MUSTANG’S UNCERTAIN FUTURE: SMH TRAVELLER
There's excitement and some trepidation as a remote Nepalese region is suddenly connected, writes Nina karnikowski.
We’ve been driving for the better part of five hours, traversing a dizzying series of switchbacks on a rough track carved along the cliffs, when the village finally comes into view. Set 3510 metres above sea level, Ghami in Upper Mustang, an isolated kingdom in Nepal’s barren highlands that once controlled trade between Tibet and Nepal, is a huddle of flat-roofed, whitewashed mud houses guarded by shimmering poplar groves.
Walking through the village’s narrow laneways, decorated with snapping prayer flags and mani stones carved with Buddhist blessings, I feel as though I’ve stumbled into a lost city.
In a way, I have. For much of the 20th century, access to Mustang was forbidden to foreigners. Still, today, getting here is not easy. There’s a $US500 ($780) cultural preservation fee each guest must pay to enter Upper Mustang for 10 days. Add to that a five-hour drive from Jomsom, the gateway to Mustang, to Ghami (still three hours from most travellers’ final destination of Lo Manthang), plus an eight-hour drive and a 25-minute flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara before that, and you have a place many may toss into the too-hard basket.
Things, however, are changing here. The road we drove in on is currently being expanded. Soon it will link Mustang to a completed, three-lane paved highway in China that travels all the way to Beijing, and will snake down through Nepal to New Delhi. The new road, built for trade, will bring cheap goods, better healthcare access – and more tourists. But many in Mustang now wonder: will this influx support or erode the region’s ancient culture and way of life?
As my husband and our Beyul Experiences guide Emilie Sherpa bundle into the cosy, dimly lit kitchen of a traditional local home, we meet Raju Bista. An imposing figure in a traditional chuba knee-length Tibetan coat, he is the nephew of the current king, Jigme Singhi Palbar Bista (Mustang’s monarchy was abolished in 2008, but the king remains a respected leader and has retained his title as a ceremonial figure).
We sit by the hearth on low benches covered with Tibetan carpets as Bista tells us about the boutique hotel called The Dzong down the street, on which he’s currently working with a wealthy Italian hotelier, on the site of a crumbling palace.
We finish our lunch of steamed rice, lentil soup and vegetable curry and follow Bista down a trickle of laneways to the hotel. As he shows us through the property, soon to be the 15-room luxury hotel The Dzong, we’re introduced to Tibetan thang-ka painter Dawa Thondup, who is painstakingly restoring the former palace’s precious 600-year-old wall paintings.
As much as many might wish remote bastions of ancient culture like Mustang to remain untouched, developments such as The Dzong, says Bista, can help preserve local architecture. They also funnel tourist dollars into the region and provide opportunities for youths who over the past several years have been leaving Mustang en masse to chase their fortunes in Kathmandu, India, Japan and the United States. “We may like to change our lifestyle these days,” says Bista, “but religion and culture we have to save.”
Early next morning we continue our journey through the rugged landscape, passing fields dotted with shaggy pashmina goats and the occasional cluster of blue sheep, curved horns sprouting from their heads like pigtails. Our Jeep swerves around switchbacks, each revealing another craggy cliff face of unfathomable scale reaching into the stark blue sky as vultures circle above.
Many of the cliffs have “sky caves” bored into them, which have been used as burial grounds, meditation caves for monks and monasteries, some since Neolithic times. At the end of an isolated canyon we follow a saffron-robed Buddhist nun up a steep, rickety staircase to one of these. Bowing our heads, we enter the 14th-century Luree cave monastery. Sherpa points her head torch up to the ceiling, illuminating intricate paintings of black, white and ochre flowers, and depictions of Buddhist deities. “These were said to have been painted by levitating monks,” she whispers.
