River valley in preparation for construction there to take some basic measurements around Galyang. He found that the two riverbeds were a little less than 2 kilometers apart with an elevation difference of about 250 meters. Some quick calculations suggested that the site had about 5 megawatts (MW) of hydropower-generating potential, about five times the amount available at the Tinau site. Located about halfway between Pokhara and Butwal, a power plant at Galyang would improve the conditions for industrialization in both cities. And, as the Tinau project progressed through the late 1960s and 1970s, Hoftun increasingly saw a new Andhi Khola project as something that would build on and advance the tunneling and construction experience being gained at Tinau (and, in 1978, consolidated in the creation of Himal Hydro) as well as further expanding hydropower engineering and production capacities at the Butwal Technical Institute (BTI), its Development and Consulting Services (DCS), and, eventually, the Butwal Engineering Works (BEW). For Andhi Khola, Hoftun explained, “the intention was to earn a profit and to finance the next project or growth of other desirable things like setting up the daughter companies.”

In conversations with me, Hoftun made it clear that by the mid-1970s he had started to develop a long-term vision for hydropower development in Nepal. Exactly where and how it would develop was anyone's guess but Hoftun saw how incremental capacity building could create an independent hydropower development sector that would allow Nepal and Nepalis to tap into their country's vast hydropower potential.