‘When in the mountains, walk like a yak. Slow and steady’

Chandrahas Choudhury embarks on an enchanting adventure through Nepal's timeless Himalayan Mustang region
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Jack Johns

The morning I leave England for the Great Himalayas, I step out into my garden with a cup of tea and see Fergus, the snail who resides around a flowerpot. A strange fancy has seized him and he has set out to scale the garden wall – a laughable project that will surely take him all day. Now he’s inching up the bricks with a quite hypnotic slowness, his horned head turning from side to side. Every few minutes, he stops to contemplate his hard-won view of earth and sky. When he sees me, perhaps he sees a mountain.

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Village of MarphaJack Johns

Two days later, I feel just like Fergus. A short flight north from Nepal’s Pokhara airport has dropped me in the little town of Jomsom, in the Kali Gandaki river valley. This is the gateway to the ancient “forbidden kingdom” of Mustang, the upper reaches of which were closed to outsiders until as recently as 1992. The pine-forested mountains and deep, forbidding ravines that I have flown over, studded by the red-tiled roofs of tiny hamlets, are but a prelude to a landscape of monumental proportions: the Annapurna range, part of a 500-mile band in Nepal where some of the highest Himalayan peaks are to be found.

Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain in the worldJack Johns

Mustang lies in the rain shadow of two large massifs, the Annapurna and the Dhaulagiri, and the landscape is bare and sombre; beige and grey, stony and windy, mountain and desert. In the gorge below, the Kali Gandaki river – which originates to the north, near the Tibetan border, and finally empties itself into the Ganges in India – glints a disconcerting black, with particles eroded from rock. Although vast, the valley and surrounding mountains are dwarfed by a single form looming 23,000 feet above me, somehow both near and far: the Nilgiri Himal.

Local girlJack Johns

Black river, sprawling grey-brown mountains, white feather-duster clouds and a mountain like a stairway to heaven. It feels as though I’ve entered another plane of existence, where humans are but an afterthought. Mustang (pronounced “moos-taang”) is a land of secrets and specificities – a consequence of being naturally isolated from the world for millennia by the colossal peaks around it. In the 14th century, an independent kingdom by the name of Lo, under the rule of the fabled king Ame Pal. In the 18th century, it was assimilated into Nepal but remained a semi-independent kingdom, a stronghold of Tibetan culture. Always sparsely populated – fewer than 15,000 people live here, even now – it has a rich history of hardy travellers, having been an important trans-Himalayan trade route along the Kali Gandaki between Tibet and the lower realms of Nepal and India.

Guides cooling off by the lakeJack Johns

Today, much of the historic trade along that trail – in dried meat, wool and salt – has been made redundant by modern technology. But unlike the Everest section of the Himalayas – 190 miles east and, at least in season, driven by the animal spirits of hordes of trekkers – Mustang remains grounded in its own past, exuding a lama-like poise and mystique. Things change very slowly here. Its status as a monarchy was only officially abolished in 2008; its last king, Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista, passed away in 2016.

Aerial view of PokharaJack Johns

Tourism in Upper Mustang is strictly controlled by a permit system. But there is a vivid new presence in its lower reaches: Shinta Mani Mustang, an atmospheric 29-room property, launched this August in Jomsom by the pioneering hotelier Bill Bensley. It is a reworking of renowned Nepali architect Prabal Thapa’s long, two-storey structure of local timber and stone, set down unobtrusively on a slope just above town, backing onto an orchard of 2,000 apple and apricot trees. Every room has ethereal floor-to-ceiling views of the Nilgiri, its triple peak always covered in snow and often shrouded by clouds. This will be my home base: staying in a room with a giant Tibetan rug, overlooked by studies of the Mustang landscape by the painter Robert Powell; waking daily to that view, and returning after hikes to villages and gompas (monasteries) to astronomical reveries from the terrace. Local crafts and sustainability are central to Shinta Mani, which means “good heart” in Tibetan. With my days a delicate balance of engagement and reflective solitude, dotted with proseccos and beautifully plated Tibetan food, Shinta Mani strikes me as a cross between a pleasure garden and a university, an observatory and a design studio.

