Twenty hours after Sam and Remi climbed over the cliff top and left the Toyota to the waters of the Kali Gandaki, the pickup truck in whose bed they were riding coasted to a stop at a fork in the dirt road.
The driver, Mukti, a gap-toothed Nepali with a crew cut, called through the back window, “Lo Monthang,” and pointed at the road heading north.
Sam gently shook Remi awake from her curled position against a bag of goat feed and said, “Home sweet home.”
She groaned, pushed aside the coarse cotton, and sat up, yawning. “I was having the weirdest dream,” she said. “Something similar to The Poseidon Adventure, but we were trapped inside a Toyota Land Cruiser.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Are we there?”
“More or less.”
Sam and Remi thanked the driver, climbed out, and watched as the truck turned onto the south fork and disappeared around the bend. “Too bad about the language barrier,” Remi said.
With only a smattering of Nepali words and phrases between them, neither Sam nor Remi had been able to tell their driver that he had possibly saved their lives. For all he knew, he’d simply picked up a pair of wayward foreigners who’d somehow lost their tour group. His indulgent smile suggested this was not a rare event in these parts.
Now, exhausted but thankfully warm and dry, they stood on the outskirts of their destination.
Surrounded by a tall wall of patchwork rock, brick, and mud-thatch mortar, the ancient capital of the once-great Kingdom of Mustang was small, occupying a half mile square in a shallow valley surrounded by low rolling hills. Inside Lo Monthang’s walls, most of the structures were also constructed from a mishmash of mud and brick, all of it painted in shades of white ranging from grayish to brownish and bordered with layered thatch roofing. Four structures rose above the rest: the Royal Palace and the red-roofed Chyodi, Champa, and Tugchen temples.
“Civilization,” Remi said.
“Everything is relative,” Sam agreed.
After they had wandered the wilds of Mustang for what seemed like days, the otherwise medieval Lo Monthang seemed positively metropolitan.
They started walking up the dirt road toward the main gate. Halfway there, a boy of eight or ten appeared and sprinted toward them, calling, “Fargos? Fargos?”
Sam raised his hand in greeting and called in Nepali, “Namaste. Hoina.” Hello. Yes.
The boy, now beaming, skidded to a stop before them and said, “Follow, yes? Follow?”
“Hoina,” Remi replied.
After leading them through the winding alleys of Lo Monthang under the curious gaze of hundreds of villagers, the boy stopped before a thick wooden door set in a whitewashed wall. He lifted the tarnished brass knocker, rapped twice, then said to Sam and Remi, “Pheri bhetaunla,” then scampered off down a side alley.
They heard footsteps clicking on wood from inside the building, and a few seconds later the door swung open, revealing a frail mid-sixties man w
ith long gray hair and a matching beard. His face was heavily lined and brown. To their surprise, he greeted them with an upper-crust British accent:
“Good morning. Sam and Remi Fargo, I presume?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Sam said, “Yes. Good morning. We’re looking for a Mr. Karna. Sushant Dharel from Kathmandu University arranged a meeting.”
“Indeed he did. And indeed you have.”
“Pardon?” Remi replied.
“I am Jack Karna. Well, where are my manners? Please come in.”
He stood aside, and Sam and Remi stepped inside. Similar to the exterior of the building, the interior walls were whitewashed, and the floor was constructed with old but well-scrubbed wooden planks. Several Tibetan-style rugs covered the floor, and the walls were dotted with tapestries and framed bits of parchment. Along the west wall, beneath thick casement windows, was a seating area with cushions and pillows and a low coffee table. Against the east wall was a potbellied stove. A small hallway led out of the room and into what looked like a sleeping area.
Karna said, “I was about to send out a search party for you. You look a bit travel worn. Are you quite all right?”
“We had a bit of a hiccup in our travel plans,” Sam offered.
“Indeed you did. News reached me a few hours ago. Some trekkers found a guide vehicle destroyed in one of the chokes south of here. Two bodies washed ashore near Kagbeni. I feared the worst.” Before they could answer, Karna ushered them toward the pillows, where they sat down. “The tea is ready. Give me just a moment.”