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Managing cultural resourcesin the Himalayan Kingdomof upper Mustang (LO)Myra Shackley aa Culture Resource Management atNottingham Trent UniversityVersion of record first published: 18 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Myra Shackley (1995): Managing cultural resources in theHimalayan Kingdom of upper Mustang (LO), Asian Affairs, 26:2, 172-182

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MANAGING CULTURAL RESOURCES INTHE HIMALAYAN KINGDOM OF UPPER

MUSTANG (LO)MYRA SHACKLEY

Myra Shackley is Professor of Culture Resource Management at Nottingh-am Trent University. She specialises in studying the management andimpact of visitors on the peoples, sites and monuments of the DevelopingWorld and has led two recent expeditions to the Himalayan Kingdom ofMustang (L6), a Tibetan-speaking region of northwest Nepal. She gave thistalk to members on 7 December, 1994.

THE TERM " culture resource management ", culled from the social sciences,encompasses the management of historic sites and processes of change inmaterial and non-material culture as well as anthropological studies ofdynamic social structures. In the Himalayas, as in most other areas of theDeveloping World, the management of culture resources is inextricablyconnected with conservation and development policies and, above all,with the management and impact of increasing numbers of visitors. Suchvisitor impacts may be positive, in the sense that they contribute revenuefor conservation (Tabata 1989), or negative, thereby creating unacceptablechanges in local societies or management problems at historic sites (Halland Weiler 1992). These issues are felt especially acutely in areas which aresuddenly opened up to western influence after cultural isolation, as hap-pened in Mustang which is a semi-autonomous province of Nepal whosepeople (Lo Ba) are Tibetan-speaking Sakhapa-sect Buddhists. Mustang isa desert kingdom, geographically part of the Tibetan plateau, with walledtowns and villages focused around the Kali Gandaki river which drainssouthwards through the Annapurna range (see Map). The ancientKingdom of Mustang, founded in A.D. 1380, has remained virtuallyunvisited by western scholars and was formally sealed by the Nepalesegovernment for thirty years before being unexpectedly opened to visitorsin March 1992, initiating considerable environmental and socioculturalchanges. Since December 1992 the management of development has comeunder the control of ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project)working in conjunction with the King (Lo-Gyalpo) of Mustang andvarious Nepalese government departments. This paper assesses the impactof visitors on the culture resources of Mustang and the success of currentmanagement policies.

Tourism in Nepal

Tourism in the Himalayas developed initially from trading and pil-grimage, entering a second phase during the 19th century when the British

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Settlementlocation and

trekking route

MUSTANGNepal

PAKISTAN i

CHINA .

,,~'~L TIBETEPAL mustang

INDIA

Y' ANGLADESH

,! AS

established summer resorts away from the heat of the Indian plains.However, these activities involved relatively small volumes of visitors andthe Himalayan region was not subject to large scale visitation until afterIndian independence (Smith and Jenner 1992). The tremendous growth inmountaineering (and subsequently trekking) tourism dates from the

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1950s, stimulated by the conquest of Everest by Sir Edmund Hilary andSherpa Tenzing in 1953. The long-established tourism industry of Nepalattracts a relatively small number of visitors, currently 320,000 per year(KTMC 1992), but they cause disproportionate environmental damage.Impacts are most severe on the popular trekking routes around Anna-purna and Everest Base Camp where haphazard collections of teashopsand inns have developed.

The influence of tourism on the cultural heritage of Nepal takes severalforms. Firstly, it is manifest in alterations to vernacular building styles,construction techniques or raw materials resulting from changes in tasteand a move towards western rather than traditional styles. Increaseddemand for accommodation and catering services frequently creates adhoc developments of new buildings, with concomitant hygiene and waste-disposal problems. A second category of impact comes from tourist pres-sure and urban pollution at historic sites. The increase of tourism to bothLadakh and Nepal has placed considerable pressure on fragile historicmonuments. Failure to control such pollution and to divert some of therevenue from tourism for conservation purposes almost resulted in Nepallosing World Heritage designation for some of its Kathmandu valley sitesduring 1994. Some impacts may be beneficial, as where tourism revenuesare used, generally at a local level, for the conservation of built heritage orcommunity development projects. This may be for major rebuilding (as inthe case of Thangboche monastery, Nepal) or minor restoration (toTsarang gompa wall, Mustang). From the anthropological viewpoint thisinflux of visitors has acted as a catalyst for speeding up inexorable west-ernization with concomitant changes in dress, food, family structure, lan-guage, community values and patterns of daily life.