Shinta Mani Mustang exteriorJack Johns

“Welcome to the windy valley, Ong Chandrahas,” laughs Abhishek Thakali, my butler at Shinta Mani, as I struggle to make headway – down a slope. As the morning sun heats up the air, a fierce diurnal wind comes calling, gusting up the valley through the river gorge and only dissipating at dusk. It suffuses the landscape with drama and motion as it works the thousands of strung-up prayer flags – while also relieving unsuspecting visitors of their hats. That piece of burglary takes but a second. Evidence of the wind’s work over the centuries can be gleaned from the walls of the gorge, which it has shaped into flute-like columns that contrast with the sinuous horizontal lines of the mountains above. It is – as I discover in the coming days, when I am taught about the correspondences between the world that we live in and the world that we ourselves are – also a powerful metaphor for lung, the energy that flows through the body.

Kamala Lalchan cooking lunchJack Johns

Later, we are in the village of Thini, across the river from Shinta Mani (so imposing from within, the property now looks like a doll’s house against the mountain behind it). Little nuggets of colour and form painstakingly set down by human civilisation are lovely against the bare mountains: small expanses of pink buckwheat flowers nodding in the wind, clusters of red apples dangling against the blue skies; a niched ladder carved out of a long swathe of timber and set against a wall of stacked stone.

And here, too, are the characteristic homes of the Thakalis – a small ethnolinguistic group who are the most preponderant and prosperous denizens of Mustang. Abhishek grew up here. A graduate in hotel management from Kathmandu, he now works in a place where he is most himself: a cosmopolitan young Thakali man with a world of his own to share with those who come his way. He leads me around his family home: two storeys of grey stone, partly whitewashed, supported by wooden rafters and beams and built around a courtyard. A ladder leads up to an open rooftop with a “hot room” that has one wall made entirely of glass “where we all gather in winter”. The house has multiple sublevels and enclaves, stairways and ladders, generations and even species: one door opens into a pen, where four startled sheep stare back at me.

Trail horsesJack Johns

The roof of every house in the village – indeed in every village in Mustang – displays a layer of logs, usually the thin branches of juniper trees. Stored for firewood in winter, they are also a cultural code: the higher the stack, the more prosperous the household. But despite their similarities – the whitewashed houses of stone 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. They have histories and atmospheres as unique as their vantages: expansive Zhong, set in a valley with 360-degree views; forbidding Lubra, a tiny riverside hamlet ringed by steepling cliffs; and Kagbeni, home to a fortress-like monastery founded by the 15th-century scholar Tenpai Gyaltsen and throbbing with the sound of the Kali Gandaki.

Shinta Mani Mustang bedroomJack Johns

The largest and merriest of them – perhaps because it’s easily accessible by road and most receptive to outsiders – is Marpha, just south of Jomsom, along the river. Protected from the meddling wind by the flank of a mountain, surrounded by orchards bearing apples of the highest quality, the flagstoned streets of this model village – practically a metropolis of 1,600 residents – buzz with life: teahouses and shops, signboards and posters, locals and foreigners.

Here, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Thakalis is greatly in evidence, as is a hyperlocal social order of delicious intricacy and dramatic potential. “We are Thakalis but, just as importantly, we are Marpha Thakalis,” says Kamala Lalchan, the apple-cheeked and voluble proprietor of the Apple Paradise teahouse, head of a local women’s cooperative, owner of a farm and now a local politician of note – not that this stops her from opening shop at 6am every day.

The seating area in in Shinta Mani Mustang’s barJack Johns

Bustling around her open kitchen, Kamala serves me a traditional Thakali meal of rice, dal, curried chicken, stir-fried cabbage and pureed pumpkin (second and third helpings are mandatory). Almost as large as a drum in a gompa, the plate is steeped with colourful condiments: tomato chutney spiked with the local pepper called timur, strips of carrot and radish doused with chilli, tart pickled apricot. She also turns over brown hillocks of apple jam, slowly cooking on a stove, and makes small talk with Mimi, her assertive Pomeranian.

Trail from Thaktul Monastery to PhakdingJack Johns

“In Marpha, we Thakalis have four clans. They are the Hirachans, the Lalchans, the Pannachans and the Jwarchans,” she says. “The Pannachans and Jwarchans are small in number. So they are not encouraged to intermarry. Hirachans and Lalchans, yes, no problem.” She laughs the delighted laugh of a high-social-capital Lalchan. “Recently, though, things have started to change. The young people of the village have started asking to marry outside Marpha – in Thini village, Jomsom, Tukuche...”

Tea on the terrace of Shinta Mani MustangJack Johns

A Thakali from Marpha marrying a few miles upriver in Jomsom – would he or she be able to deal with the disruption? I wonder if it is worth settling down here, eating two apples a day, drinking apple brandy every evening and writing the great Marpha novel.

