Near the Top of Asia, the Kingdom of Lo (Part 7, Heading South)

Heading south out of Lo Manthang

Dear readers, we have walked to the remote capital of Lo Manthang in Nepal's Kingdom of Lo and ridden horses to the monastery of Nyiphu near the Tibetan border. But autumn was approaching, and it was time to head south and, eventually, home. 

Leaving Lo Manthang, we walked south through a rather desolate and bleak landscape. Imagine the winter here at 3,800 m elevation. For our trek south, we followed the eastern route which approximately follows the Kali Gandhi River. We crossed a couple of passes exceeding 3,900 m elevation, but it was not hard walking, and we had been at that altitude for over a week.

Modern steel girder bridge at Charang

Charang (Tsarang)

Long day in the saddle, Charang

Charang (or Tsarang), at 3550 m is the first town south of Lo Manthang. We stayed in the Kailash Hotel, a rustic but clean place. Note from the photographs above that we still had magnificent weather, with nights just a bit below freezing. It was October 14, so winter would be here soon.

A ruined palace, once the home of the Raja of Mustang, strategically overlooks the town.

Dhargyeling Monastery, Charang

The Dhargyeling Monastery in Charang, possibly over 500 years old, is a treasury of statuary, painting, and sacred scrolls. How do these pigments survive the brutal cycling from cold to hot?

Ghami

In another day, we reached the village of Ghami, where we had stayed a week before. From here on heading south, we retraced our steps along the Kali Gandhi River. 

Main Street, Syanboche

Packing up at the Dhaulagiri, Syanboche

Our next night was in Syanboche (also Syangbochen? approx. 3,800 m), really little more than a dirt street between some houses. 

Sure-footed walking near Chungsi

Samar

At the Annapurna, Samar

Samar was a rather well developed town, just a short distance above Chele and the crossing of the Kali Gandaki. North of town, the road passed through some treacherous terrain of landslides and rotten rock. We saw road crews trying to cut the road across some cliff-faces. We learned later that in the following winter, parts of the road were swept away in landslides. Our horses were more sure-footed than we were.

The next day, we walked across the river and stayed again in the big town of Kagbeni, which I described in Pat 2 of this series (click the link).

Jomson

Oh, oh, traffic, electricity, stores, lights - after another day's walk south from Kagbeni, we reached Jomson, the main commercial town of southern Mustang. Jomson has many hotels as well stores, a health center, and an airport. This was a major stop on the Annapurna circuit, so it has received tourist traffic for decades.

Jomson was the last stop for most of our group. They returned to Kathmandu by air. Within about a week, brutal cold descended into Central Asia, and many Mustang villagers had to head south abruptly. 

I opted to continue south on foot and walk down the fantastic valley of the Kali Gandaki. The river cuts the deepest canyon in the world between the 8,000-m peaks of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna. This amazing 4-day walk carries your through several biologic zones as the elevation drops and the temperature goes up. You are in high altitude desert at Jomson and semi-tropical rainforest at Tatopani. I wrote about this canyon walk in 2017. Highly recommended!

This ends one of my best hiking trips ever. I hope you enjoyed riding (walking) along. 

Near the Top of Asia, the Kingdom of Lo (Part 6, Nyiphu Monastery)

 

Waypoints from a Garmin Geko GPS receiver. Mystique is the guesthouse in Lo-Manthang. Maps made with ESRI ArcGIS software

North of Lo-Manthang, the terrain looks dry, wild, and forbidding. But humans have inhabited this area for at least 2500 years, indicating there was sufficient water for agriculture and animal husbandry. The cliffs around the valley are riddled with caves, some of which were used for human occupation hundreds of years ago. Many were tombs and contain religious relics dating back to the origins of Tibetan Buddhism.

 

Chhoser is a small town in the valley north of Lo-Manthang. I think this is where we bought tickets to visit the monastery. In the photograph above, note the rock walls made of rounded river rock. I assume this is one way that the villagers cleared the land to make it suitable for some agriculture (barley?) or grazing. You see similar rock walls in New England, where settlers in the 1600s and 1700s cleared rocks from the land and used walls as a disposal method.

The  Nyiphug Namdrol Norbuling Monastery is north of the town of Chhoser and is partly built into the mountain. We rented horses for the 8 km. trip north out of Lo-Manthang. Our Sherpa guides walked, but we wimpy lowlanders opted for the bumpy luxury transportation.

