In Nepal’s highlands, climate change threatens Tibet’s Bon faith

Lubra, Nepal — "It has been 20 generations since the great monk, Trashi Gyaltsen, founded Lubra,” says Lama Tsultrim, speaking from the basement of his home in the Nepali Himalayas.

His basement door is open, letting in both a cool wind and warm rays of sunlight. The spiritual leader is wearing a maroon chuba (traditional Tibetan coat) and an orange belt. He passes a set of prayer beads through his fingers as he speaks. From the door, one can see the old village below, nestled between the valley’s steep slopes and a wide, dry riverbed.

“Long ago, Trashi planted two pine needles and promised that if one grew into a tree, he would establish a village in this place,” Tsultrim explains, gesturing down to the village.

“He covered the seeds with two baskets, and within seven days, one had risen off the floor. Underneath, a walnut tree was growing.”

The 76-year-old squints his bloodshot eyes and pinpoints the walnut tree that survives among the houses below.

Tsultrim is describing the founding of Lubra, a Himalayan village in remote northwest Nepal, set in a rugged valley in the culturally Tibetan area of Mustang. The 16 families who live here make up one of the oldest Nepalese settlements to follow Bon, an ancient religion of Tibet. Here, unique beliefs, rituals and social patterns have endured for centuries, and Tsultrim is the latest in a long line of Bon lamas (spiritual practitioners) in the village.

He walks down the steep, twisting path to the crooked walnut tree. Medium height and stocky, Tsultrim moves steadily, hands clasped behind his back.

Deep crevices line the tree’s thick bark, like the wrinkles of a centenarian. Its big, gnarled roots are tangled into the foundations of nearby homes. Despite its age, hundreds of young branches, fresh with new buds, are sprouting from a long trunk and a few venerable boughs. Just metres from the tree is Tsultrim’s old house. It has three floors, and its clay walls are trimmed with an ochre-red pigment.

Above is a steep, semicircular hollow, filled with whitewashed houses. Built of clay and wood, the buildings are almost on top of each other. Each flies a vertical flag with the sacred elemental colours of Tibet, the colours tied to the five elements in Tibetan cosmology and the Bon religion, topped with sprigs of sacred juniper. Below, the river is a mere trickle. Across the valley, the black mouths of caves dot the landscape. Eroded spires of sandstone tower over rocky slopes.

Once far from the river, the walnut tree is now right at its edge, Tsultrim explains. So is his former home.

“I left this house two years ago because of flooding,” he says, pointing to it.

After a decade of worsening floods, Tsultrim's home and several others in the village remain empty, and the small wooden doors stand closed behind piles of sediment. Where there were fields, a mud flat has formed, littered with rocks. The stone walls of agricultural terraces are collapsing into the mud.