When travelling to the north of Nepal you will sooner or later reach the Himalaya. Hidden between mountains, an ancient and almost forgotten kingdom is waiting for you, where time has been standing still for hundreds of years. Here, the influence of modern civilization, technological advancement does not affect the daily life of its people. Once, the kingdom was known under the name “Lo”. Today, it is called Mustang.
Today, the kingdom is a province in Nepal. The kingdom and the rest of Nepal have been heavily influenced by the cultural exchange with Tibet whose culture and traditions have been adopted by the Mustang people who still seem to live their life like they did in the last centuries. The Mustang people still lead a nomadic lifestyle living off breeding yaks. Mustang is a kingdom where you get from A to B on the back of a horse, which is a cultural good, the people there take pride in. Indeed, living there is connected with hardship. In fact, they fight for survival every day because the sparse mountains are certainly no hospitable environment.
And yet the landscapes are defined by endless beauty and so are the cities that enchant with their intriguing contorted structure, while still harboring the beautiful spirit of the past. In Mustang, life is heavily affected by Buddhism, which is reflected in all fields of life. The art, the architecture, the traditions, the people.
If you too want to experience the charm and beauty of this immortal kingdom, you sadly have to get an exceptional permission at the Nepalese embassy because the Lo kingdom was first opened to the rest of the world in the early 90ies, which was certainly a special moment for adventurous globetrotters looking for new unknown and unexplored places in the world.
