below Women restore the
Tupchen Gonpa monastery’s
walls. They are supervised by
experts from the American
Himalayan Foundationbottom Armour and masks
displayed in Tsarang Palace.
They are traditionally used
during ceremonies and
festivals to ward off demonsThe homes located on the lower levels also have
small barns and stables. Firewood is scarce in this
arid land, and so the Loba burn dried yak and goat
dung for fuel and warmth.
Mustang is scattered with crumbling buildings
nestled between promontories: defence forts, chortens
(stupas) and funerary monuments decorated with
iconographic paintings and mandalas. One of the most
important Loba legends recalls an invasion of demons
who intimidated the kingdom’s people until the eighth
century, when Guru Padmasambhava Rinpoche,
founder of the Tibetan Nyingma school of Buddhism,
overthrew the demons. The myth has it that the blood
from the battle dyed the cliffs of Drakmar red, and
that the heart of the devil was locked away under
the foundations of the Lo Gekar Monastery.
A rch a eologica l Explor ation
One of the great secrets of Mustang is the numerous
caves carved out by people in the mountains. Some
of these caves are isolated, whereas others appear in
groups, sometimes forming eight or nine tiers. These
caves are thought to be at least 2,000 years old.
The total number of caves in Mustang is around
10,000. Remarkably, there are still Loba families living
in some of them today. Excavations in these caves have
yielded several important findings. In one expedition
to Alto Mustang in Samdzong village in 2009,
archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer discovered materials
in a tomb that suggested changes to the geographic
reach of the Silk Road. According to Margarita Gleba
from the McDonald Institute of Archaeological
Research at the University of Cambridge, they found
evidence of silk fibres and Indian dyes in the caves.
As these materials were not produced in the Mustang
area, they had to be imported from China and India.
A year later, a team of archaeologists found 27
human remains with cut marks into the bones in
Samdzong’s two biggest caves; the skeletons date
back to between the third and the eighth centuries.
Scientists concluded that the cuts into the bones relate
to the Buddhist sky burial. Even today, when a member
of the Loba tribe dies in Mustang, the body is cut up so
that the remains can be taken away by vultures.The Origins of Mustang
Legend has it that a fierce soldier named Ame Pal
founded the Kingdom of Lo in 1380, and built Lo
Manthang on “the plain of prayers”. He was on a
pilgrimage from Tibet to India when an old man
in the area had a prophetic dream that a man from the
north would become the ruler of the Mustang territory.
Ame Pal chose to fulfil this prophecy, and stayed to
build the Ketcher Dzong fortress, from which he
launched numerous attacks to unify the various tribes
within the Mustang region.Archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer
discovered materials in a tomb
that suggested changes to the
geographic reach of the Silk Road