Overview
The Upper Mustang Trek spent centuries closed off from the outside world, and even after Nepal finally opened it to foreign trekkers in 1992, it has stayed intentionally quiet ever since. Sitting behind the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges in a deep rain shadow, the landscape looks more like the Tibetan plateau than anywhere else in Nepal, making this one of the few corners of the Himalayas that still feels genuinely untouched.
Most trips fly from Pokhara to Jomsom to start the trek, then walk up to Kagbeni, where you officially enter the restricted area. The trail keeps climbing through Chele, Geling, and Charang, along dry ridges and through small walled villages, until you finally reach Lo Manthang, the old capital of the Kingdom of Lo.
The city is still surrounded by its stone walls, with centuries-old monasteries, a former royal palace, and narrow lanes that have changed little since the kingdom’s founding. A side trip to Chhosar takes you to the region’s famous sky caves, carved into cliff faces long before anyone recorded who built them.
Permits are arranged through Nepal’s Department of Immigration Trekking Permit system.
For a shorter, more accessible version of this region, see our Jomsom Muktinath Trek and for a similarly remote restricted-area trek, see our Tsum Valley Trek.
Highlights
- Lo Manthang, the ancient walled capital of the former Kingdom of Lo, opened to foreign visitors only in 1992
- Red cliffs and canyons carved by wind, giving Upper Mustang a landscape closer to Tibet than the rest of Nepal
- Ancient caves carved into steep cliffs
- Ghar Gompa, one of the oldest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Nepal
- A high desert landscape where rain rarely falls, even during the months when the rest of Nepal is in monsoon
- A region that still feels genuinely untouched, where tourism has been kept intentionally small since the trail first opened
