The Old Kingdom of Mustang, now a part of Nepal, sits at the crossroads leading from Tibet to India, and was a central trading route for many centuries. Here a branch of Tibetan Buddhism flourished.
But with new routes and the closure of the Tibetan border the kingdom went into deline, and is now a province of Nepal. Also the Buddhist religion, central to its culture, went into decline as well.
When Luigi Fieni, an Italian Art Conserator first visited at the end of the 90s, this was the state of the place: monasteries virtually empty, all in a state of disrepair. He raised some money to do restoration work at the main temple in the capital Lo Manthang.
This film follows him on some of his later trips to Mustang, and sees the vast improvements that have been made in the past couple of decades, with temples now full of monks again, locally trained conservators, and a reviving culture.
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to see an album of screenshots click here