Source: Time magazine
MUNTANG
Nepal
Best place to fall off the map
Best place to fall off the map
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 semi-autonomous principality of Mustang: 8000 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 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.1o 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, prayer's 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.
By Alex perry
Parahawking
Pokhara, Nepal
Best Tonic for A Tired Brain
if a headlong run down a Himalayan mountainside doesn't snap your brain out of its work numbed funk, then being lifted skyward by a para glider will certainly do the trick. and when your whoop of exhilaration is answered by the shriek of an eagle or a falcon just ahead of you, well, all your cares melt away and the world is reduced to a cool rush of air, a dazzling view of glaciated peaks, and the sheer joy of being able to soar with birds of prey.
Over millenniums, eagles, hawks and other birds have perfected their ability to sense thermals -pockets of warm air eddying up from the earth's surface that allow them to coast with very little effort. Para gliders can catch rides on these same currents, hopping from thermal to thermal and covering hundreds of kilometers in a single day. but without a raptors sharply honed sense for the gravity-defying updrafts, humans are beholden to chance. until now. in a marvelous example of humankind working with nature, Scott mason, of the Himalayan Hawk Conservancy in Pokhara, Nepal, has taught his birds to hunt the elusive thermals and lead him to them. the result is an experience like no other.
'' Flying with the birds is the closest you could ever come to feeling like you are one of them, '' mason observe' ''it takes you to another level of understanding. the rest of the world simply disappears.'' if its doesn't clear out your mental cobwebs, nothing will.
By Aryn Baker
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