The writer on the far right, with his friends (right to left): Devika, Sandesh, Kriti, Anzel, Sujal, Nelson, Trijan and Chandrika near Kagbeni
Once you make it, a trip to the windy valley of Mustang will give you some rough and tumble experiences you want to cherish and share forever.
As a fourth year undergrad, I had heard of the valley and talked about it with friends. We would imagine making a trip there after our studies. But, due to Covid-19, our studies took six years to complete and raised our anxiety level to pandemic proportions.
In May, two of my friends returned home from Australia. After years of waiting, we sat and planned our rejuvenation trip, we so desperately needed now. When we set out, we were seven of us, on a night bus, headed for Mustang, keen to get some fresh wind to shake off our mundane routine.
To Beni
Our journey started on the 21st of May, from Kathmandu. On the bus, with friends, time began to fly fast. Soon, we were sipping tea at Dharke, our first stop on the highway.
“When will we reach Beni?” Trijan asked the driver.
“Around 7am,” the driver replied.
Back on the bus, I had fallen asleep. At 5 in the morning, Sujal pulled out the Google Map and showed us Beni, according to the map, would be an hour away.
Greeted by bumps on a rough road we reached Maldhunga. We were at Beni at 7am. The driver was right, not the map.
Sandesh picked us up at the bus stop for a small hike to Lovely Danda (Nepali for beautiful hill) before lunch. Now, we were eight of us, off on our way to Jomsom.
View of Beni Bazaar from Lovely Danda Photo: Diwash Ghimire
To Jomsom
The ride on the earthen road was still giving us soft bumps, but the lure of Mustang, as we imagined it, kept us holding firm on our seat and excited all along.
Kaligandaki was gushing below, its silty water spraying drizzles over the banks. We were supposed to see snowy mountains appearing before us somewhere from around there. But thick clouds had covered them. The fog hovered close by, forcing us to look at what our eyes could see. Hard to believe, small restaurants were thriving on the patches of flatland, as tourists and locals travelled on the highway.
In the corridor carved by Kaligandaki, the highway served as a lifeline and opportunity for people. Hoteliers were happy to serve guests after a long Covid lockdown.
A few hours past, vegetations dwindled, giving way to grassy hills. Every some hundred metres, waterfalls gave life and added beauty to the hills, drawing shouts of wow from us.
“Ruptse is far more beautiful, about 10 minutes away,” a local passenger seated across me told us. His friend added: “Dana Galchhi is across it.” Also called Andha Galchhi, the gorge is the deepest in the world.
The locals were helping us adjust our excitement and anticipation. To me, the next ten minutes of waiting felt like the longest I had ever experienced on our trip. The bus was struggling to plough through the muddy road section until a turning opened a new vista.
Ruptse came to view in its full glory. The 300-metre fall ranks among the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. We went to the cabin of the bus to better appreciate the cascading water from up front. Sadly, the road work was taking a toll on the scenery, making the gorge look vulnerable. The debris below the road and frequent landslides had nearly filled it.
The driver stopped the bus for us to take a snapshot or two of the landmark. Hanging on the door of the bus, oh yeah, pushing the conductor to go inside, we could feel the power of Kaligandaki gorge. The road was dangerous, as a narrow track, barely enough for the bus to fit.
Ruptse at its full glory with an active landslide on its side Photo: Diwash Ghimire
“Don’t look on the right,” Chandrika suggested.
A few hundred metres away, a bus was stuck in the mud. The road was closed for all of us until 45 minutes later, when it was pulled out. The driver hurtled our bus on the highway, drawing our cheers for him.
Hours of such thrill on the narrow track along Kaligandaki brought conifer hills before us. Then mountains came out of the clouds, sending us chilly winds. We put our jackets on. We were in Jomsom (2,743 metres). Time: 6pm.
Korala Highway near Jomsom with a backdrop of snowy peaks Photo: Diwash Ghimire
Again, clouds covered the mountains. But Jomsom was beautiful even under clouds. Flat mud roofs and the Thakali culture reflected in the houses were a wow factor for us. A rain shadow area, with low or no rain, Jomsom and the region above it used to be fine with the mud roofs.
“But it rained here more often these days, right?” I asked an old lady, a restaurant owner that evening. She said, “As rain was becoming a little common now-a-days, people have started putting metal sheet roofs on their houses.”
Is climate change to blame?
We had little time left to think about big issues. After eating the delicious Royal Thakali Set, we went to bed.
Upper Mustang
The next day, at 5am, after a cup of strong Americano, with no sugar, Bharat Dai (he looked at least 10 years older than me), our driver + guide came to receive us on 4x4 SUV. We left for Muktinath (3,750 metres), a place of high religious value to both Hindus and Buddhists.
The shrine is of Lord Vishnu, for Hindus. They call it Mukti Kshetra, which literally translates to "a place of salvation". It has 108 cow-faced water spouts, believed to be flowing with holy water. Those who take a bath in all these spouts and dive into the pond in front of the temple will get all of their sins washed away. That’s what the people believe.
Six of us, collected the courage to do the ritual in the super chilly water. “Whoa!” We shouted and ran through the spouts and made the dive, doing it as quickly as possible. Swiftness is the only technique to survive the ice-cold water. Back on the SUV, we were on the Korala Highway to Upper Mustang.
We talked about how the rugged terrain, chilly wind and the gravelled highway passing through the banks of Thak Khola (Kaligandaki in local) called up the image of the Grand Canyon. Past Kagbeni, the landform was a total alien. Arid, desertic graben landform with towering hoodoos -- yellow and red everywhere -- we were so keen to take photographs there. We stopped the vehicle every few minutes. Bharat dai said, “There is more to come, the farther you go, the more beautiful it gets!”
