The Forgotten Kingdom : A rare journey inside exotic Mustang, a remote region of Nepal recently opened to limited numbers of environmentally sensitive trekkers

LO MANTHANG, Nepal —  High on the plateau beyond the Himalayas, the boy stopped and looked at the biggest pair of feet he’d ever seen in his life. His gaze traveled up oddly white legs, past a bright pouch at waist height and on to a ghost’s face topped with hair the color of summer wheat. The boy’s neck, already sore from backpacking a bundle supported by a strap looped round his forehead, strained back another notch. “Where are you going, grandfather?” he whispered.

I am 34. Not as lean as when I first visited Nepal in 1980, but still with all my hair and none of it gray, either. Smiling at the youngster’s salutation, I told him I was going to Lo Manthang.

“Your name what is?” I asked, slipping into the local dialect of Nepalese.

“To me ‘Kanchha’ is called.” Kanchha--Little Guy--is the name awarded to all the youngest sons in Nepal, and obviously in Mustang, where we now stood, as well.

And so we talked, Little Guy and the grandfather. We spoke of his family and of his first journey through Nepal to India, where he was now going with his uncle to sell woolens. His little sister had died two years before, when he was 6. He was too busy looking after the sheep to go to school. He knew of my home--Hong Kong--since a cousin had been there to trade. But geographically he lumped it with all the other strange places beyond the borders of his homeland. Then we realized we had both loitered long enough.

“I went,” I said.

“Let it be.”

*

About 125 miles northwest of Katmandu and several centuries removed in time, a four-day trek from the nearest road head, my destination--the walled city of Lo Manthang--has resisted the rude intrusion of outsiders since its battlements were first raised during the 14th Century above the barren, surrounding plain. Virtually on the border of Tibet, in country so wild and desolate that the only foreigners to pass through the region until 1992 were mostly wood and salt traders stepping through the high passes of the Himalayas, Lo Manthang (sometimes called Mustang) and the surrounding region, also known as Mustang, have long slumbered in isolation. This was forbidden territory to foreigners, as remote and mystical as Shangri-La. A king saw to local rule, the villagers wrenched one crop a year from the earth, and lonely darkened monasteries resounded to the beat of drums and monks chanting.

And so it might have continued forever, but for violent demonstrations in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu in 1990. As a consequence, a new government--a constitutional monarchy--was formed which, in turn, revised the country’s trekking policies. Previously off-limits to tourists and only rarely penetrated by a few Westerners, Mustang was to be opened up to a controlled number of trekking groups.

The reason for this was two-fold: By limiting visitors to 500 per year, officials hoped to contain the ecological impact on a remote and undeveloped area. And by charging a $500 fee for each trekker, they hoped that funds could be raised for such practical aid projects as restoring decaying monasteries and providing villages with drinking water.

The officials making these decisions benefited from lessons learned on more traditional routes, such as those to Annapurna and Everest, which have been infested with trekkers “living off the land” and creating deforestation and litter. So it was decreed that each group going to Mustang must attend a “green” briefing before setting off, must take along its own food and cooking fuel, and must display its own rubbish in a bag at the end of the trek.

Far from putting would-be trekkers off, the high price of the trek only served to attract those who felt that such an expensive item must be worth buying, while the ecological element caught the spirit of the decade and made visitors feel positively virtuous. The first trekking groups made their way north in the spring of 1992, and by the end of the year the route had proved so popular that the Ministry of Tourism decided to double the quota for 1993.

*

It had been some years since I first trekked in Nepal, where I had been posted to work as an aid worker for the British government. In that time, much had changed. Then, Mustang (pronounced moose-TAHN) had been a name on a map, a hiding place for anti-Chinese guerrillas from across the border in Tibet, and a refuge of elusive wild beasts such as the snow leopard.

Elsewhere in Nepal, trekkers romped free, often oblivious to the havoc their presence wrought on the landscape and society. Trees were felled to build toilets and for fires to heat water for showers. Streams were clouded with effluent and shampoo, children--strangers to dentists--clamored for candy and coins. This I witnessed with sadness tinged with resignation. Tourists’ rupees represented undreamed-of wealth: Why should a villager, whose entire livelihood could be wiped out by a single landslide, not chop down a tree to earn some cash just because some official said it could damage an invisible ozone layer?

When Mustang was declared open to trekkers for the first time ever, I knew at once that I wanted to be one of the first to go. Mustang’s largest town, Lo Manthang, was a 600-year-old, mud-walled city whose local king has ruled his people with feudal strictness. Its monasteries and shrines were filled with the chants of monks devoted to the Saskyapa strain of Buddhism. Not Tibetan, nor really Nepali, the Lobar, as the people of Mustang called themselves, were as tough and wild as their surroundings and lived hand-to-mouth on the upper tiles of the roof of the world. I wanted to travel as they did, by foot, to greet their king and to sit in their monasteries before Lobar children started to say “Hi Man!” and shriek for pennies.

