At the Foot of the Himalayas, the Once-Forbidden Kingdom of Mustang Is Now Welcoming Travelers

A fierce diurnal wind is gusting up the Kali Gandaki valley in Mustang, an isolated region in central Nepal, suffusing the austere terrain with drama and motion. It whips the thousands of prayer flags into a frenzy and relieves unsuspecting visitors of their hats. The powerful wind is the breath of this land; its heart is the Kali Gandaki, the river that originates in the north, near the Tibetan border, and empties into the Ganges. Over centuries the wind and the river have carved this gorge out of the Annapurna range, part of a 500-mile band that contains some of the Himalayas’ proudest peaks. But all are dwarfed by a single form looming 23,000 feet above, somehow both near and far: the triple-peaked, snowcapped Nilgiri Himal, which keeps watch over its dominion below.

I am struggling to make headway down a slope amid the feral gale. Abhishek Thakali, my guide and butler from Shinta Mani Mustang, a newly reimagined resort in the Nepali highlands, laughs at me. “Welcome to the windy valley, Ong Chandrahas,” he says.

This is the gateway to the ancient “forbidden kingdom” of Mustang (pronounced “moos-taang”). It is a barren, stony, gray landscape of secrets and specificities, a consequence of its place in the rain shadow of two colossal massifs, the Annapurna and the Dhaulagiri, and its natural isolation from the rest of the world. In the 14th century Mustang was an independent kingdom called Lo, ruled by the fabled king Ame Pal. In the 18th century it was assimilated into Nepal but retained some of its autonomy, remaining a stronghold of Tibetan culture. Though it has always been sparsely populated (even today fewer than 15,000 people live here), hardy travelers have long passed through the region; it sits along what was once an important trans-Himalayan trade route between Tibet and the lower realms of Nepal and India. Whereas Mount Everest and its environs are visited by hordes of trekkers, Mustang is quieter, grounded in its own past, exuding a lama-like poise and mystique. Things change very slowly here. Until as recently as 1992, Upper Mustang was closed to outsiders. Its monarchy was officially abolished only in 2008, and its last king, Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista, died in 2016.

But there is a vivid new presence in the valley: Shinta Mani Mustang, an atmospheric 29-room hotel in the municipality of Jomsom, which opened to guests last summer. It is the third hotel under the Shinta Mani banner, after outposts in Cambodia’s Siem Reap and Cardamom Mountains. All were designed by the pioneering hotelier Bill Bensley, whose sustainability-minded ethos can be found at resorts throughout Asia. The Mustang property came to life after the renovation of a grand structure made of local timber and stone, originally built by the renowned Nepali architect Prabal Thapa. Perched on a slope just above town and backed by an orchard of 2,000 apple and apricot trees, it’s a luxe alternative to the usual hiking lodges dotting Nepal’s trekking circuit. Guests can try archery, go horseback riding, and take part in yoga sessions. Abhishek takes me on hikes to villages and gompas (monasteries). The hotel serves beautifully plated Tibetan meals punctuated by flutes of prosecco. My room has a giant Tibetan rug, framed studies of the Mustang landscape by the late artist Robert Powell, and floor-to-ceiling views of the Nilgiri, whose three white peaks are often shrouded by feather duster clouds. To wake up here is to greet the gods.

Across the river from Shinta Mani sits the village of Thini, whose houses are lovely nuggets of color painstakingly planted by human civilization against the imposing mountains. Abhishek grew up here before studying hotel management in Kathmandu. He leads me around his family home: a two-story building made of gray stone, built around a courtyard, and supported by wooden rafters and beams. A ladder leads to a rooftop with a sunny room with one wall made entirely of glass; the family gathers here in winter. Every household in the village—indeed, in every village in Mustang—stacks wood on their roofs, usually thin juniper branches, for all to see. The stockpiles are used as firewood and also as a cultural code: the higher the stack, the more prosperous the household. But despite their similarities—the whitewashed houses of rock and rammed earth, the serene gompas smelling of juniper incense, the groves of buckwheat and apricot—the villages of lower Mustang are worlds unto themselves, with unique histories and atmospheres. There is expansive Zhong, with 360-degree views of the valley; forbidding Lubra, a tiny riverside hamlet ringed by cliffs; and fortress-like Kagbeni, home to a gompa founded by the 15th-century scholar Tenpai Gyaltsen, which throbs with the sound of the Kali Gandaki.

The largest town is Marpha, just south of Jomsom, along the banks of the Gandaki—with 1,600 residents it’s practically a metropolis. Easily accessible by road and protected from the meddling wind by the flank of a mountain, its flagstoned streets buzz with life: teahouses and shops, signboards and posters, locals and foreigners. Here the spirited and welcoming attitude of the Thakali people, Mustang’s largest ethnolinguistic group, is evident, especially when I meet Kamala Lalchan, the voluble proprietor of the Apple Paradise teahouse. Bustling around her open kitchen, she serves me a traditional Thakali meal of rice, dal, curried chicken, stir-fried cabbage, and puréed pumpkin. (Second and third helpings are mandatory.) Colorful condiments decorate my large plate: tomato chutney spiked with the local pepper called timur, strips of carrot and radish doused with chili, tart pickled apricot. While attending to apple jam slowly cooking on a stove, Kamala makes small talk with me and Mimi, her assertive Pomeranian.