Ancient books wrapped in silk

Modern notebooks at a study table

Buddha backed by a modern commercial decorative cloth (or tablecloth?)

The rooms built into the rock are decorated like many gompas, with colorful fabrics, a sitting Buddha, candles, some electric lights, and a variety of offerings donated by pilgrims. Fascinating.

 

Monks occupied some of these caves in solitary meditation, sometimes spending months or years alone. Other caves shielded families in the past during warfare. I am not sure how they handled water supply. Some caves contained tombs dating back thousands of years. A 2017 Public Broadcast System (PBS) NOVA program described an expedition to investigate Secrets of the Sky Tombs. We were able to climb up to some of the caves, which have passageways and platforms that are semi-safe for tourists.

 

View from a cave above Nyiphug Gompa

This is a very special place. And the remoteness and culture will be profoundly changed when the road is complete down the Kali Gandaki. Already, the road to China means Chinese trade goods come in from the north. What happens when mass market tourism comes via bus? As David Ways wrote in 2019:

For trekkers the dreaded road from Pokhara to Lo Manthang to Tibet is not yet as bad as some people make out (it only exists in small sections and is completely off-road). However, once it is finished and the trading route to China is fully open there’s little doubt the Kingdom of Lo will disappear into folklore and package tours much like the Annapurna Circuit of 10 years ago.

Returning to Lo-Manthang

As of 2011, Lo was still a magical place, a time capsule of tradition and a way of life little changed over the decades. I am glad I visited this remote part of the world. When the COVID crisis is finally under control, consider a trip to the Kingdom of Lo. 

These are digital images from a Panasonic G1 digital camera. This was Panasonic's first micro four thirds (µ4/3) camera and was very refined for a version 1 product.

Perched on the Heights: Chiwong Monastery, Solu Khumbu, Nepal (Nepal 2017-12)

Chiwong Monastery with Phaplu airstrip in the distance

Dear Readers, this is the last monastery that my friends and I visited during our circle trek in the Solu Khumbu. The Chiwong Monastery is perched on the edge of a steep mountain - almost a cliff - with a stunning view to the south. The town of Phaplu is in the distance, and the residents of the monastery can monitor the aircraft flying up the valley, making an abrupt turn, and dropping down onto the airstrip.

Chiwong Monastery has a web page:

The Chiwong Monastery was founded by the late Sangey Lama, in 1923. Sangey Lama’s ancestors, and all Sherpa people, have their origins in Kham, in northeastern Tibet. They migrated to the Everest region of the Solu Khumbu and made their home there, some 500 years ago.

At one time, the Chiwong Monastery echoed with the prayers and scholastic activities of the many monks and nuns that resided there. The monastery has a proud history, having been home to several spiritual leaders and learned monks. Chiwong Monastery had the privilege of hosting Dza-Rong-Phuk Sangey Ngawang Tenzing Jangpo, from 1955-1958. And, His Holiness Trulshig Rinpoche lived at the monastery from 1960-1967.

The monastery has a modern guest house built only a few years ago by an Italian organization. From the guest rooms, it was a steep walk uphill to the main buildings. I do not have any pictures of the older buildings. They were hard to capture because of the steep topography, but in the first photograph, you can see the complex from the ridge top.

This monastery also serves as a school for boys of various ages. Most eat in a group, but at every meal, 3 or 4 of the younger boys eat with the older monks to socialize them to the upper echelons of the establishment.

We has some of the best food on our trek here. We were invited to eat with the senior monks.

The Lepon (aka Abbot) of Chiwong Gompa was a humble man who rose to that position from a village background. As a boy, he had trained at the Buddhist Academy in Serlo (described in an earlier post). His personality and personal philosophy led to his rise to the top and his approach to running a monastery full of young students. My friend, Don Messerschmidt could converse with the Lipon because both spoke village-level Nepali. The Lipon told us he had been to New York. That must have been quite a cultural and noise shock.

As usual, the kitchen offered some interesting scenes with hard side-lighting. The middle frame of the young man washing his hands had a light leak or some bad flare.

Some of the younger students had their dahl baht outside on the porch. I noticed they were using spoons rather than their fingers.

The monastery also fed our porters. The kitchens in these monasteries are big operations, as you have seen in my various pictures from this and other Nepali monasteries.

The black and white photographs were from Tmax 400 film exposed in my 1949 Leica IIIC camera with a 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens. I used a Gossen Luna Pro Digital light meter to measure the light.

