Day by Day
Days 1 to 3 Kathmandu The Medieval Gateway
Arrive at Tribhuvan International Airport and transfer to the hotel with a welcome from the SherpaHolidays team. The expedition briefing that first evening covers the full 21-day itinerary: the restricted area protocol for Upper Mustang, the cultural conventions appropriate for Lo Manthang and its royal household, the altitude profile of the trek, and the logistical arrangements for the internal flights. The briefing also introduces the cultural context of the journey: the history of the Kingdom of Lo, the Tibetan Buddhist traditions that define the region, and the specific religious sites the group will visit. Guests come to breakfast the following morning knowing clearly what the coming three weeks will involve.
Kathmandu is not simply a staging point for this expedition. The valley contains seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites and a depth of living religious culture that is directly continuous with what the group will encounter in Mustang. Swayambhunath sits on a hilltop above the western edge of the city, its whitewashed stupa and the eyes painted on its tower watching over the valley from a site that has been a centre of Buddhist practice for over two thousand years. Pashupatinath on the Bagmati river is the most sacred Hindu temple in Nepal, its ghats and its courtyards carrying the continuous activity of a site where the dead are cremated and the living come to pray in equal measure. The Durbar Squares of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur are medieval royal court complexes in various states of preservation and ongoing life. The stone carvings, the timber lattice windows, and the pagoda temples of the Newari architects who built them represent a tradition of religious art that has been producing work of exceptional quality for over a thousand years. The restricted area permits for Upper Mustang are processed during these three days, allowing the group to move north without administrative delay on arrival in Jomsom.
Stay: Luxury Hotel in Kathmandu
Days 4 to 8 Jomsom to Tsarang The Desert Plateau
The flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara and then to Jomsom is one of the more dramatic approaches to a trekking region in Nepal. The aircraft from Pokhara climbs north over the Annapurna foothills and then turns west through the gap in the main range, the great walls of Dhaulagiri and the Annapurna massif visible on both sides before the aircraft descends into the wide valley of the Kali Gandaki and lands at Jomsom. The airstrip here is at 2,720 metres and the wind is already present in the upper valley by mid-morning. This is the wind that defines life in the Mustang corridor: a thermal flow that funnels south through the gap between the two great massifs, strong enough in the afternoons to make walking slow and uncomfortable. The morning hours are the trekking hours in this valley.
The trail north from Jomsom to Kagbeni follows the river through a landscape that changes with every kilometre. The lower valley is still green in the monsoon season, juniper and scrub growing on the lower slopes, the river grey with glacial silt. By Kagbeni, the last village before the restricted zone checkpoint, the vegetation has thinned and the cliffs have begun to show the red and orange colouration of the upper desert. The checkpoint at Kagbeni is where the restricted area permit is verified. North of it, the trail enters a different country. The villages above Kagbeni are mud-brick settlements the colour of the hillsides they sit against, their flat roofs and enclosed courtyards built for a climate of cold winters and almost no rainfall. Lo Gekar monastery stands on a ridge above the valley above Ghami: one of the oldest religious institutions in Nepal, its foundation attributed to Padmasambhava, the eighth-century master who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Continue south of Tsarang for camp at one of the finest positions on the route, the red cliffs of the eastern wall above and the trail to Lo Manthang visible on the ridge ahead.
Stay: Traditional Mountain Lodges
Days 9 to 11 Lo Manthang The Walled City
The Nyi La pass at 3,950 metres is a short but steep climb from Tsarang, and the view from the top is the one that justifies every step of the approach. Lo Manthang sits on the plain below: a rectangle of white wall enclosing the buildings of a city that has been in continuous occupation since the fifteenth century. The plain around it is brown and flat, the mountains of Tibet visible on the northern horizon, and the city in the middle of it all looks precisely like what it is: a walled capital built to be seen from a distance, its walls a statement of permanence in a landscape that otherwise offers none.