Within Nepal the pattern of tourism development has been varied,although certain problems are common to almost all destinations. Theseinclude environmental pressures, often related to deforestation and over-grazing, rapid population growth and in-migration to urban centres. Thishas not been helped by lack of government control over the tourismindustry which has encouraged the proliferation of small unregulatedtourism businesses, particularly in the accommodation and cateringsectors. Culture resource management issues are more acute in Nepalthan, for example, in Bhutan where impacts have been minimised by directgovernment control of tourism with minimum private sector involvementin accommodation and support services until the mid-1980s. It has beenargued that this and associated Bhutanese policies have caused culturalfossilisation but it has certainly had a beneficial effect on cultural heritage.The impact of tourism on the cultural resources of the Tibetan heritage ofLadakh, open to visitors since the 1970s, has been the subject of a greatdeal of research (Norberg-Hodge 1991). Goering (1990) noted that thebuilding boom induced by tourism and increased westernisation hasresulted in architectural changes which have phased out traditional mud-brick buildings in favour of concrete. Progressive Ladhakis equate tradi-tional with unfashionable and thus replace a mud house (which has a poor

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image) with a concrete replica giving the correct impression of modernitywith diminished energy effectiveness. There are many parallels betweenthe architecture of Mustang and that of Ladakh, with the former havingremained essentially unchanged since the 14th century. Since much of thebuilt heritage of Tibet has been modified or destroyed over the last thirtyyears the untouched Tibetan culture and architecture of Mustang are ofspecial interest to scholar and tourist alike.

Despite the fact that overall tourist arrivals to Nepal declined by 30per cent in 1993 (Shackley 1993) this is likely to be a minor interruption ina rising trend which has seen the number of visitors increase from 6,179 in1962 to 320,000 in 1993 (Economist Intelligence Unit 1991). Some of thesevisitors are travelling on very small budgets and either camping or makinguse of cheap accommodation. Their positive economic impact is minimaland potential environmental impact very great, but the Nepalese govern-ment has traditionally encouraged such tourists. However, over the lastdecade a new category of visitor has appeared, often motivated by aninterest in local culture or history and prepared to pay high permit feesand undergo difficult journeys to remote areas (Hall and Weiler 1992). Thetravel industry has a constant need to find new regions and new tourismsites to satisfy the demands of these increasingly sophisticated and experi-enced visitors who may be few in number but generate substantialrevenue. Without exception all Himalayan governments are continuing toopen new areas to tourism each year, generally without properly-developed management plans or any idea of visitor carrying-capacity.During 1994, for example, India opened Arunachal Pradesh and newareas of Himachal Pradesh. Nepal permitted cross-border trekking toTibet on its northwest frontier and allowed freer access to peripheralBuddhist kingdoms. Bhutan increased private-sector participation andopened new routes. By contrast Kashmir and Ladakh experienceddecreased numbers of visitors because of political instability. Overalltourism to Himalayan regions is increasing by at least 10 per cent a year,and in a newly-opened region often by considerably more. The adverseimpacts of this growth have been observed for the last twenty-five yearsbut very few effective management strategies have been implemented.

The Annapurna area of Nepal, directly to the south of the culturallyTibetan provinces of Mustang, Dolpo and Manang (see map) has experi-enced particularly rapid growth in tourism. The Annapurna ConservationArea sees 44,000 trekkers each year whose impacts (taken in conjunctionwith those of rapid population growth) include deforestation, poachingand pollution. This resulted in the formation of the Annapurna Conserva-tion Area Project (ACAP) in 1986 by the King Mahendra Trust forNature Conservation (KMTNC), which was the first Himalayan attemptto develop a central management plan to strike a balance between theneeds of the local inhabitants, tourism development and nature conserva-tion. ACAP concentrated on the Ghandruk area and Annapurna Sanc-tuary and now manages an area of 2,700 sq. kms, generating US$250,000per year in trekker user fees. As a successful NGO it is significant for

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originality of approach encouraging community participation. However,in 1994 internal political problems caused some concern for its future andthe extension of its activities into Tibertan-speaking Upper Mustang (Lo)from early 1993 proved to be less successful.

