Lubra Village is a small settlement located in the remote area, beside the Panda Khola George between Jomsom and Kagbeni, Lower Mustang. This village is semi-arid valley with remarkable combination of unique cultural heritage and a modern education. The people of Lubra village believe that the village was founded in the late 12th century and have sustained their traditional way of life and still they are practicing the ancient Bon religion. Lubra, a “Bon Community Homestay” provides a unique village experience in the high mountains. The name, Lubra refers to a uniquely separated cliffs on the side of Panda Khola that looks like snakeskin spread out and frozen on the rock face. ‘Lu’ refers to a serpentine spirits and ‘bra’ refers to rock cliffs in their local dialect. Around 20 families lives in Lubra, so you can observe the culture closely. According to local legend, the Tashi Gyaltsen, generally known by the title of Yangton Lama or Dragon came from the Tibet via Dolpo and controlled the unruly local sprits by making the area suitable for human settlement. He planted a walnut tree as a divination to determine whether a village flourish there and still the tree is surviving. While trekking through Annapurna Circuit or other trekking trails on this region, take a detour to Lubra that makes a great way to take a break and appreciate some local home comforts. In Lubra village, there is a Yungdung Phuntsok Ling, an ancient Bon monastery with unique wall paintings and statues, where a five-day masked dancing festival occurs every mid-Autumn, depending on the lunar calendar. The people of Lubra built their houses with combined techniques of stacked foundation stones and rammed earth walls, topped with earthen roofs. They plaster the outer walls with red and white clay for decoration, and store firewood on the top edges of their flat roofs. Lubra belongs to one of the nineteen villages of the Baragaon region of Lower Mustang, which is commonly misunderstood to mean the “twelve villages” that lie above Jomsom and below Lo-Manthang.
