Karma, a monk in the ancient monastery of Mu Gompa right at the head of the Tsum Valley, close to the border of Tibet. Image by Stuart Butler.

• In Nepal’s sacred Tsum Valley, Buddhist community members are conflicted about the ongoing construction of a road that will pass through the region.
• The Tsum Valley is one of the few, if not last, remaining beyul, or sacred valleys, governed by customary and Buddhist laws, where humans and wildlife have lived together in harmony for more than a millennium.
• The valley has maintained its religious and cultural traditions that have conserved biodiversity and its cultural uniqueness due to its remote location.
• The road is part of a government project that aims to connect every town across the country, bringing economic development and government services closer to remote mountainous communities.

TSUM VALLEY, Nepal — “In the future, when war, strife and difficult times come,” said Thrisong Deutsen, an eighth-century Tibetan king, “will there be a safe place where people can go to practice Buddhism?”

His guest, Padmasambhava, otherwise known as Guru Rinpoche, quickly calmed the king’s worries with his response: “Yes, there will be valleys where warfare will never happen and where people will live in peace with animals.”

Nearly 1,300 years later, Karma, a monk, stands in the colorful monastery of Phurbe staring out the window into the sacred Tsum Valley of legend below. Surrounded by hand-painted murals of Padmasambhava, the Buddha and other Buddhist deities, the 82-year-old is troubled.

“The road will change everything here,” says Karma, who has lived all his life in the sacred valley of Tsum, which today lies in central Nepal. “It’s all about money. There are a few good points, but it will really destroy everything. Even this monastery might be destroyed.”

For believers, Padmasambhava, a real historical figure, is one of the most important of all Tibetan Buddhist saints. Founder of the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism, he’s chronicled as having spread Buddhism through much of the Himalayas and the world’s highest peaks. A man of great spiritual powers, he was also said to have been frequently embroiled in magical duels with demons to restore harmony on Earth.

Invariably, Padmasambhava won such contests, but despite his successes, he was said to believe that one day a dark period would come to this part of the world, to Buddhism, and to the world. To counter this and to provide a safe refuge for Buddhists in their time of need, Padmasambhava created a network of sacred valleys, or beyul.

The Tsum Valley is one of these, governed by traditional institutions that have protected the area’s natural resources, forests, biodiversity and culture for more than a millennium. It’s also one of the last preserved beyul in Nepal where people still live. (Last year, the government even legally recognized the Tsum Valley’s customary institution protecting the land, known as the shagya).

A beyul is a secret Himalayan valley that can only be entered by the spiritually pure and only when the world is under great stress. The location of each beyul, and how to enter them, was written on terma (hidden treasure) that Padmasambhava and his consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, hid in caves, rocks, behind waterfalls, deep in the bowels of monasteries, and in the minds of disciples. Scripts say that only the chosen ones, tertön, at the chosen time, may discover these treasures and gain entry to a beyul. The reward would be a slice of paradise where man and animal live in peace and harmony.

“Beyuls are purely guided by the five precepts of Buddhism — Panchsheel,” says Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa, a conservationist. “Its essence relies on the principle of nonviolence and abiding by them could foster a peaceful coexistence between all beings in these regions.”

But a beyul can be more than just a physical place. It can also exist only in a spiritual dimension. In theory, then, one could physically be within a beyul but not actually be inside it, or even aware of it, if one isn’t spiritually pure.

Over the centuries, many terma have been uncovered, and with then, the location of several beyul. There are reputed to be 108 of these sacred valleys dotted throughout the Himalayas. Some, such as the beyul on the southern slopes of Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for Everest, or the mountain kingdom of Bhutan, have already been found and opened. Many of these sacred lands were already inhabited by people before they were revealed as beyul.

Although customary laws and principles of harmony guided the conservation of these valleys, many eventually became connected to urban centers and large markets. This opened up the valleys to unsustainable practices that scarred the landscape in one way or another.

But the Tsum Valley is one that remains relatively remote and detached from industrial development, where people and wildlife continue to live in harmony. Also known as Beyul Kyimolung, meaning the Valley of Peace and Happiness, no one knows how or when it was revealed to be a beyul. It’s hidden behind a great shaft of relatively unexplored and imposing mountains that make up the Himalayan sub-range of Ganesh Himal — a row of jagged peaks soaring more than 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) into the sky.

Down on the valley floor, the landscape is far friendlier. Spring green wheat and barley fields cover much of the upper valley, peppered with the stone villages of the Tsumba people, meadows bursting with wildflowers, prayer flags, monasteries and chapels. Rivers and streams run free, and in the lower, warmer parts of the valley, dense forests filled with 110 bird species and blue sheep, musk deer, Himalayan tahr and other wildlife cloak the slopes. The forests are pristine, the air clear and clean, and everyone has time to stop and talk.

But villagers say they’re worried the harmony of the valley might be about to be shattered.

At a crossroads

The Nepalese government is building a road into the valley that’s poised to bring enormous change to the beyul. When completed, it will link Nepal with China via the Ngula Dhajen Pass, which sits at an elevation of 5,093 m (16,709 ft) and is covered in thick snow for months at a time. Officials haven’t put a date on when construction will be completed or where exactly it will go, due to the serious logistical and engineering issues that come with blasting the sheer cliff face of the very narrow gorge that leads into the Tsum Valley.