Tourism in upper Mustang

Mustang is a bleak, desert region on the northern side of the Hima-layas which is geographically and culturally part of Tibet. The Lo-Bapeople of Mustang are Tibetan-speaking and the province has alwaysshared the architectural and cultural legacy of the Buddhist kingdoms ofthe Himalayas, from Ladakh to Bhutan. Mustang is ruled by a king/rajahcalled the Lo Gyalpo who controls a population of around 3,000 peopleisolated by distance, and more recently by the sealing of their northernfrontier as a result of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. TheNepalese government sealed the southern frontier to westerners shortlyafterwards since the province had become a base for Khampa guerillafighters. These borders were opened quite suddenly in March 1992, osten-sibly to provide new trekking opportunities and take pressure off the maintrekking routes through Annapurna and Everest (Jeffries 1982). In prac-tice the hidden agenda was to generate substantial revenues for the Nepal-ese government via a permit fee which currently stands at minimumUS$700 per visit (Shackley 1995). Access was limited to 200 people duringthe first year (a quota rapidly raised to 1,000 as it was seen that there wasgreat demand). Visitors were compelled to ignore local accommodation infavour of fully supported tent trekking groups accompanied by a nonLo-Ba staff of Sherpa, porters, pack ponies and police EnvironmentalLiaison Officer (Shackley 1994). The visitor was guaranteed an expensivebut "authentic" Tibetan experience and the chance to visit a previouslyunknown area for the first time.

The writer first visited Upper Mustang in October 1992, six monthsafter the kingdom was first opened to visitors, to examine the existingimpact of tourism and recommend potential management structures(Shackley 1992, 1993). At that time tourism had generated substantialrevenues for the Nepalese government but none for the people of L6, thepoorest in Nepal. As a result of strong local feeling and external pressurethe government turned the management of Mustang over to ACAP inearly 1993. However, ACAP has been unable to fulfil its initial promise(KMTNC/ACAP 1994) to return 60 per cent of tourism revenues fromMustang to development projects. Less than 27 per cent of the revenueshave actually been returned, development projects are patchy, minimalinvestment has been made in tourist facilities with the exception of trailsignposting, the provision of information leaflets and enforcement of theexisting regulations.

Culture resource management in Mustang

Visitors to Mustang are motivated by an interest in culture, rather

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than in trekking or climbing, with the result that the conservation of thecultural heritage of Mustang has a vital and reciprocal role in tourismdevelopment. As a consequence of the atrophy of the salt caravan routesbetween India and Tibet and the extreme poverty of the Lo Ba people,Mustang has very restricted economic opportunities. Low volumes ofcultural tourism, carefully managed, could provide an opportunity togenerate development funds, some of which may be used to conserveMustang's thirty-seven major gompas and other significant historical sites.These buildings and the art treasures they contain are gradually fallinginto decay as the local communities have no funds to maintain them.Visitors come to Mustang to experience Tibetan culture. Tourism, there-fore, must be strictly regulated to eliminate the possibility of acceleratingcultural change, while yet permitting the Lo Ba to earn legitimate incomeand develop their province as they wish. Such a paradox requires thedevelopment and implementation of a careful management plan.

