(The long forbidden region of upper Mustang and the walled city of Lo Manthang and are now open a limited number of foreign trekkers, just 300 tourists in a year)

Mustang is one of the few places in the world that is still untrammeled by tourists, it is most important that the region be preserved its natural state. In common usage, the name Mustang refers to the arid Tibet like region at the North end of the Kali Gandaki, which is known to its inhabitants as Lo. Mustang is probably a Nepalese mispronunciation of the name of the capital of Lo, the city of Manthang. The name is pronounced “Moo- stang” and has nothing to do with either the automobile or horse with a similar name. Officially, Mustang designates the district along the Kali Gandaki from the Tibetan border. The capital of the Mustang district is Jomsom; the region of Tibetan influence north of Kagibeni is generally referred to as “upper Mustang”.

Upper Mustang consists of two distinct regions, five southern villages of people related to the Manangis and the ancient kingdom of Lo where the language, culture and traditions are almost purely Tibetan. The capital of Lo is named Manthang, which translate from the Tibetan as “plain of aspiration”. Many texts refer to the capital as Lo Manthang, but this is not strictly correct.

The trek to Mustang (Lo Manthang) is through an almost treeless barren landscape. Strong winds usually in the afternoon, generally subsiding at night. Being in the rain shadow of the Himalaya, Lo has much less rain than the rest of Nepal, through the skies is cloudy and there is same rain during the monsoon. In the winter there is usually snow, sometime as much as 30-40 centimeters on the ground. In the Lo itself the countryside is similar to the Tibetan plateau with its endless expenses of yellow and gray rolling hills eroded by wind. There is more rain in the lower part of upper Mustang and the hills tend to be great red fluted cliffs of tiny round stones cemented together by mud. Villages are several hours apart and appear in the distance almost as mirages; during the summer season, after the crops are planted, they are green oases in the desert- like landscape.
House and temple construction throughout the region uses some stone but mostly unbaked bricks of mud. Astonishing edifices, such as the city wall and the 4-story palace in Lo Manthang, are built in this manner. It is said that were once large forests in Lo, but now wood for construction is hauled all the way from Jomsom or pruned from poplar trees that are carefully planted in every village.
The people of upper Mustang call themselves Lobas. To be strictly correct, this word would be spelled “Lopa “, meaning “Lo people”, in the same way as Sherpa, which means “East people”, or Khampa, which means “Kham people”, The people of Lo, probably because regional dialect, pronounce the world with a definite “B” sound instead of the “P” sound that the Sherpas and Khampas use. At the Lo tradition and spell the word as it is pronounced: “Loba.”

Mustang (from Tibetan Mun Tan (Wylie smon-thang) which means fertile plain) is the former Kingdom of Lo and now part of Nepal, in the north-central part of that country, bordering the People's Republic of China on the Tibetan plateau between the Nepalese provinces of Dolpo and Manang. The Kingdom of Lo, the traditional Mustang region, and "Upper Mustang" are one and the same, comprising the northern two-thirds of the present-day Nepalese Mustang District, and are well marked by official "Mustang" border signs just north of Kagbeni where a police post checks permits for non-Nepalese seeking to enter the region, and at Gyu La (pass) east of Kagbeni.

Life in Mustang revolves around tourism, animal husbandry and trade. Except for a nine km portion from Chhusang to Syangboche (just south of Ghiling (Geling)) as of August 2010, it is bisected by a new road linking it to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to the north and to the rest of Nepal to the south. Plans call for the final nine km portion to be completed in just a few years' time, which will provide, with a high point of 4660 m at Kora La on the Mustang-TAR border, the lowest drivable corridor through the Himalayas linking the Tibetan Plateau via Nepal to the tropical Indian plains. (The easiest and only widely used road corridor, from Kathmandu to Lhasa via the Arniko Rajmarg (or Arniko Highway), traverses a 5125 m pass.)