“Nobody from the government ever came to ask us if we wanted a road,” says Penarapsing, the owner of a guesthouse in the village of Chhokung Paro. “Businessmen and politicians made the decision for us.” Although it’s against the law to not obtain the community’s free, prior and informed consent, there’s been no organized protest against the road.

According to Norbu Sherpa, if the local people, as guardians of these sacred places, want to have roads built in areas where these sites are located, it’s important that the government assess the cultural, social and spiritual impacts.

“Since Indigenous peoples are the first settlers of Himalayas and guardians of the beyul, their voices and consent should be respected and incorporated in decision-making of the road,” he says.

To date, work crews have gotten as far as the entrance to the Tsum Valley on the opposite side of the river. Within Tsum itself, bulldozers have already carved a dirt road through parts of the flatter, upper half of the Valley. This stretch doesn’t yet connect with any access roads and hasn’t been opened for use.

There are also plans to build a road across the Nubri Valley, which, like Tsum, is thought to be a beyul. In both cases, proponents of the projects say the road will make the lives of local people easier. Without roads, they have to walk several kilometers and use mules to visit the nearest markets, says Nima Lama, chair of the Tsum Nubri rural municipality. “The road will also promote tourism,” Lama tells Mongabay. He says the construction won’t pose any threat to either beyul, but an environmental impact assessment still hasn’t been carried out.

The exact impact remains unknown. If the road follows the current unused dirt road through the upper valley, then not so many buildings will actually be destroyed. But the presence of the road here, as it has elsewhere in Nepal, will bring indirect destruction and change through the ease of access, growing tourism, and inevitable building sprees as seen at other beyul.

The road is part of an ambitious Nepalese government project that aims to connect every town and sizeable village in the country with roads, including hard-to-reach mountain settlements such as those in the Tsum Valley. As the road network spreads like a web across the country, it brings certain economic advantages. Produce and products that once took days or weeks to travel from Kathmandu or neighboring India now only take about a day or so at most. Roads are also providing faster access to government services such as hospitals and universities, and increasing job opportunities.

“I believe there are no protests going around in both the valleys because roads in such remote areas could help improve people’s quality of life and their livelihoods,” says Amindra Khadka, head of the Gorkha road project under the Department of Roads. “It will also open routes that connect to China and enhance both local and international tourism.”

All the community members Mongabay spoke to say they feel internally conflicted when weighing the pros and cons of the road. From the perspective of business or access to conventional health services, they say the road will be good. But from the aspect of preserving local cultures, traditions, and the environment, they say the road will be bad. The sacredness and uniqueness of the valley weighs heavy on them, especially the older inhabitants.

“The generations are changing and some of the young here want these changes to come,” says Karma, the octogenarian monk.

“They say the beyul is only for the old generations. Those young people mostly don’t care about this being a beyul, or even know what it means. They say the road will make it easy for people to get the things they need. Maybe they’re right because right now everything produced outside of the valley has to be carried up here.”

When Padmasambhava designated the network of beyul, he intended for them to be sanctuaries of peace and nonviolence, where no person or animal would come to harm. Even the vegetation would be shown great respect.

Today, the entrance into the Tsum Valley is marked by a bright blue signboard with gold lettering that lists the customary law of the beyul, including no hunting, no slaughtering of domestic animals, no fires on the pasture, and even no gathering of honey, among others. The shagya institution involves the establishment of committees made up of representatives from member villages to govern the resources of the beyul, such as allowing trapping and trading during specific times of the year.

Even those who no longer believe in the religious stories of this being a sacred valley follow the environmental rules of the beyul.

In the village of Chhokung Paro, guesthouse owner Penarapsing and his wife say the spirituality of the valley plays a positive role in protecting the local wildlife and environment.

“The holy valley begins just beyond the narrowest point of the gorge leading up from the rest of Nepal. In the past it was said that evil spirits and ghosts could not get beyond that point and into the valley.” He stops to glare at his wife who’s chuckling at his comment about ghosts. She’s among those skeptical about some of the religious stories. “This is a nonviolence area,” Penarapsing continues. “The killing of animals, both wild and domestic, has been forbidden here for a long time.”

For this reason, locals say, many of the wild animals living in the forests aren’t afraid of people. The communities here have gone more than a century without killing any animals. A few years ago, people in the Tsum Valley celebrated 103 years without killing animals in the valley. People do eat meat here, but it comes from animals that have been killed elsewhere and the meat brought over to the valley.

“We also have strict rules on chopping down trees,” Penarapsing says. “Every household is allowed to chop down only one tree a year and then only at certain times. That’s our firewood for the year. The conservation of the forests here is very important to us.”

But when asked about the proposed road, his mood turns a little more somber. “I cannot say it will be bad or good if the road comes,” he says.

“At the moment, if a woman here is giving birth, then she does it in her own house. Or, if someone gets sick and they need to get to a hospital, then it can take six days to get there.  So, if a road comes, it will make life easier. But the road will probably destroy the natural and cultural heritage of the valley.”

Back at the monastery, Karma pauses and looks north toward a cliffside cave where Padmasambhava and another great saint of Tibetan Buddhism, Milarepa, are both said to have spent time meditating. He sighs, contemplating the road. “I’m 82. I will be dead by the time the road is finished.”

This story by Stuart Butler was first published in Mongabay  on 8 May 2024