Rara is the largest lake in Nepal, held at 2,990 metres in a basin of blue pine and juniper in the country's far west, and no road reaches its shore. You fly in to a dirt airstrip and walk two or three hours down through the pines, or you come on foot for days. Nothing is built at the water. People here say the lake changes colour several times a day. There is no single cause: great depth, mountain light that swings from dawn to dusk, and a wind that ruffles the surface or leaves it alone. After the monsoon the air scrubs clean and the dawn wind holds off, and then the snow peaks and the sky lie inverted on the water until mid-morning. A wooden boat rows out from the jetty. In the middle the shore falls away on every side, the peaks stand all around you, and there is nothing to hear but the oars. Three kinds of snowtrout, a cold-water fish of the Himalaya, live in Rara and in no other water on Earth, and a small frog named after the lake shares the same narrow home.
The settlements a walk above the shore belong to Mugu, where men still wear the Nepali topi and the year is set by the herding and farming seasons of the high Karnali. Around 250 families used to farm the shoreline itself. In 1976 Rara became one of Nepal's first national parks, and they were moved to the lowlands hundreds of kilometres to the south. The climb everyone comes for starts at the water and goes up to Murma Top, a ridge at 3,630 metres, two to three hours above the lake. From up there you get the whole thing in a single frame, ringed in forest with the snow ranges stacked behind it. Walkers carry a tent up to watch it through a full day, when it can look like several different lakes. The terraces cut by the families who left are still stepping down the slopes below you.