The vernacular architecture of Mustang is quite different from the restof Nepal, characterised by boxlike walled towns and villages made fromplaster-coated stone and chan (Tibetan moulded clay cement) often exter-nally striped with the ochre and grey colours of Sakyapa-sect MahayanaBuddhism. Settlements are walled complexes of narrow dark passage-ways, small interior courtyards, streets and tunnels. Outside, the desertlandscape is dominated by isolated fortresses, hilltop villages andrundown gompas, relics of L6's former medieval splendour. A Lo-Bahouse is built around a central courtyard whose ground is surrounded bystables and storage space. Family rooms are located on the galleried firstfloor with much use being made of the brushwood-edged flat roof. Eachvillage has at least one extra-large house belonging to the dominantfamily, which may be three storeys high and contain a private chapel ofsome splendour. These houses, beautifully decorated with elaborately-carved and painted windows and beams, included guest accommodationand functioned as a network of inns. Rooms have beaten earth floors andlong rug-covered benches around the walls. Some buildings are even moresplendid. At Tsarang, for example, an extensive five-storied castle whichwas once the King's summer palace is in an advanced state of disrepair.Significant buildings in the capital, Lo Manthang, include the King'spalace and three major gompas. Many of these buildings incorporatestructures dating from the foundation of the kingdom of L6 in 1380,although main monastic buildings tend to be of mainly 15th and 16thcentury origin. Part of the task of the 1994 expedition was to take samplesfor radiocarbon dating, which will establish a sequence for the built heri-tage of Mustang. Such architectural splendours need surprise nobodyfamiliar with the built heritage of Tibet where the Potala palace in Lhasa,contemporary with many Mustang buildings, is nineteen stories high.

Building interiors are significant and elaborately decorated. Manygompas contain an as yet uncatalogued collection of artwork includingstatues, thankas (ritual paintings on silk) and wall paintings. Some of thelatter are in very poor repair and one unfortunate by-product of tourism

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in Mustang has been a spate of serious art thefts (Shackley 1994). Withinsix months of opening monastic authorities were already expressing con-cerns about security and it is interesting to note that some of the firstACAP-funded projects involved installation of security screening for port-able artwork. Three black thankas were stolen during 1993 from theremote Lori gompa. Local complicity is indicated and it is thought that theobjects will long since have disappeared into the international art market.A valuable religious statue covered in gold paint was stolen from thenunnery at Gilling (see map) which has resulted in the site being per-manently closed to visitors. It is likely that many minor thefts and illegaltransactions take place between local people and visitors with some evi-dence of religious objects being sold. Despite this the writer was able toinspect the important treasury in the Defenders Room at Tsarang fort atintervals of eighteen months and found that no objects had disappearedbetween her two inventories. However, this may not be the case for outly-ing and remote gompas. ACAP have instituted a standard visitor fee forgompas (R100) which is paid directly to monastic authorities and goestowards the monastery school and restoration projects. The visitorreceives a ticket with a brief history of the building and ACAP thus have ameans of counting visitors. Most Lo Ba are very devout and there isstrong community feeling that gompa restoration projects should takefunding priority over almost all other development. ACAP, on the otherhand, favour a mixture of projects with particular emphasis on irrigationand forestry.

Because Mustang has been opened to visitors so recently very little ofits built heritage has been systematically recorded, with the exception ofthe observations of western scholars such as Peissel (1967), Snellgrove(1961) and Tucci (1952). No central register of buildings, even majormonastic centres, has been kept and there is, as yet, not even an archivelisting buildings which have been photographed or surveyed for resto-ration work. Since it seemed possible that the built heritage of Mustangmay shortly be substantially modified for tourism purposes, part of thefunction of the 1994 expedition was to design a system which might solvethis problem. The team included photographers, an architect, informationtechnologist, anthropologist and local interpreter with the objective ofpioneering a new multimedia culture resource database for Lo whichwould record not only material culture, architecture and spatial data suchas town plans but could also be used for ecological and anthropologicalmaterial. The database will serve as an easily updated archive as well as atool to assist in the management of development and culture resourceplanning. Map-based Geographical Information System (GIS) softwarewas utilised with data entered in the field on a solar-powered laptopcomputer, precise locations being established using a Global PositioningSystem which uses satellite fixes. This hi-tech approach was necessary asthe cartographic base in Mustang is so poor - even the best maps haveerrors of up to 5 kms in settlement location. No aeronautical navigationcharts or large scale air photographs are available. The new system will

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enable detailed computer-generated maps of Mustang to be constructedto which information can be added as required. Thus in the future thedatabase will permit an enquirer to obtain the distribution of major settle-ments or gompas, village plans showing the location of individual houses,a plan and elevation drawing of significant buildings, photographs ofarchitectural features or wall paintings and even a recorded interview withthe house's inhabitants. The 1994 expedition established a successful pilotscheme which is currently being refined, together with a series of specialistreports on subjects ranging from Mustang's medieval fortress architectureto its early prehistoric stone tools. It is planned that the completed data-base will be made available to ACAP (or whoever is then responsible forculture resource management) together with appropriate training, so thatit can be continually updated with new information.