As elsewhere in the Himalayas, Mustang’s history is a chronicle of intense physical hardship and awesome spiritual striving – the respective symbols of which are mountains and monasteries. Those who mastered these high mountains did so by first achieving self-mastery – breaking out through prayer and meditation into a higher realm of almost superhuman awareness and power. Their names still resonate through the land, and their deeds and discoveries form a distinctive spiritual-intellectual tradition – about the mind and body, desire and liberation – that would take a whole lifetime to assimilate.

Picnic at Chhema LakeJack Johns

I am in Lubra, a tiny settlement along the Panda Khola – a tributary of the Kali Gandaki – leading 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, the shamanistic and pantheistic faith indigenous to Tibet that predates the arrival of Buddhism.

Amchi Tsewang Gyurme GurungJack Johns

As we approach, we see some of the inhabitants fording the river bearing loads of groceries on their backs – the only way to bring goods to Lubra during the monsoon. My guide, the taciturn but caring Gyaljen Sherpa, a veteran of trekking in the Himalayas, points to large cavities like toothmarks 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.

Man washing at Muktinath templeJack Johns

“‘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.” In traditional mandalas found in almost every gompa, the snake also represents anger – the disfiguring passion that must be tamed before we can grasp the true nature of reality.

It was Tashi Gyaltsen, locals say, who planted the 800-year-old walnut tree, gnarled and great-canopied, that still stands at the entrance to the village. He found the site conducive to meditation and established a monastery further up the hillside, a small building set back from the edge of the mountain 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 are painted purple and emblazoned with frescoes of Buddhist legends, including the adventures of Tashi Gyaltsen himself. The pictures are rich in demons and serpents, whose gnashing jaws and flailing limbs are loaded with vivid malevolence, projecting 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 bearing the imprint of the lama’s foot; behind it, a small cave where he retired to meditate. The Bon faith holds that everything has a soul: every tree, every stone, every place. I tarry here a long time with my eyes closed.

Bon village of LubraJack Johns

That evening, I have another encounter with living tradition. Tsewang Gyurme Gurung is the 11th in a long line of “amchis”, or practitioners of traditional Tibetan medicine, serving Jomsom and its neighbourhood – and now head of the wellness centre at Shinta Mani. Intense of manner and swift of speech, he palpates my pulse on both wrists with three fingers, listening to its testimony about my body; writes out a page of notes that accurately diagnoses my medical problems (back trouble, poor blood circulation); and works on my body with an hour-long massage. “When you wake up in the morning, walk on pebbles for 15 minutes,” he commands.

Later, we talk about the subtle body that resides within the physical one; the idea that we are ourselves combinations of earth, wind, fire, water and space, which work on each other as they do in nature; and about the powers of the great yogis – such as tummo, a breathing technique to generate body heat in very cold climes. I go to bed with several more pages of notes.

Lubra villagerJack Johns

“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, big, intense eyes, carefree stride and impish manner, he comes across like a sort of sage bohemian, aged 31. My heart feels like a bicycle pump, my legs like logs. We have been walking up a winding trail for 90 minutes – the equivalent, says my iPhone, of 150 floors – towards Chhema Lake (“The Lake of Forgiveness”), a natural lagoon at 12,500 feet against the backdrop of the Nilgiri.

Annapurna mountainsJack Johns

There’s no one on this trail but our group of four – small as snails on a garden wall. Above us, its icy peaks ablaze with midday light, its fissured slopes glinting with cascading water, the Nilgiri radiates an unblinking stillness, a vision of time on a geological scale. It has been around 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 – I love to wait for it at dawn when it slowly emerges from the darkness and fills up the sky, and again when it glows with the pearly light of sunset – and is yet unchanging.

Temple bellsJack Johns

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. The Great Himalayas are not only the roof of the world, they are also the roots of the world – the source of the life-giving rivers that sustain the teeming millions of South Asia. If something changes up here, things change everywhere. That insight alone is worth the journey here.

Ammonite sculpture in Shinta Mani Mustang’s barJack Johns

Absorbed by these thoughts, I skid on some gravel and land on my bottom, cursing. “No more Champagne for you at lunch,” says Gyaljen, as he comes running to help me up.

Doubles at Shinta Mani Mustang start from about £1,465* (Rs1,58,290*) (minimum stay five nights). Rates include all meals and drinks, excursions, a private guide, spa treatments and transfers to and from Jomsom. shintamanimustang.com

This article appeared in the December 2023 issue of Condé Nast Traveller UK.

*Prices are subject to change.

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