Records & People

Nepal's Cliffs Hide 10,000 Man-Made Caves — and No One Knows Who Built Them

High above the Kali Gandaki river in Upper Mustang, ancient 'sky caves' have given up mummies, 600-year-old manuscripts and more questions than…

By Laxman Rawal · Jul 20, 2026

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Carved hundreds of feet up sheer desert cliffs, with no visible staircase and no written record of who built them, Upper Mustang's "sky caves" have been keeping secrets for at least 3,000 years. There are roughly 10,000 of them, stacked five storeys high in…

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