Culture resource management in the future

It is inevitable that the relatively sudden exposure to western cultureresulting from the opening of Mustang's borders in 1992 will result incultural change. The acquisition of wealth by certain families who canthus afford to send their children to Kathmandu for schooling, increasedbusiness opportunities arising from the development of tourism, andforeign aid from charities such as CARE Nepal, have all modified socialand economic structures. Mustang's high infant mortality, poor healthcare and minimal educational system have, as yet, remained largelyunchanged. With the exception of men who operated caravans or wentsouth in the winter to trade in India many Lo Ba people had never seenwesterners when the first tourists arrived. Classic sociocultural changesobservable within a matter of a few months included the initiation of abegging cycle, especially among children. Language changes (particularlythe acquisition of western swear-words) and changes in costume were alsoevident (Shackley 1993). It is difficult to determine whether such changeswere attributable to tourism, western influences observed by Lo Ba trav-ellers, or images seen on elderly videos in one of the two " cinemas " whichhave appeared in converted stables in Lo Manthang, utilising generatorsleft behind by film companies. In October 1992 the writer (Shackley 1993)observed significant changes in attitudes between Lo Ba villagers living onthe main tourist trail and those living in locations such as Dhi (see map)which are difficult and dangerous to reach, and whose people see only 10per cent of the visitors going to the main towns. In such areas westerninfluence is still minimal. Sociological changes noted between 1992 and1994 included adolescent girls begging for face creams and lipsalve andmany new non Lo-Ba immigrant street traders, especially from Tibet. InLo Manthang great resentment towards visitors was evident on the partof the local population. This was mainly due to the drought which haslasted since the borders were opened, and is attributed by some to the evilinfluence of tourists. More positive cultural changes included regulardance performances at major villages for the entertainment of visitors,

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which not only keeps traditional dances alive but also contributes financesto local communities from a standard charge of R100 per head, institutedby ACAP. Removal of the trading ban (Shackley 1992, 1993) now allowsvisitors to purchase local handicrafts, particularly textiles, and it is to behoped that ACAP's plans for a handicrafts cooperative in Lo Manthangare realised in the future. A further optimistic development is the firststage of establishing a school in Lo Manthang where children can betaught in Tibetan, since at present all instruction in Mustang is in Nepal-ese.

The annual Tenchi festival, held in Lo Manthang, is likely to becomevery popular with visitors and is attended by virtually the whole populaceof Mustang, dressed in ceremonial finery. It consists of dances and cere-monies performed by monks in the presence of the king, celebrating theslaying by a great Buddhist lama of a demon who was thought to havecaused terrible epidemics. Similar festivals elsewhere in Nepal, particularlythe Mani Rimdu festivals of the Everest area, have become so popularwith visitors that local people are excluded and the character of the fes-tival has begun to change. The High Lama of Mustang, Tesbi TenzinLama, hopes to encourage visitors to make donations to the running costsof the festival by providing extra facilities such as an explanatory booklet.The writer and Elaine Brook working with Teshe Tanzin Lama have nowcompleted a booklet, printed in English, whose production is sponsoredby Himalayan Travel Ltd who will donate the copies to the monastery sothat they can be sold to westerners at future festivals providing informa-tion enabling them to obtain both greater insights into the festival's religi-ous significance and guidelines about what is happening and how tobehave.

The best way to preserve the cultural heritage of Mustang is by ensur-ing that its tourism management is closely integrated with the recordingand preservation of traditional culture. One way of doing this is to replacethe environmentally destructive backpacking and teashop trekking of therest of Nepal with cultural tourism utilising Mustang's inns. The KaliGandaki valley of L (see map) has always been significant as a majornorth-south trade route joining the southern branch of the Silk Roadalong the Brahmaputra valley with the Terai of Nepal and thence to theGanges basin. Caravans had been utilising this route since the MiddleAges trading ponies, wool, salt and textiles with Tibet. Utilising the innnetwork, based around at least one substantial private house in eachvillage along the route, would present an opportunity for the modernvisitor to experience something of the atmosphere of this ancient route. Assoon as Mustang was opened local people joined together to form aTourism Development Co-Operative, largely instigated by a relative ofthe King, with the object of recycling part of government tourism revenuesinto upgrading local inns to remain under community control. SinceLo-Ba people have neither caste, language nor religion in common withThakali Hindu people of the Annapurna area they are prepared to resistin-migration of potential developers in favour of developing their own