*

My journey started in Katmandu a year ago last October, with a three-hour ride in a flying machine--airplane seems too dignified a word--which slalomed up the narrow valley of the Kali Gandaki river. Abandoning the lush rice paddies, quaint thatched villages and rhododendron forests of Katmandu’s Nepal for treeless landscapes characterized by sand and stone, we swooped onto the airstrip at Jomosom at 8,800 feet. The air was chill, the village dusty and flat roofed. In the rain-starved shadow of the Himalayas, water was not just precious, it was life, and with so little, the earth took on a harsh veneer.

Time dictates that most people fly part of the way to Mustang--usually first to Pokhara, a two-hour flight northwest of Katmandu, and then, after a change of planes, to Jomosom--before embarking on the four-day trek (one way) to Lo Manthang. His soft voice echoing round a sparse office, an environmental officer delivered a briefing before we set off. The desolate scenery outside gave resonance to his gentle requests to protect the land we had been privileged to glimpse. A police liaison officer accompanied our group of eight to prevent any mischief. The scene was set for “caring” trekking.

Striking north into an almost lunar landscape, we found the trails peppered with Lobar migrating south for the winter: Families with cheery boys like Little Guy embarking on a trading expedition, with the old folk staying at home and next season’s crop safely under ground. Porters passed us going in the opposite direction, heading for the market in Pokhara, their baskets loaded with crisp, sweet apples, somehow coaxed from the unforgiving terrain.

Lodge keepers in the villages along the way offered apricot liquor made from locally grown fruit distilled to make a spirit that they hopefully described as brandy--smooth, mildly intoxicating and wonderfully relaxing. Looking around at the rock and sand and stone pushed up by tectonic forces millions of years before, and tasting the sweet fruit, I started to realize just how admirable the Lobar truly were.

*

I had booked my journey from Hong Kong through a Katmandu company, Tiger Mountain (its American branch is Tiger Tops International in San Francisco). Tiger Mountain arranged porters, equipment and flights and obtained the necessary trekking permits. My fellow trekkers, coincidentally all British, were a financier and his two grown sons, a merchant banker living in New York, a photographer from Oxford and two 70-year-old ladies who had trekked Nepal three or four times before. They were a bit slower then the rest of us but asked for, and needed, no special assistance despite the grueling demands of our voyage.

Altitude sickness was a serious concern at levels above 10,000 feet, and can really only be overcome by carefully acclimatizing to the reduced oxygen at higher altitudes. Several days in Katmandu (4,344 feet) were of some help. Careful, paced trekking led by experienced Sherpas is essential. Being in good physical condition is mandatory. I trained in the hills surrounding Hong Kong, yet serious pain was a constant. Since Lo Manthang itself is at 12,000 feet, our trek was usually at altitudes significantly lower than many of those near Everest, which can stretch to 18,000 feet. We did not take or need oxygen tanks, but I found myself to be short of breath much of the time.

Following the dawn each day, we trekked two or three hours before lunch, when our Sherpas would race ahead to set up the noon meal, which they accomplished in an extraordinary few minutes. On the menu were sandwiches, cookies and lots of fruit juice, used to wash away the hot, dusty days when the sun baked the earth and it was warm enough to don shorts. Dinner was usually more elaborate and included--on our final night, for example, and not without a hint of triumph by our Sherpas--pizza for dinner and apple pie for desert.

After a few hours of trekking in the afternoon, we would camp at a prearranged spot in tents the Sherpas carried, along with sleeping bags and other equipment, all provided by the company. Everyone had his own tent and there was also a dining and a toilet tent. All I and the other trekkers toted was clothing, camera gear and any other personal goods we thought necessary.

As the trekking trail bends northward, the surrounding area gets even bleaker, with occasional houses and Buddhist shrines the only indication of any human influence. The Himalayas, which dominate every other trek in Nepal, fall behind as the way opens up toward Tibet, and the few people you pass on the roads are ruddy-cheeked with their hair in braids, and speak Nepali, the national language, only haltingly, if at all.

Unworldly though the Lobar may seem, economics has pushed many beyond the frontiers of their homeland. Near-total deforestation--by the people who have used the trees not for profit but for survival--and an increasing population have urged many Lobar south during the coldest months to trade in India.

*

After four days of ragged ups and downs through passes that reached almost 13,000 feet, Lo Manthang revealed itself, solid as a monolith and dominating the surrounding fields--a green sward in the summer but dry and inhospitable at all other times. While there are four monasteries in the L-shaped city that is perhaps a quarter mile at its longest leg, it is the four-story palace of King Jigme Palbar Bista that is the paramount feature.

Above the winding alleys and bumpy courtyards of Lo Manthang, higher even than the monastery with its surrounding temples, King Jigme’s palace resounded to the howls of his favorite mastiffs, tethered on the first floor. No tin-pot monarch, King Jigme threshes his own grain, mediates local disputes and those with the government in Katmandu, and (at least during our visit) condescends to meet groups of foreign visitors when not otherwise engaged. Our visit was arranged through our head Sherpa, who had spoken with the King’s chamberlain.