The city inside the wall is smaller than the wall suggests from above, its lanes narrow and its buildings close together in the way of settlements that were planned around defence as much as convenience. The royal palace at the northern end is a four-storey structure of mud-brick and timber that has been the seat of the Lo royal family since the kingdom was founded. The gompas of Lo Manthang are the reason that art historians and religious scholars have been making the journey here since the restricted zone opened: Champa Lhakhang and Thugchen Gompa contain original fifteenth-century murals and thankas of a quality and completeness that has survived here precisely because the isolation that made Lo Manthang difficult to reach also protected it from the destruction and looting that affected most comparable sites on the Tibetan plateau during the twentieth century. A local guide accompanies the group through the gompas on both days in the city, providing context that a self-guided visit cannot offer.
An audience with the King and Queen of Mustang is arranged through the SherpaHolidays team when the royal household’s schedule permits. The Kingdom of Lo lost its formal legal status within Nepal in 2008, when the country’s new constitution ended the recognition of hereditary monarchies. The royal family remains in Lo Manthang and continues to hold a respected ceremonial and cultural role in the community. An audience is not a tourist attraction. It is a formal meeting with a family that has governed this place for twenty-five generations, and it is conducted with the corresponding courtesy on both sides.
Stay: Local Lodge and Professional Tented Camp
Days 12 to 16 Luri Gompa to Muktinath The Hidden Valleys
The eastern valleys beyond Lo Manthang are the least visited part of an already rarely visited region. The trail leaves the city through the eastern gate and crosses open plateau toward a valley system that drops into a series of narrow gorges cut through the red sandstone of the upper Mustang geology. Luri Gompa appears in the cliff face above the valley floor as a cluster of painted facades built across the mouth of a cave, the cave itself containing a temple and a chorten that archaeologists have dated to the fourteenth century. The interior murals are in a state of preservation that the altitude and aridity of this region make possible: the pigments still vivid, the figures still legible, the composition still coherent. Very few people see these paintings each year. The monastery is maintained by a small community whose commitment to preserving what is inside is evident in the condition of what remains.
The village of Tangya is further into the eastern valleys, a small community that the main trekking traffic does not reach. The people here are Loba, the traditional inhabitants of Lo, and the village functions on the same seasonal rhythms it has followed for centuries: agriculture in the summer, trade in the autumn, the long cold of the winter. The return south from Tangya crosses high ground above 4,000 metres with clear views across the upper Mustang plain to the ridges of the Tibetan border, then descends to rejoin the Kali Gandaki corridor for the final approach to Muktinath.
Muktinath at 3,800 metres is a religious site of a different order from the gompas of Lo Manthang. It is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, which is unusual in a region where the two traditions generally maintain separate institutions and pilgrimage routes. The sacred character of the site comes from a natural phenomenon: a gas seep that produces a flame burning above water, fire and water in the same place at the same time, which has been interpreted as a divine sign by both traditions for over two thousand years. The 108 water spouts arranged around the temple precinct are used for ritual bathing by Hindu pilgrims who believe the water carries purifying power. The gompa above the spring serves the Buddhist community. Both are in active use on any given day of the pilgrimage season.
Stay: Professional Tented Camp and Lodge
Days 17 to 21 Jomsom to Kathmandu The Return
The descent of the Kali Gandaki from Muktinath to Jomsom is a single long day on a trail that the wind makes easier going south than it was going north. The vegetation returns gradually as the altitude drops: first the scrub juniper, then the larger trees of the middle valley, then the green of the lower slopes approaching Jomsom. The final evening in Jomsom is the traditional expedition dinner, the full crew gathered for a meal that marks the end of the mountain section and the beginning of the return. The connection between a group and the people who have carried the loads and cooked the meals and kept the camp for three weeks is one of the less expected rewards of this kind of travel.
The flight from Jomsom to Pokhara retraces the dramatic mountain approach of Day 4 in reverse, the great walls of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna flanking the aircraft as it turns south through the gap. Pokhara at 800 metres feels, after two weeks above 3,500 metres, warm and dense and extravagantly green. Two nights on the shores of Phewa Lake with the Annapurna range reflected in the water to the north is a considered end to the high-altitude section of the expedition rather than a rushed transit. The final flight back to Kathmandu returns the group to the valley where the journey began, the UNESCO temples and the medieval courtyards available for a final day of unhurried exploration before the international departure.
Stay: Luxury Hotel in Pokhara then Luxury Hotel in Kathmandu
