Upper Mustang Photography Tour by Jeep

You land at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu (1,400 m), where our representative meets you outside the arrivals hall with a name board and drives you to your hotel in Thamel.

Your guide meets you at the hotel in the early evening to go through the route, check your equipment and collect your passport details for the restricted-area permit, which is applied for in the morning.

If you arrive with daylight to spare, the lanes of Thamel and the market at Ason are ten minutes away on foot and make an easy first hour with a camera. Overnight in Kathmandu.

While our office takes your passport to the immigration department for the Upper Mustang permit, the day is yours to photograph. It starts before sunrise at Boudhanath, where the dawn kora circles the stupa under butter-lamp light, and where the Tibetan Buddhist culture you will meet again in Mustang has its centre in Kathmandu.

After breakfast on a rooftop above the square and a rest through the flat midday light, the afternoon is free for the lanes of Thamel and Ason.

Sunset is at Swayambhunath, the hilltop stupa west of the city, with prayer flags, monkeys and the whole valley below in haze. Your guide returns the passports and the permit in the evening. Overnight in Kathmandu.

A morning flight of twenty-five minutes takes you to Pokhara (822 m). Sit on the right-hand side for the mountains: Ganesh Himal, Manaslu and the Annapurnas pass the window in turn.

The afternoon is a gentle one beside Phewa Lake — the last warm, low-altitude day before the road north — and a chance to buy anything forgotten, from lens cloths to a down jacket, in the lakeside shops.

Late in the day you cross the lake and climb to the World Peace Pagoda for sunset on the Annapurna range above the water. You meet the jeep driver this evening and load the vehicle for an early start. Overnight in Pokhara.

A long and remarkable day, eight to nine hours with stops. The jeep runs west to Beni and turns north up the Kali Gandaki, which cuts between Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) and Annapurna I to form one of the deepest gorges on earth. The road passes the hot springs at Tatopani and the Rupse waterfall as the forest changes from subtropical to pine.

Above Ghasa the valley opens and dries out. You stop in Marpha, a whitewashed Thakali village of flat roofs stacked with firewood, known for its apple orchards, and pass through Jomsom under the north face of Nilgiri.

Kagbeni (2,810 m) arrives in the late afternoon: a fortified village of mud-brick alleys and a red monastery at the meeting of two rivers, looking north into Upper Mustang. Overnight at a lodge in Kagbeni.

An hour in the lanes of Kagbeni at first light, then the permits are stamped at the police post and the jeep enters the restricted area. The track follows the wide gravel bed of the Kali Gandaki before climbing past Chele and Samar onto the plateau.

The landscape is the subject all day: fluted cliffs in grey, ochre and red, cave mouths high in the rock, and a string of passes including the Nyi La (4,010 m), the highest point of the tour. At Ghami the road passes the longest mani wall in Mustang, built of carved prayer stones and painted in stripes.

Charang (3,560 m) is reached in the afternoon, six to seven hours after setting out. A white five-storey palace, now in ruins, and a red monastery stand on a spur above the gorge, and both take the evening light. Overnight at a lodge in Charang.

Sunrise on the palace and the monastery of Charang, and time in the village as the animals are driven out to graze. The interior of the monastery, with its old murals and library, is visited with the camera put away.

The drive to Lo Manthang is short, about an hour and a half. From the Lo La (3,950 m) the walled city appears below for the first time, a compact block of white and red on a brown plain with the Tibetan border ridges behind — the picture most people come for, and the jeep waits as long as you need.

Lo Manthang (3,840 m) fills the afternoon. Inside the wall are about a hundred and fifty houses, the royal palace and three monasteries, linked by alleys just wide enough for a horse. Sunset is from the roof of the lodge or from the low hill to the north. Overnight at a lodge in Lo Manthang.

Before breakfast you climb the hill above the city for sunrise on the walls and the snow peaks to the south. The jeep then drives an hour north toward the Tibetan border to Chhoser, where the Jhong cave, a five-storey dwelling of more than forty rooms, is cut into a vertical cliff and climbed by wooden ladders.

The nearby cliff monastery of Nyphu, the villages of the upper valley and the horsemen on the track back all give pictures, and the return to Lo Manthang is in time for lunch.

The afternoon is inside the wall with your guide: Thubchen and Jampa monasteries, whose fifteenth-century murals are seen but not photographed, the palace square, and the lanes where people sit spinning wool in the sun. The evening light on the city wall is the last session. Overnight in Lo Manthang.

A last sunrise over the city from the Lo La, then the long drive south, seven to eight hours with stops. The light falls differently on the same country in this direction, and the cliffs you passed in afternoon shade are now lit from the front.

From Ghami a short detour leads to Dhakmar, a village beneath a wall of deep red cliffs riddled with caves — in legend, stained by the blood of a demon killed by Guru Rinpoche, and one of the most striking sights in Mustang.

The track recrosses the passes and drops to the Kali Gandaki, leaving the restricted area at the Kagbeni checkpoint. You reach Jomsom (2,720 m) in the early evening, with Nilgiri above the town. Overnight at a lodge in Jomsom.

Morning in Jomsom is the calm part of the day, before the valley wind starts, and the first light on Nilgiri and Dhaulagiri from the edge of town is worth getting up for.

The drive back down the Kali Gandaki takes seven to eight hours, descending from desert through pine forest to rice terraces and banana trees in a single day. There is time for a stop at the hot springs of Tatopani or for anything missed on the way up. Travellers who have chosen the flight add-on are in Pokhara by mid-morning instead.

You reach Pokhara (822 m) in the late afternoon, with a hot shower, a lakeside dinner and thick air to enjoy. Overnight in Pokhara.

If the morning is still, the shore of Phewa Lake before sunrise gives Machhapuchhre and the Annapurnas reflected in the water — a soft, green contrast to the week behind you.

After breakfast you fly back to Kathmandu (1,400 m), with the mountains on the left-hand side, and check in to your hotel. This day also serves as the reserve should a landslide or bad weather have delayed the journey out of Mustang.

The afternoon is free. Patan Durbar Square is twenty minutes away and at its best in the last two hours of light, and the vehicle is available if you would like to go. Overnight in Kathmandu.

The morning is free for a last walk in Thamel or simply for cleaning the Mustang dust out of your equipment before it is packed.

We collect you from your hotel three hours before your flight and drive you to Tribhuvan International Airport, where our representative sees you through to the check-in counters.

Carry cameras, lenses, cards and drives in your hand luggage rather than the hold, and keep lithium batteries with you — the airlines require it and it is the only sensible way to travel with a trip's worth of pictures.