Entrance to royal circles in Lo Manthang may be easier than elsewhere, but it is no less bound with protocol. Ducking our heads, we trooped up the stairs to His Majesty’s parlor. There we slightly shy trekkers, wrapped up like Michelin Men in down jackets and boots, offered His Majesty new prayer scarves on hands held out with the palms uppermost and thumbs tucked into the side, as directed by our Sherpa. King Jigme took the cloths and tied them gently around each donor’s neck as a sign of welcome. A bowl of fruit and a bottle of medicinal rum were also handed over, but these were not returned.

King Jigme exuded toughness, and he answered questions and posed for pictures a little warily. He could do with an airstrip, and a clinic and a better water supply, he said. Trekkers were neither good nor bad, but welcome just the same, he added. A devout Buddhist and strict chieftain, King Jigme seemed to us to be the sort of man Mustang needed as it faced up to the modern world. Officially under the aegis of the Nepalese monarch and the country’s prime minister and cabinet in Katmandu, in reality King Jigme can run Mustang pretty much by himself.

The King’s subjects have grown used to the odd visitors to their city to the extent of now affording them only a curious glance, while the children might well muster a timid “hello.” While we stayed in a tented camp erected by our Sherpas just outside the city walls, we spent our days in town talking with the people, wandering the streets, watching daily life go on. We observed that their homes, stables and cowsheds--so often intermixed--are crisscrossed by a maze of alleyways and passages, broken occasionally by a square with a water faucet in the center. The children attend a school just past the giant copper prayer wheels that stand at the main gate, although the young boys may be conscripted into the monastery. The Saskyapa sect’s distinctive gray, white and yellow stripes on the monasteries’ red walls reflect the colors of the surrounding hills, blending religion into nature in this enigmatic land.

*

On our second and last night in Lo Manthang, snow swept in from the north, bathing the empty earth in flurries of whiteness. With daybreak came a little warmth from the sun, and children, like children everywhere, raced out to make the most of their new playground.

The trek south, back to Jomosom, was hampered by slush and ice, harsh winds whipping through the fleeciest down jackets, wresting scarves and hats awry. For us, these few days were an adventure, a hardship to be borne and boasted about back in--for want of better word--civilization. For the Lobar, they were part of day-to-day existence, a cruel and unending struggle that gives no quarter.

But though the thermometer dropped and the passes south seemed steeper than ever they were on the journey north, inside my heart I was warm and glad. I had touched the hidden kingdom, caught sight of the once forbidden land, and felt, though change may come, part of Mustang would be mine forever.

GUIDEBOOK

Mustang Sallies

Since Mustang has been open for trekking only since 1992, little information is available and many guidebooks don’t mention it. The best sources of information are the tour companies that organize trips.

Getting there: It would be possible to fly to Katmandu, Nepal, and book a trek to Mustang through local travel agencies. But this would be time consuming, so pre-booking is probably best. Two weeks would be enough time to fly from Katmandu to Jomosom, trek to Lo Manthang and back again. I flew into Katmandu from my home in Hong Kong and paid about $2,000 for a 14-day trek last year with Tiger Mountain (known as Tiger Tops International in the U.S.), land cost only out of Katmandu.

Thai Airways (connecting through Bangkok) and Singapore Airlines (connecting through Singapore) both fly from LAX to Katmandu. Fares begin at about $1,600 for round-trip advance purchase tickets.

Papers: Passport and visa for Nepal are necessary, in addition to a trekking permit for Mustang, obtained through tour operators. Do not refuse emergency evacuation insurance available through tour operators. Since Mustang is remote, a quick departure--in case of emergency--can be difficult and expensive.

When to go: Tours leave spring through fall.

Tour operators: Companies supply all equipment (tents and sleeping bags included) except clothing and other personal items. Prices quoted do not include air fare between the U.S. and Katmandu but do include trekking permit fee and air fares within Nepal.

Tiger Tops Int., 2627 Lombard St., San Francisco 94123, telephone (415) 346-3402; 14-day, round-trip treks out of Katmandu; from about $2,500 per person, land cost only; accommodations in Katmandu can be arranged through the company but cost extra; five departures in 1994 or as a custom trip, June-September.

InnerAsia Expeditions, 2627 Lombard St., San Francisco 94123, tel. (415) 922-0448; 20-day tours from the West Coast; from $3,300, land cost only; two departures in 1994, May and October.

Wilderness Travel, 801 Allston Way, Berkeley 94710, tel. (510) 548-0420; 22-day tours from the West Coast from $3,600 per person, land cost only; six departures in 1994, May through November.

Lute Jerstad Adventures, P.O. Box 19537, Portland 97280, tel. (503) 244-6075; 22-day tours from the West Coast from $3,500, land cost only; two departures in 1994, August and September. Mountain Travel Sobek, 6420 Fairmount Ave., El Cerrito 94530, tel. (800) 227-2384; 26-day tours from the West Coast from $3,990, land cost only; three 1994 departures: May, June, August.

For more information: Royal Nepalese Consulate, Tourist Information, 820 2nd Ave., Suite 202, New York 10017, tel. (212) 370-4188.