From August 19th to August 25th 2026 I visited Upper and Lower Mustang with Khenpo Ngawang Tashi.
Altitude
Drove from Pokhara (800m altitude) to Lo Manthang (3800m), that’s an increase of 3000m!
To prevent altitude sickness it’s best to not go beyond 500m after passing 3000m.
Didn’t have altitude sickness symptoms other than peeing a lot and slight preassure in head and eyes.
I woke up so many times the first night, each time clearly remembering the dreams but since I didn’t write anything down I lost them at early morning except for one where I was waiting to receive a Sakya name from Sakya Trizin Rinpoche, which in fact Khenpo Ngawang Tashi is arranging for me in real life. Very auspicious.
Mineral Pigments
Mustang Mineral Pigments
Many monuments, houses, monasteries and other buildings are painted often with four colours.
Those are natural mineral pigments they get from the mountains. It’s easy to see in the landscape mountains naturally shifting their colors:
- Gray
- Orange / Yellow
- Red
- White
In Nyiphug Namdrol Norbuling Monastery I received a book that had an article on that.
Link to original
Genetics
I see many Tibetans have a blue rim around the pupil.
todo Take picture of a Tibetan with such eyes, such as the souvenir shop owner in the Tibetan camp behind Pema Tsal
What also surprised me is finding one Mustangi child monk that had blue eyes:
Temple Rules
No Photos
No photography is allowed in the shrine rooms. So I cannot share what impressed me the most from those places. You’d have to experience yourself!
Nyiphug Namdrol Norbuling Monastery
Nyiphug Namdrol Norbuling Monastery
ཉི་ཕུག་རྣམ་གྲོལ་ནོར་བུ་གླིང་, often translated as “Sun Cave Monastery”.
Lowo Khenchen Sonam Lhundrub (1456–1532), a scholar of the Sakya tradition and a prince of a Mustang kingdom (yes, there were many) found a monastery in ruins. Next to it there were caves and he stayed in meditative retreat. Afterwards we decided to rebuild the monastery.
Now the monastery even has a guesthouse next to it:
Hermitage
Speech to Encourage Speaking Tibetan
Karma, the principal of the monastery invited us to have lunch with the community and asked me if I could run a Motivation Tibetan Speech for the small monks to encourage them to speak more Tibetan among them. He thought if a westerner that’s learning it speaks of how beneficial the language is they might take it more seriously than if the principal recommends them.
Link to original
Jampa Temple
Jampa Temple
It has 3 floors. It’s very impressive because from the lower one you glimpse the massive statue of Maitreya — the Buddha to come in the future.
When entering the gate to the lhakhang (temple room) on each floor there’s an intermediare space, and then you must cross another door to get in. That naturally produces an inner corridor, a perimeter around the temple which we would do kora (circumambulation) before entering.
The kora is very dark, so we used our phone’s torches to check the murals. Some holes resseambling european fortress arrow slits let some beams of light at intervals. It’s damp because the walls are made of mud or clay.From the second floor direct view of Maitreya. Visiting this temple them builds progressively the experience of contemplating the figure.
Third floor holds a Mahakala statue that was originally in the middle floor. But anyway it’s not the original. There’s a local story about it: Mahakala in Ghiling Monastery Originally From Jampa Temple
Link to original