TASHI KABUM: A MUSTANG TREASURE REVEALED Gerry Virtue – TAASA Review June 2008

I had wanted to visit the tiny kingdom of Upper Mustang (ethnically Tibetan but for centuries part of Nepal) and its old walled capital of Lo Manthang ever since reading Michel Peissel’s 1964 book Mustang, A Lost Tibetan Kingdom.

In August 2007, an unusually intense Himalayan monsoon fortuitously diverted me there (my original intended destination was Mt Kailas in Tibet). On the map, Mustang is a bump on the northern border of Nepal, projecting into Tibet.

Until the early 1970s, the Khampas of Eastern Tibet used the area, which has an average altitude of around 4000 metres, as a base in their guerrilla war against the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and for a long time the area was closed to outsiders; the ban was lifted only in 1992 ...