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tourism industry. In order for this project to be successful the co-operation of ACAP was essential, and has not been obtained. It was alsonecessary to persuade the government to ban tent-based tourism (equallyunsuccessful) and to divert a small amount of tourism revenues towardsupgrading the inns. The Co-operative project lacked political influenceand only got itself registered as an NGO in 1994. Their idea was toorganise a chain of inns which could be pre-booked (via a Lo-Ba ownedoffice in Kathmandu) to provide simple traditional accommodation.Guests would take a sleeping bag and sleep, in local fashion, in multiple-occupancy guestrooms. They would eat in the traditional way from lowchogtse tables, but bring their own cooks and supplies. Modernisationwould be restricted to improving room and kitchen hygiene, and thetraditional " long drop " dry privies which service each floor of the inn onthe medieval garderobe principle, the outfall terminating in a manureheap in a stable. Eventually it was intended to centralise bulk goodspurchase and train local innkeepers in better lodge management tech-niques. Each inn would have been required to utilise kerosene, solar orhydro power (yak dung is used as fuel at present) and no demolition orrebuilding was to be allowed without prior consultation to ensure thatany new building is made in traditional style. The idea was to providevisitors to L6 with an authentic Tibetan experience which could not beobtained anywhere else in the world (especially in Tibet).

Tourism to Mustang has the potential to provide considerable eco-nomic benefits for Lo-Ba people, at minimal environmental cost. Theexisting quota system and high permit fee has excluded large numbers ofpotential visitors but the revenues obtained are not being returned toMustang. Tourism is not a naturally self-sustaining exercise and to neglectconservation of the cultural resource on which it is based runs the veryreal risk of eliminating those factors which attracted visitors in the firstplace. One cannot halt inexorable westernisation and, indeed, it is oftenonly the visitor desiring "authentic" experiences who is opposed to whatlocal people might see as material progress. No amount of managementplanning by outsiders can, or should, determine the nature of Lo-Bachoice. However, at least in the short term, tourism is all the growthpotential that Mustang has, and its careful management holds out thepossibility of recording and conserving both material and non-materialculture before it has become substantially changed. This can be done, ashas happened in Bhutan, without overt commercialisation although thisrequires greater government control than has hitherto been present.Nepal is no stranger to commercialisation. The Sherpa country of north-east Nepal contains more than ten times the population of Mustang,many of whom make a living as high altitude porters for mountain expedi-tions and guides for tourist treks - an industry created by western demandin the early 1900s. This has resulted in many material improvements toSherpas' lives but great concern had been expressed since the mid-1980sfor vanishing Sherpa culture. A revival has taken place, with traditionalceremonies being rediscovered and new cultural centres built. If the rich

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cultural and artistic heritage of Mustang is to survive, or at least to berecorded before it disappears, then the wise use of tourism revenues is theonly viable option. Fortunately, tourism to Mustang has started late andat a low level. Utilisation of the inn network, systematic artwork record-ing, better policing and the returning of tourism revenues to developmentand conservation projects could provide the Lo Ba with a bright futureand save a small but significant fragment of our global heritage. It has tobe hoped that we are not, again, going to do too little, too late.

Acknowledgements

The 1994 expedition to L6 was partly financed by a series of researchgrants from The British Academy (Stein Arnold Fund), Royal Geographi-cal Society, Mount Everest Foundation and Nottingham Trent Uni-versity. Sponsorship was also obtained from Kodak Ltd and TrimbleNavigation Ltd. The writer is most grateful to all members of the expedi-tion as well as to Elaine Brook and Lhakpa Sherpa of Himalayan TravelLtd, Mr Jayaprata Rana, Dr Chandra Gurung and Ms Manju Thapa ofACAP and colleagues at Nottingham Trent University for providingadvice, assistance and support. The map was drawn by Ms Linda Dawes,Department of International Studies, Nottingham Trent University.

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