Searching for the world’s most remote village

Christopher Purnell

This week’s winner: survives vultures and snow leopards in Nepal

Phu is just around that bend,” our mountain guide shouts out from 50 metres behind us, taking another swig from his flask. We knowingly raise our eyebrows in sync and continue trekking the steep incline, not hopeful the guide’s seventh guess will be lucky. We’re nine hours into day three of our search for one of the most remote places in the world, a village so isolated that the rest of Nepal wasn’t aware of its existence until the Seventies.

The late afternoon twilight creates a glowing landscape dominated by the great mountains of the Annapurna range. A Himalayan griffin vulture with a wingspan the length of a Mini Cooper circles above. As twilight turns to darkness we continue for what feels like hours, navigating 40-metre drops through snow leopard country. Rounding the last bend there’s a light in the distance that seemingly never gets closer but is a reassuring sign that this night will not be our last.

It’s not until the next day we experience the sheer intense beauty of Phu. It feels other-worldly. Dust from a biting breeze swirls as I half expect a young Anakin Skywalker to zip

through the arid valley in a podracer.

The physical landscape bears the imprint of Buddhism: from prayer flags to religious images carved into rock, sacred symbols are everywhere. The sacred life is woven into the very fabric of daily existence. People twirl prayer wheels while engaging in mundane tasks and the recitation of mantras forms a constant backdrop.

It’s unsurprising that religion is so prominent in an area in which humanity battles to exist in the face of the immensity of nature. So much so that the inhabitants choose to leave for the winter months. All except Nina Dolma. The 67-year-old nun eases past as we breathlessly clamber up to 4,200m and the monastery that watches over Phu.

Nina tells us how she withstands the sub-zero temperatures of winter in solitude to continue her Buddhist practice. “What’s the worst part about being alone here at winter?” I ask, expecting some great philosophical insight. “The snow,” she replies.

We join Nina for her afternoon purja, a form of meditation performed daily for the good of all sentient beings. Sat in a temple and using drums, bells and readings of Sanskrit scripture, Nina creates a sound so humbling that my posture instinctively adjusts.

I sit there, staring out into the glistening mountain range, overcome by humanity’s ability to survive adversity.

Two lessons pop into my head: first, that my problems in the West are not real problems. And most importantly, never trust a mountain guide you meet in a bar.