Journey To Mustang III

“Before me spread a yellow and ochre desert, the most horrifying I could have  imagined, a succession of barren, wind-eroded crags overlooking deep gorges and canyons which cut across an inferno of parched soil, like deep scars in a vast sand pile. It was like the Grand Canyon but without cactus or water. As far as I could see, there was not a single blade of grass, a tree or a bush. Just one gullied expanse   of desolation combining the horrors of desert and high, arid mountains, of bareness and cold. A terrible wind whistled in my ears, spitting sand as it whipped across this patched landscape, howling   in the canyons and buffeting the hills, carving them into sinister towers bleached into dry bones. I found myself exclaiming: ‘This is Mustang! I must be mad!’ ”   Michel Pessel, Mustang, A Lost Tibetan Kingdom, 1968