Muktinath Pilgrimage Tour

Overview

Muktinath sits at 3,710 metres in the Mustang district, in the rain shadow north of Annapurna, at the head of the world's deepest gorge. The name means "place of liberation", and it is one of a small number of sites that Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists hold sacred in the same terms and at the same time.

For Hindus it is one of the eight self-manifested shrines of Vishnu. For Buddhists it is Chumig Gyatsa, one of the twenty-four tantric places. The pagoda temple houses a Vishnu murti and is attended by a Buddhist nun.

What is there

Behind the main temple, 108 bronze spouts shaped as cow heads pour glacial water in a semicircle. Pilgrims pass beneath all of them and then bathe in the two Mukti Kunda pools. At 3,710 metres this is a short and serious business.

Below the temple, Jwala Mai shelters a natural gas flame burning over a spring — fire on water, which is the specific reason for the site's standing.

The riverbed below is the source of shaligram, black ammonite fossils regarded as aniconic forms of Vishnu and found nowhere else.

Getting there

Fly Pokhara to Jomsom — twenty minutes, morning only, and cancelled regularly for wind — then jeep for two hours. Or drive the whole way in two long days via Beni and Tatopani, which is cheaper and much more reliable.

Either way you arrive at 3,710 m the same day you leave Pokhara at 822 m. That is a very fast ascent, and the rest of the afternoon should be spent doing nothing.

Kagbeni

A night in Kagbeni on the way down is worth the detour. It is a walled medieval village of mud-brick alleys at the confluence of two rivers, with a red gompa above it and the Upper Mustang checkpoint at its northern edge — the point beyond which you need a USD 500 permit.

Best season

March to June and September to November. Unusually, the summer months work here too: Mustang sits in the Annapurna rain shadow and stays dry when the rest of Nepal is under monsoon. Winter is cold and the passes above can close.