Posted Monday, November 15, 2004; 21:00 HKT
Mustang isn't marked on most maps. You'll find it by looking at Nepal and tracking northwest from Everest along the border. That bump in the middle of Nepal's northern flank, protruding into Tibet? That's the semiautonomous principality of Mustang: 8,000 people in three towns, 24 villages and eight monasteries.

Mustang was only opened to outsiders in 1992. It attracts a few hundred visitors each year, but they're not exactly courted and cosseted. In addition to paying $70 a day to the government for the right to be in a place that has no hotels, no restaurants and must be almost entirely traversed on foot, tourists are obliged to travel with a registered trekking agency and an accompanying environment officer. They must even sign an official agreement requiring them to take all their garbage with them. Rule No. 9 reads: "We shall keep the trekking route and environment clean." For emphasis, Rule No. 10 repeats the exact same words.

It's an isolationist approach that has its benefits. The Dalai Lama has declared Mustang the one place on earth where Tibetan culture has a fair chance of survival. And that's a clue as to what to expect there: monks, prayers flags fluttering in the wind, small villages built from mud bricks, intricately carved pillars made of ancient wood, and bright, epic frescoes of Buddha's life. There is some modernization: the closer you get to Tibet, the more Chinese-made knickknacks show up in the markets. But Mustang is mostly a vast, aching plain of emptiness, broken sporadically by the warm campfire welcome of tough people living harsh lives. Falling off the map? That would assume that most people could find Mustang on a map to begin with.

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October 11, 2004	July 26 - August 2, 2004	April 26, 2004