Later, as we walk through the Kali Gandaki riverbed over hundreds of glittering ammonite fossils, Sherpa tells us how locals believe Mustang became a holy land after the Indian mystic Guru Rinpoche slayed a demoness here. Perhaps it’s the altitude – we’re at 3800 metres, after all – but as I stop to listen to the wind slip over the mountains I can’t help thinking that floating monks and demonesses really might have played a hand in creating a place as extraordinary as this.
It’s late afternoon when we finally arrive in the 600-year-old walled capital of Lo Manthang, which stands like a sturdy but withered elder just 16 kilometres from the Chinese border.
Circumambulating the ramparts at sunset, we pass rows of mud-brick homes with roofs stacked with firewood, and age-old monasteries washed red with ochre. Wind-worn, faded prayer flags cast lengthening shadows across the rammed-earth paths as groups of old local women wearing hand-woven striped pangden aprons methodically finger strings of prayer beads.
Less romantic sights signal the encroachment of modernity: Coca-Cola in store windows, plastic rubbish scattered in street corners, kids with their heads buried in mobile phones. It’s hard to see these and not consider the poignant dilemma inhabitants face in Upper Mustang, like locals in remote regions everywhere, now that access to the region is changing. How to balance progress with preservation? How to cater to the demands of youths who wish to advance their education and career prospects without seeing Mustang’s culture and ecology become extinct?
This question flits through my mind the following dawn as we visit the nomadic camp of a fourth-generation yak-herding family. Pema, age 24, is using a yak wool slingshot to gather the 150-strong herd, while his mother is expertly milking some of the female yaks. We’re soon ushered inside the family’s yak wool tent to drink Tibetan butter tea. Gathered around the pot-belly stove, they share their difficulties in finding enough grass for the yaks now the climate is changing drastically.
They also talk about their 24-year-old son’s desire to leave the pastoral life behind and chase what he sees as progress and opportunity, perhaps by driving Jeeps for Mustang’s growing number of tourists. It’s Jeep tourists like us, however, that the current prince of Mustang, Jigme Singhi Palbar Bista (the king and prince share the same name), sees as one of the region’s biggest issues.
We meet him after polishing off lunchtime yak burgers and chai at his luxurious Royal Mustang Resort, set on the edge of town. Softly spoken and impeccably dressed in a white Tibetan tohlay silk shirt, he says that “for people dependent on tourism, the new road has meant a total loss of trekkers”. He explains that, once, trekkers supported villages along the trail.
“It’s all Jeep safaris now,” he says. “People have lost business.” Still, he hopes the new road will create chances for young people. “Because without people I don’t think anyone will be interested in visiting empty towns.”
We spend our final day in Lo Manthang exploring ancient monasteries that house what are said to be the world’s most exquisite Tibetan Buddhist paintings. Inside Thubchen monastery, dating back to 1448, we marvel at fierce images of Mara, the Buddhist deity of desire and death, and gilded figurines that have watched over the monastery since antiquity.
At the 16th-century Jampa monastery we find 47 tantric yoga mandalas and a three-floor-high statue of Maitreya, the Buddha to come. “Earthquakes, invasions, harsh winters – these monasteries have survived all this,” says Sherpa as we make our way back out into the sunlight.
Mustang has certainly endured much over the centuries. Whether it will survive the new road remains to be seen. For now, though, this last bastion of Tibetan culture is less scarred by modern interference than almost any other region on Earth I’ve visited. Perhaps now, then, is the time for thoughtful travellers to visit, stay longer and funnel their travel dollars into helping preserve the culture before it all changes too much.
THE DETAILS
VISIT
Beyul Experiences offers bespoke itineraries for individuals, families and groups to Mustang and throughout Nepal. Seebeyulexperiences.com
FLY
Singapore Airlines flies daily from Sydney and Melbourne to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport via Singapore. From there it’s a 25-minute flight to Pokhara with Yeti Airlines, then an eight-hour drive to Jomsom. See singaporeair.com
The writer travelled with assistance from Beyul Experiences.
This article was first published in print and online here.
