The two characters "Sakya" mean "grey-and-white land" in Tibetan.

The monastery was built against a stretch of grey-white rock beneath Mount Ponpo, and so took this name. Grey and white are the colors of the rock, and also the underlying hue of that earliest lineage. A thousand years on, when people speak of Sakya, what first comes to mind is still that understated grey-white — not flamboyant, not noisy, yet profoundly deep and enduring.

Yet lands of grey and white are not found in only one place.

Beyond the main Himalayan ridge, in northern Nepal, lies Mustang — known by its ancient name, Lo. There a deeper, older river valley runs, its cliffs on either side glowing grey-white and ochre-red. Wind rises year-round through the Kali Gandaki gorge, grinding this land into a high-altitude desert, yet also slowing time to an unusual stillness here.

At the end of the fourteenth century, a warrior from western Tibet named Ame Pal founded the Kingdom of Lo upon this land.

He set his capital in Lo Manthang, an ancient walled city on the high plateau. The city is small; its earthen walls stand about six meters high, with square watchtowers at the corners. Gates open to the east, west, south, and north, but ordinarily only the northeastern gate is used. The city was built to repel enemies and wind alike, and to guard the rare spark of human life on this barren plateau. Within the walls, white-walled earthen homes stand close together, and prayer flags flutter from the four corners of every roof in the highland wind.

This city has kept its watch for over six hundred years. It was not until 1992 that Upper Mustang was opened to the outside world. Before that, it had nearly preserved itself whole within time — its medieval walls, fifteenth-century murals, and rituals centuries old all remain.

In earlier ages, Lo Manthang was a hub on the salt route. Salt and wool from Tibet traveled south from here, while grain from the Indian and Nepali plains moved north, and caravans plied the Kali Gandaki valley, forging an artery across the Himalayas. The Kingdom of Lo sat at its midpoint — guarding the gateway and serving as the waystation, nurturing both trade and faith along this river valley. After the eighteenth century, the salt route's monopoly passed to the Thakali people of the south, and the Lo people gradually withdrew into the depths of the plateau; yet it was precisely this isolation that preserved the old Tibetan customs intact.

And so it is called: the last forbidden kingdom.

To understand Lo Manthang, one must first understand its terrain.

Mustang lies in the rain shadow of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri massifs. The monsoon moisture from the south is blocked entirely by the mountains, so that no more than three hundred millimeters of rain falls here in a year. Thus this high plateau, at an altitude of 3,800 meters, presents an almost lunar landscape: ochre-red sandstone, dry riverbeds, and ravines and cliffs carved by wind.

Yet it is precisely within this desolation that Tibetan Buddhism has borne its most enduring flower.

To enter Upper Mustang, one must first travel north from Kagbeni. The village of Kagbeni is the southern gate of the restricted zone; at its entrance stands a notice: ahead lies the Upper Mustang restricted area, entry requires a permit and a guide must accompany you. This threshold, in place since the 1992 opening, has never been lifted — on the contrary, it has kept Mustang a place "visited by fewer than one in a thousand" — for while some forty thousand reach Everest Base Camp each year, Lo Manthang receives less than a fraction of that.

It is precisely its remoteness that has preserved its most precious things.

Lo Manthang is a small city, yet it nurtures an authentic Sakya tradition.

Three ancient temples stand against the city walls: Jampa Lhakhang, Thubchen Gompa, and Chode Gompa, all enshrining the same lineage. The Sakya school is marked by three colors — red for the wisdom of Manjushri, white for the compassion of Avalokiteshvara, and blue for the majesty of Vajrapani. This "three-color" emblem, on the temple walls and prayer flags of Lo Manthang, is identical to that of Sakya Monastery.

Look closely, and each of the three temples reveals its own face:

Jampa Lhakhang, said to have been built in the mid-fifteenth century, enshrines a giant Maitreya statue that rises through three floors. No daylight enters the hall; only in the glow of butter lamps do hundreds of gold-ground mandalas spread across the walls — painted layer upon layer by artists who ground real gold into liquid, forming mandala murals that researchers call among the most exquisite in the Himalayan region.

Thubchen Gompa, built at the height of the Kingdom of Lo, is the great assembly hall of the city. Massive wooden pillars uphold its lofty hall, and its fifteenth-century murals were painted with lapis lazuli, turquoise, and cinnabar. Centuries later, the blues and greens on the walls remain calm and vivid — the dryness of the rain shadow inadvertently sealed its colors.

Chode Gompa is the still-beating religious heart of the city, with a Sakya monastic school attached. Young monks study scripture before the hall at dawn and circumambulate the white chörten at dusk, carrying a single lineage forward from one generation to the next.

The world beyond the walls has long since changed, yet the sound of bells within the city has never ceased.

Sakya's grey and white have not faded through the separation of the snow mountains.

In the fifteenth century, Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (1382–1456), the founding master of the Ngor branch of Sakya, entered Lo three times and established the lineage in this snowy land: he oversaw the transcription of the Kanjur in gold ink, forbade animal sacrifice, and wove Sakya's teachings drop by drop into the daily life and faith of the Lo people. After him, the monastic communities, temple institutions, and rituals of Mustang all took Sakya as their orthodoxy.

Fifteen kilometers beyond the city stands an even older Nyingma monastery — Lo Gekar, said to have been built by Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) atop the demon's heart, contemporaneous with Samye Monastery. The Sakya royal temple within, the Nyingma ancient shrine without — one city, one monastery, together sketch the two lifelines of Tibetan Buddhism along the southern slopes of the Himalayas.

Today, Chode Gompa remains the religious heart of Lo Manthang, with a Sakya monastic school attached, where nearly a hundred young monks study the scriptures.

Every year in May, the Tiji Festival is Lo Manthang's grandest ceremony. Over three days, monks wearing masks centuries old perform the dance of subduing demons in the city center. On the first day, long horns and cymbals sound together as the monastic procession marches out from Chode Gompa to dance beneath the giant thangka in the central square. On the second day the masked dance peaks — gods, demons, birds, and beasts take turns upon the stage, telling the story of Dorje Jono subduing the father of demons. On the third day, at the climax of the rite, the monks fashion a demon effigy from tsampa and drive it from the city gate, casting it into the desert — signifying that calamity is banished from the valley and that rain and abundance return to the earth.

It is a "victory of good over evil" performed for six hundred years. During the festival, the descendants of the royal family still attend as observers, guarding this tradition of centuries alongside the monastic community. In 2008, the kingship of the Kingdom of Lo formally ended and the king became a commoner — yet the townspeople still call him "Raja" — a term of respect, not politics. Tradition does not rest upon a throne; it lives in everyone's daily life.

Sakya's grey and white is not a fading, but a settling. It crossed the mountain pass and came to rest quietly on another land for nearly six hundred years, and still breathes today.

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• Images: Safalphotos (CC BY-SA 4.0); Boerniefischer (CC BY 3.0); Carsten.nebel (CC BY-SA 4.0); Jean-Marie Hullot (CC BY 2.0); Sunuwargr (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Video: NEPAL: The Last Forbidden Kingdom on Earth | 8K Travel Documentary · True Planet Explorer / YouTube

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