Huffing my way up a yak trail through a sparse forest of juniper and pine, I hear the throbbing tum-tum-tum of a drum. Or so I think. Stopping to catch my breath, it dawns on me that the sound is coming from inside my head: the reverberating beat of my heart working overtime in the thin Himalayan air. “Sorry Sangrit,” I say to my wispily goateed Nepalese guide, who’s barely broken a sweat. “It’s been a while since I hiked up a mountain.”
Sangrit gives me a look. “This is not a mountain, Ong Chris. It is a hill.” Gesturing behind us to the distant cloud-scarfed snowcap of Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh-highest peak, he adds with winking solemnity, “That is a mountain.”
Point taken. An hour later, we finally arrive at a small jadegreen lake just below the tree line, where a picnic lunch has been arranged for me. The elevation is 3,800 meters and the vista is epic. Beyond a swath of alpine pastureland, the flanks of the Nilgiri Himal rise up and up to the range’s triple summits, their frosted white peaks glistening in the bright October sun. I’m almost too distracted to notice the bottle of rosé and spread of curried vegetables and local cheeses that awaits me. Then, over the trill of crickets and the sound of prayer flags fluttering in the breeze, I hear the rumble of thunder. Or so I think. Squinting in the direction of Nilgiri’s central peak, I see a rush of snow billowing down its face.
“Avalanche,” Sangrit says nonchalantly. “Just the mountains saying hello.”
THE DHAULAGIRI AND Annapurna massifs that gird Mustang once made this remote corner of north-central Nepal all but impenetrable to outsiders. The only way in