Hoodoos near Jhong Cave Photo: Diwash Ghimire
Escalating our hype level, across a concrete bridge on Thak Khola, sky caves came to our view for the first time. We were still on a gravelled road, but it was wide, comfortable and physically strong in appearance, with no rain damaging it. Nelson was waving a hello from his window to greet the brave tourists who were on foot doing this same treacherous journey. With lots of Wows, Yeys, Jezzs, OMGs, Goshes and around five hundred pictures later, we were at Lomanthang, the walled kingdom, at 1pm.
Highway through the dry valley of Upper Mustang Photo: Diwash Ghimire
For our avid team everything was a catnip - we had lunch, Rs 400 for a vegetarian plate. Why so costly? “We can’t grow much here; everything is transported and fuel price is skyrocketing,” the hotelier replied.
After admiring the beauty and the architecture of the palaces and monasteries there, we were off to Korala again. We made a short stop at Jhong Cave; the mysterious cave inside a cliff believed to be the symbol of ancient civilisation.
“I’m feeling like I am around Pyramids in Egypt,” laughed Trijan.
Cave windows(left) and inside of cave(right) Photo: Diwash Ghimire
Korala or Kora La or Koro La, the words were used interchangeably for the mountain pass between Tibetan Autonomous Region of China and Upper Mustang of Nepal. Yellow, red and brown, the naked mountains continued, making our exclamation continue, too. Empty and wide roads winding past the mountains, following the passes between the towering snow-capped mountains, took us to the flat plateau of Korala.
Located at 4,660 metres, the pass has been considered the lowest drivable corridor through of the Himalayas linking Tibetan Plateau and Indian subcontinent. One of the new border crossings to link two huge economic juggernauts, China and India, through Korala-Beni-Kaligandaki corridor-Sunauli, it is nearly 400km from Mansarovar and 700km from Sigatse.
The infrastructure on the Chinese side looks almost done. Even at such a height, they have constructed huge buildings and connected them with a blacktopped road. Our side doesn’t even have a check post, we came to learn. The pass was such a windy place; the wind was so powerful, as if it could blow you across the border.
Bharat Dai, said, “The border opens semi-annually for seasonal trade fairs. The locals even buy new bikes for sixty thousand rupees and use it in Upper Mustang.”
“So cheap?” I wondered.
Dai replied: “Yes, without legal paper work, or bluebook.”
What I experienced?
Happiness is a gem, just that you need to discover it. During the whole trip, I learnt to smile in the hardship as the people in the Himalayas did. Living with an unmerciful climate, poor agricultural yield and unsympathetic government, they had smiles on their faces.
Basic necessities for survival such as food, clothing and fuel are available here for inflated prices that makes the lives of the people here more difficult. It is getting rare to see a young local working on the field in Upper Mustang; much like it is to see a snow leopard on the Himalayas these days. Out migration is a serious issue in the village.
Hope is a powerful thing; trees were yet to fruit but the people were already dreaming of eating them. The North-South Trade Highway, which is being upgraded and the Korala border, is about to get functional. This has given hope to people, at the local and the national level.
A 435km stretch of land will be connecting the two economic powers, along with one million Nepalis on the way, making Nepal a strategic economic partner, not just a pawn on the economic chess board. The highway will bring a huge influx of tourists in the upper reaches of the region, as our Bharat Dai expects. “I want to serve as a driver in tourism industry when more Chinese and Indian tourists visit Nepal using the highway.”
Muktinath has already seen new highs of Indian visitors after the much-publicised visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who offered prayers at the temple two years ago. The development of small towns and pockets of financial oasis along the way will also help in curbing the out-migration problem in the region.
People will realise the benefits of the highway when the transportation costs for their essentials begin to go down, when tourists fill up their hotels and homestays, when Mustang finds a place on the world map as Aspen. Mustang needs more publicity and the highway is a prerequisite for that.
The highway upgradation is going on under two separate sections: Gaidakot-Ramdi-Maldhunga of 245km and Maldhunga-Beni-Korala of 199km.
Talking with NepalMinute, Dipak Shrestha, the Project Director of North-South & Trade Route Imp. Project Directorate, said that the whole track is now open but blacktopping and gravelling will take time to complete. “The 70km stretch in Gaidakot-Maldhunga section and 25km in Beni-Jomsom section have been black topped and additional 100km and 80km stretches in each section respectively have been gravelled to this day,” said Shrestha. The remaining portions of the road are earthen.
Dipak Shrestha, Project Director speaking with NepalMinute Photo: Diwash Ghimire
The targeted project completion time is 2080/81 but Shrestha has doubts about meeting the timeline. “Hard to achieve!” he said. “Covid-19, construction holidays and late budget disbursement are some factors to blame for such delays. Not to mention landslide and heavy rains.”
In the midst of their pain, problem and hassle, the local people are dreaming of the spring, when their living standards will get a lift. The roadway is a major boost, not just for the economy but also for the everyday psyche of the Nepali people. So, a lot is at stake in the highway, life of people, life of Mustang and prosperity of Nepal.
For us on a small trip of a few days, the joy of being in the valley and plateau was more important than anything at that spur of the moment. But we knew one trip is not enough to feel the sweep of a rejuvenating wind, absorb the freshness of a naked nature at a high altitude, admire the beauty of Mustang, smile back on those hopeful faces and laugh at unfunny jokes.
That is probably why they say: “Naturally Nepal, Once is not enough!"
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