Hanging around in Junbesi, rural Nepal (Nepal 2017-11)

On the Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp trail, approaching Junbesi.

The cheerful Sherpa town of Junbesi was our base for visits to nearby monasteries and for some trekking. The town is in a valley which opens up to the south and is surrounded by both forest and verdant farm fields. This area has not been deforested to the degree suffered by many other parts of Nepal, which has led to myriad environmental consequences, such as soil erosion, runoff, and flash flooding.

We stayed in the Apple Garden Guest House & Restaurant, which was clean and cheerful. The rooms were clean and the food was good, but the toilets and wash facilities needed work (typical in most of the country).

Room with a View - Junbesi from the Apple Garden Guest House.

Pack explosion = room with a mess. In the Apple Garden Guest House.

Entering town from the south, you are welcomed by a chorten with prayer wheels on all four sides. You are supposed to circle a chorten clockwise, meaning pass to the left, and spin the prayer wheels for good fortune and health. Chortens are found throughout the country, and range from huge structures in the city to small units on trails, villages or mountain cols. They serve as a religious focal point in the town or countryside and have a positive effect on the people who live nearby or pass alongside. "Building a chorten is an especially karmic act, helping to ensure fortunate rebirths."

Late tomatoes still ripening in the sun.

Toilet brushes ripening in the sun.

Most of Junbesi is cheerfully painted and in good maintenance. Some of the stores have odd items on display. A couple of my co-travelers found plenty of beer for sale.

We met an Australian dentist who comes to Junbesi once or twice a year to treat local residents. He had a clinic in a small building which was equipped, he said, to do most procedures that he might encounter. He brought most of his supplies with him when he came from Australia. For fillings, he used composite resin. He told me no longer used silver amalgam because the material was too heavy and there was the issue of disposing of waste. The day we talked, he was awaiting nuns to come down the mountain from the Thupten Chöling Monastery.

A short distance up-valley is another prosperous Sherpa town, Phungmoche. This photograph was from the trail that leads uphill to the Thubten Choling monastery.

I have already written about the Thupten Chöling Monastery before, so will only show one photograph. Drying barley in the sun is a common late autumn activity throughout Nepal.

A short distance below Junbesi, a lady was sipping her tea in the town of Benighat.

The boys of Benighat, cheerful and optimistic.

The photographs with grain are from Kodak Ektar 100 film, shot with a 35mm Yashica Electro 35CC camera. The grain-free photographs are from a Nexus 4 phone.

Learning and Peace, the Himalaya Buddhist Academy of Serlo (Nepal 2017-10)

The Himalaya Buddhist Academy at Serlo, in the southern Solu Khumbu, perches on a sunny hillside at 2870 m elevation above the town of Junbesi. The Tibetian name is Ngagyur Sergon Lungrig Sheddup Zungdel Ling (Higher Buddhist Studies and Research Center). Ven. Khenpo Sangye Tenzin (1924 - 1990), a scholar and teacher who had trained in Tibet, founded the academy in 1959. After the brutal Chinese invasion of Tibet, many monks and scholars fled south to Nepal and set up schools or monasteries to preserve Buddhist teachings and traditions. The traditional Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp trail comes by the front of the monastery, so the monks and students see many tourists in the trekking seasons.

My friends and I hiked up from Junbesi on a cheerful sunny day. The students were glad to see us. They were especially impressed because my friend, Don Messerschmidt, speaks fluent Nepali. We received the royal treatment, including tea and Digestive Biscuits.

Some of the boys were practicing to make torma from barley flour and water. The torma is decorated with butter sculpture, known as chopa. The boys practice making shapes such as disks, dots, lunar crescents, and flower petals.

The more skilled boys make amazingly intricate shapes. In the lower picture, a teacher is grading them on their workmanship.

The students come from Nepal, India, and occasionally from further away. Many Nepali families send their children to be trained at the monastery. At about age 18, they can opt to remain or leave and return to the regular commercial world. They live in dormitories on site.

The monastery is partly self-contained. The monks and students grow vegetables and barley on the hillsides. And they make their clothes on sturdy treadle sewing machines.

Once again, the kitchen was an interesting place, with shiny pots and mugs and very directional light. In this monastery, the cook is a professional contractor, not a monk. They use some gas, which is brought in. A road links the monastery to Junbesi, so trucks can bring in supplies.

The black and white photographs are from Kodak Tmax 400 film taken with my 1949 Leica IIIC rangefinder camera and a 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens.