Dolpo :
Dolpo is located in the septentrional part of Nepal at the Chinese border and the North-West of Kathmandu. It extends to the north from Dhaulagiri to the source of the Karnali river and to the west from the Lho kingdom, known in the West under the name of Mustang. The monsoon influence is slight. It is at the same latitude as Cairo. It is a land of poor pastures, inhabited by robust nomads. At an average altitude of 4,000 m it is cut by north south valleys. Passes +5,000 m high make it possible to cross from one valley to another a major route for yak caravans to trade with the Tibetan plateau. It is admitted it was populated by Tibetans as early as the first centuries AD. At our time, it is the crossing point for the Tibetan refugees fleeing the Chinese regime and its Tibet colonization. Dolpo is partly in She-Phoksundo National Park that bears the name of the most famous monastery of this area, She Gompa, and of the lake, Phoksundo, with turquoise water.

Approach: The approach time from Paris to the starting trek base, Dunaï, was five days including a one-day stop in Kathmandu for the payment of the Trekking Permit and a one-day transit in Nepalganj waiting for a helicopter to fly to Juphal, 2,470m high. The transfer by a Soviet helicopter was an exceptional moment. The 16-people group settled with luggage in the machine which took off in a deafening noise accompanied by vibrations of the cabin which made us fear the end of the one-hour flight. The sight of the landscape was splendid, the machine flew close to trees and peaks. In the machine the temperature went up close to 40°C in a moisture worthy of a sauna.

Spirituality:
A Dolpo monastery is a training and deepening place for the Lama preparation. In an area without school, medical system, judicial power, the Tibetan Lama takes up all these functions by travelling in Dolpo. He settles the domestic and vicinity problems, the children's education and health. He incarnates the highest values of the Tibetan culture: quiet mind, friendliness, compassion, respect for all the beings. In one of the poorest areas of the one of the poorest countries of the planet, the Tibetan culture is undisturbed. Dolpo monasteries belong to the one of the 17 sects of Tantric Buddhism, moreover both of them, Ring-Mo and Samling, are attached to the Bonpo ancestral religion. Tibetan monastery should not be understood by comparison to the Christian religion. A monk hasn't God's call, but more prosaically it is an economic problem. The reference to the Christian Western civilization must be made in relation to the Middle Ages.
I wish that tourism and trekking may respect this civilization in its ecological sphere. Tourism restriction qualified by charges and sizes should help there.

Phoksundo Lake: Three days were necessary to reach the turquoise water lake, 3,450 m high. The Ring-Mo monastery of Bonpo obedience was visited the following day at day break to attend the morning prayer. Bonpo was prior to Buddhism, it became a sect. But the faithful practise the circumambulation in the opposite direction. Outside,  very beautiful chortens announce the monastery. The prayer room has impressive masks of exorcizing dance.

Shey Gompa:  Three days to go up to the Crystal Monastery by crossing the first pass up to +5.000m high. The monastery clutched to the red blood stone mountain is in perfect harmony with it. Outside, chortens announce the monastery. The interior presents paintings and statues in theTrantic Buddhism tradition, Kargyupa sect.

Dolpo-pa:
Dolpo is regarded as the last Himalayas enclave of an authentic Tibetan culture. Dolpo-pa, inhabitant of Dolpo, is a farmer, stockbreeder and caravaneer by need. It should be recalled that the social Tibetan structure is based on polyandry. The woman, marries the elder son of the family, and does agricultural work. The wife's cap, Tikpu, is made of a metal curved plate, silver plated brass, transversely posed on the head. Life in high altitude and natural selection involve a population with not very evolutionary demography, the infant mortality is important. The consequence is the multidisciplinary of the people. The craft industry is the business of all and of the most skilful, mutual help, solidarity is part of the inhabitants' life.
Only metal work is in margin of the Tibetan society, as in our Middle Ages. Marshal-shoeing, the gara, lives apart from the village close to the river for his working tool. He is all at the same time blacksmith, metal worker, goldsmith.
The doctor,the amchi, plays an important office in these remote and isolated areas. Very often the knowledge is transmitted in the family. The medicamentous substances are of mineral, animal and vegetable origin. He is helped in many cases by the Lama, in his exorcizer function, a prayer brings relief.

Saldang, the village is built on a cornice on the edge of a chasm above the black river. The trekking group spent two nights there to visit this beautiful village. The weather was gloomy, a storm of hail fell down submerging the campsite completely.

Salt and Grain caravans:
Before 1950 and the invasion of Tibet by China, the trade between Dolpo and the low valleys of Hurikot, Chaurikot, and Talphi, areas of Rong-Pa, were ensured by Rong-Pa which brought the grain to Dolpo on sheep and goat back exchanged against salt. Dolpo-Pa went to Tibet to exchange the low valleys grain against salt and to put the yaks in the Tibet pastures during the winter. Thus the trade was well distributed between Rong-Pa and Dolpo-Pa. The terms of the trade were equitable.
After 1950, the Chinese closed the border and rationed the salt exported by Dolpo-Pa. Consequently Rong-Pa are supplied  with Indian salt coming from the saltworks of Gujarat. It is less expensive but it contains less elements essential for the cattle food. They thus continue to buy salt to Dolpo-Pa but in less quantity and at lower cost. Moreover Dolpo-Pa can no more put their yaks in the Tibet pastures during the winter. They go down with them in the Nepal low valleys to sell salt and to acquire the right to put the yaks in grazing ground. The terms of trade are much less profitable to Dolpo-Pa.
The invasion of Tibet upset the ancestral economic balance of this area. Admittedly the stakes, for China, do not have common measurements with the few thousands of Dolpo-Pa. Moreover the Tibetan culture is not the cup of tea of the Chinese.

Dho Tarap, 4,100 m high, is an important village of the Tarap valley, a crossroads of trails to the south west to go to the village of Tarakot or to the south east to reach Jomoson, our goal to catch the helicopter to Pokara.

Accommodation:
Unlike some countries, the Dolpo house proceeds from fort and monastery adaptation and not the opposite. The Tibetans lived and still live under tents. Constructions are made of adobe (pisé), wet earth mixed with straw and sometimes with yak dung. This aggregate is used either in shape of bricks or cast in a formwork of two boards. In high altitude, the cob wall becomes hard like rock. To avoid erosion in the rain, the ridge of the walls is protected either by stone slabs or by bundles of sticks. Blackened by the bad weather, the sticks make a decorative black frieze.
As in most mountainous areas, the house has two floors, the ground floor is reserved for the animals and one room used as a kitchen and winter room. The second floor has the private chapel, the summer room and a guest room. Wood is stored on the terrace used for meat drying.
The ground floor of the house is often characterized by the absence of window and of smoke pipe. Soot blackens and oozes along the walls. The smoke stagnating in height, the daily life is on the ground, it is necessary to stoop to enter the house and sit down at once. Dolpo-Pa have serious ophthalmologic problems.
In the villages clutched to the mountain wall, moving in the village is made from terrace  to terrace of the houses using ladders whose stairs were cut in a tree trunk. This principle was used by the Indians of North America.

Jomoson, 2,760 m high. The last pass before Jomson offered an exceptional sight on the  Kali Gandaki valley which takes the name of Mustang Khola after the village of Geling.
But this is another story presented by the next trek to Lo Manthang.
The Khali Gandaki valley is a genuine rift in the mountains, it is surrounded by two summits +8,000 m high, Dhaulagiri, 8,167 m, and Annapurna, 8,078 m. The difference in height is higher than that of the Grand Canyon of the American West.