Since the completion of an all-weather road eight years ago, Nepal’s remote Mustang region has become a mass tourism destination, reports Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi. The surge in tourists, combined with the impacts of climate change, could put the fragile Himalayan region at greater risk of future disasters.
Previously, Mustang was a destination for foreign trekkers attempting the Annapurna Circuit and occasional Nepali devotees. Now, domestic and Indian pilgrims flock to the region on the new road, which has significantly shortened travel time to both upper and lower Mustang.
Between mid-July 2024 and mid-June 2025, Mustang experienced a 49% jump in tourist arrivals compared to the previous year, according to the district police office. The number of domestic tourists increased by 52% and foreign arrivals rose by nearly 40%, bringing visitors from 72 countries.
To cater to the surge in tourism, new hotels, guesthouses and teahouses have been built, often on the edges of fragile riverbanks. With weakly enforced zoning laws, construction has also expanded to parts of riverbeds that naturally buffer floodwaters, raising the risk of flooding. Furthermore, inadequate sewage treatment from hotels and other establishments in places like Kagbeni in lower Mustang means most waste flows into the rivers, Joshi reports.
At the same time, the impacts of climate change are already visible. Heavy rains are uncommon in the desert-like Mustang region because it lies in the rain shadow of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges — the Himalayas act as a wall blocking clouds. Yet, on Aug. 13, 2023, a flash flood triggered by heavy rain in Kagbeni swept away homes, hotels, a police post, bridges, vehicles and electricity poles.
New research also indicates that warming in the Arabian Sea is helping monsoon clouds, stronger winds and moist air penetrate deeper into Mustang. Consequently, previously dry places are now seeing heavier summer rains, Joshi writes.
“We also see an increase in the intensity of rainfall that wash away sediments and destabilize slopes, triggering massive landslides and endangering settlements,” said researcher Apechhya Aryal, who recently studied precipitation changes in the region.
Additionally, warming is accelerating the melting of permafrost and shrinking glaciers, threatening Mustang’s Kali Gandaki River, which provides the area with drinking water, irrigation and hydropower. “When the permafrost is gone, the river could face periods of extreme low flow,” Aryal said.
Geologist Shree Kamal Dwivedi added that melting permafrost exposes loose soil underneath, which can be easily eroded as precipitation shifts from snow to rain, triggering sediment-laden floods like the one that affected Kagbeni in 2023.
However, Ram Chandra Sedhai, CEO of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN), said tourism “has brought more positive impacts than negative ones to Mustang.” He added “the landscape itself hasn’t altered much due to tourism.”
Read the full story by Abhaya Raj Joshi here.
Banner image: Tourists making their way to the Muktinath temple in Mustang (left). Buses ferrying tourists parked near the Muktinath temple (right). Images by Abhaya Raj Joshi/Mongabay.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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