Introducing Mustang

Only a few years ago it was ‘nobody’s been there’, now it’s heading towards ‘last chance to see’. The completion of a road connecting Mustang to China in the north and the rest of Nepal to the south will make all the difference.

Lo Manthang, or Mustang as it’s usually called, has been dubbed ‘little Tibet’ or ‘the last forbidden kingdom’; though politically part of Nepal, in language, culture, climate and geography, it’s Tibet. The remote region is north of the Himalayan watershed and on the Tibetan plateau, and just south of the border with ‘big Tibet’, the Chinese one.
Until 1992 nobody from outside was allowed in; for a while after that it was opened up to a few hundred a year, and these days it anyone can enter, though the pricey trekking permit keeps the numbers down. There’s also a restricted season for visits: in winter it’s too cold and the snow too deep, so for months each year it again becomes a ‘forbidden kingdom’. Much of the population heads south to India and further afield during these winter months to exercise their legendary trading abilities.
Up here everything is sharp, severe and absolute: the colours are vivid, the terrain is rugged, the air is crisp, it’s either desert-dry or river-rapids, sere and barren or a flash of irrigated green.
Ready to go?