The Road Through Mustang

The road begins where the tarmac ends, just north of Jomsom, and from there the wind decides everything. It comes down the valley at midday with enough force to push a loaded bike sideways, and it stops in the late afternoon as abruptly as a conversation.

Leaving the treeline

For the first two days you climb out of the last of the forest. Juniper gives way to scrub, then to nothing much at all. The villages thin out and the houses change colour — whitewashed walls with black-painted window frames, a tradition borrowed from across the Tibetan border.

Nothing prepares you for how quiet it gets above Kagbeni.

By the fourth day the valley opens and the plateau begins. There is no shade anywhere, and the light at altitude is flat and unforgiving until the last hour before dusk, when the cliffs turn the colour of rust and everything looks briefly painted.

What the wind teaches you

Walk early. Stop by eleven. Find the leeward side of a wall and drink water you did not think you needed. This is the whole discipline of Mustang, and it is not something you can learn from a weather app.

We do not count the days here. We count how many times the wind changes.