Mustang Restricted Region

Mustang sits behind the main Himalayan range, in its rain shadow — which makes it one of the few parts of Nepal you can travel comfortably through the monsoon. The landscape is high desert: ochre and grey cliffs carved into fins and hollows, barley fields walled against the wind, and villages that look and feel closer to Tibet than to Kathmandu.

Upper Mustang was closed to outsiders until 1992 and remains a restricted area, entered on a special permit in a group of at least two trekkers with a licensed guide. At its heart is Lo Manthang, a walled town of whitewashed houses, monasteries and a former royal palace, still following a calendar of festivals that predates the Nepali state.

Threading the whole region is the Kali Gandaki — measured between Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, it is the deepest gorge on earth, and it has carried salt traders between Nepal and Tibet for centuries.