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Upper Mustang, Nepal has certainly seen better days--the Himalayan kingdom was once a flourishing part of Tibet and a thriving trade community between Tibet and India. Today the remnants of this golden age can still be seen in the magnificent frescoes adorning the centuries-old Tibetan Buddhist monasteries (called "gompas"). But after Mustang became part of Nepal in 1790, trade dried up and the economy began to wane--causing the gompas and their stunning wall paintings to come dangerously close to ruin.

For over a decade the American Himalayan Foundation has worked to revive Tibetan Buddhism in Upper Mustang by restoring these gompas, reconstructing historical monuments, and supporting monastic schools and nunneries. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that the conservation of religious art, artifacts and monasteries is "very, very important to carry the spirit of the tradition" of Tibetan Buddhism.

An integral part of our preservation work has been the training of young people from Upper Mustang in the techniques of art conservation. Pema, Tashi, and Jojo have spent years arduously cleaning centuries of soot and grime from the wall paintings inside Upper Mustang’s most sacred temples. Lead conservator Luigi Fieni felt it was time for them to be introduced to ‘Thanka painting 101’ with one of Nepal’s most renowned Thanka masters, Mukthi Thapa, so that in seasons to come, they can assist with the more artistic sides of conservation.

"The murals in Champa Gompa are so very intricate, so very detailed, it would be difficult for anyone to be able to reconstruct them without a basic knowledge of thanka painting" said Mutki Thapa. "As it will not always be possible to copy what is there, as some of the art is missing or too badly damaged to be a guide, understanding the fundamentals of thankas, as the original artists understood them, will be of huge benefit to these young conservationists."

Before drawing even an eye or hand, Mukti took his students back to the very foundation of religious painting - the grid. From there they moved to body shapes, pose, facial expressions and then to the very complicated hand gestures or mudra, where any slight variation in the positioning of a finger can change the meaning or even the identity of the deity.

After months of difficult study, the students and teacher were happy with the progress. As one student Jojo (pictured above with his family) commented, "We all thought we were pretty good painters, just copying what we saw in the gompas, or using our imagination, but when Thapa sir took us back and taught us the very basics, we saw how naïve our work really was. The training is a very slow process, but ultimately rewarding and we are all looking forward to 'semester 2' next winter – we may even progress to using color by then!"

AHF has helped bring the rich Tibetan art of Upper Mustang back from the brink – and has inspired a new generation of local artists to carry on these traditions.

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