“We are Thakalis, but just as importantly we are Marpha Thakalis,” she says, describing a hyperlocal social order endemic to the villages in Mustang. “In Marpha, we Thakalis have four clans. They are the Hirachans, the Lalchans, the Pannachans, and the Jwarchans. The Pannachans and Jwarchans are small in number. So they are not encouraged to intermarry. Hirachans and Lalchans, yes, no problem.” She laughs, proud and delighted. “But recently things have started to change. The young people of the village have started asking to marry outside Marpha: in Thini village, in Jomsom, in Tukuche….”

In a community this small and tight-knit, Kamala unsurprisingly serves multiple roles: head of a local women’s cooperative, farm owner, and now a local politician of note. Not that any of this keeps her from opening Apple Paradise every day at six in the morning—or doing her duty by friends old and new. On the morning of my departure from Mustang, I drop by her tea shop, without notice this time, and find her all dressed up. She’s setting out on an auspicious ritual: to greet the newlyweds during their village wedding. “The first wedding in more than a year,” Kamala tells me. Yet she stops to make tea for us and does not leave until we do.

Mustang’s history is a chronicle of intense physical hardship and spiritual striving, the symbols of which are mountains and monasteries. Those who mastered these high summits did so by first achieving self-mastery, reaching through prayer and meditation a higher realm of almost superhuman awareness and power. Their names still resonate throughout the land, and their deeds and discoveries form a distinctive spiritual-intellectual tradition: about the mind and body, desire and liberation.

I am in Lubra, a tiny settlement along the Panda Khola, a tributary of the Kali Gandaki, heading uphill to a monastery and a fort. A three-hour walk from Jomsom, it radiates a different mood from Marpha: wild, rugged, mercurial. This village of 15 homesteads is the only place in Nepal that still espouses Bon, a shamanistic and pantheistic faith indigenous to Tibet, which predates the arrival of Buddhism. As we approach we see locals fording the river, bearing loads of groceries on their backs—the only way to bring goods to Lubra during the monsoon season. My guide, the taciturn but caring Gyaljen Sherpa, a veteran of Himalayan trekking, points to large cavities like teeth marks along the cliffs on the opposite bank. These are the mysterious “sky caves” found at many sites in Mustang: small niches that seem to have served, variously, as burial grounds, meditation chambers, and places of refuge for women and children during wars. “Lu means ‘serpent,’ brak means ‘cliff’—the cliff of the serpent king,” says Gyaljen, pointing to a peculiar snakeskin pattern on the cliff face opposite the village. “This settlement was established in the 12th century by the great Tibetan lama Tashi Gyaltsen. He came across this place on his travels and subdued the evil serpent who ruled over it.”

It was Tashi Gyaltsen, residents say, who planted the 800-year-old walnut tree that stands at the entrance to Lubra. He found the site conducive to meditation and established a monastery up the hillside, away from the mountain’s edge and surrounded by apricot trees and stalks of pink hibiscus. Engraved on a stone outside is a left-facing swastika denoting well-being—the sacred symbol of Bon, as opposed to the right-facing swastikas of Tibetan Buddhism. Inside, the walls depict Buddhist legends, including the adventures of Tashi Gyaltsen himself. The murals are rich with demons and snakes, whose gnashing jaws and flailing limbs represent the dark forces that threaten to engulf humans unless we choose freedom from spiritual bondage. Next to the altar with the Buddha statue is a large stone with an imprint of the lama’s foot; behind it, a small cave where he would meditate. The Bon faith holds that everything has a soul: every tree, every rock, every place. I step into the grotto and close my eyes, meditating for a while.

In the evening I meet Tsewang Gyurme Gurung, the 11th in a long line of amchis, practitioners of traditional Tibetan medicine serving Jomsom and its neighborhood, who is now the head of the wellness center at Shinta Mani Mustang. His manner is intense, his speech swift. He takes my pulse on both wrists with three fingers, listening to its testimony about my body. He writes out a page of notes that accurately diagnoses my medical problems (back trouble, poor blood circulation), then works on my body with an hour-long massage. “When you wake up in the morning, walk on pebbles for 15 minutes,” he commands.

Soon after, my heart is pumping furiously as I walk up a winding trail to Chhema Lake (“The Lake of Forgiveness”), a natural lagoon that’s 12,500 feet above sea level. After an hour and a half of hiking, my iPhone reports that we have scaled the equivalent of 150 floors. “We have a saying: When in the mountains, walk like a yak—slow and steady.” This shard of timely advice comes from Sagrit Ranabhat, the guide at Shinta Mani Mustang. With his ponytail, carefree stride, and impish manner, he comes across like a sort of sage bohemian.

There’s no one on this trail but our group of four: me, Sagrit, Abhishek, and Gyaljen, all small as snails on a garden wall. Above us, the Nilgiri’s icy peaks blaze bright with midday light, its fissured slopes glinting with cascading water. It radiates an unblinking stillness, a vision of time on a geological scale. The mountain has been around for much longer than humanity, and it took the collision of two continental plates to generate the force that thrust it this far into the sky. It changes appearance all the time; at Shinta Mani I love to wait for it at dawn when it slowly emerges from the darkness to fill up the sky, and again at dusk when it glows with the pearly light of the setting sun. And yet it is unchanging.

We hear a ghostly rumble from far away. The sound of an avalanche. After these days in Mustang, it’s easy to understand why Hindus and Buddhists have long believed that the gods abide in these realms, that the mountains themselves are divine, a physical and spiritual landscape that tests its would-be residents. It is no less forgiving of its visitors, and for that I am grateful.

This article appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.