MUSTANG, Nepal, (Apr. 12) IPS - Seated in a Buddhist monastery in Kathmandu, Jigme Parbal Bista, the 25th Raja of the Kingdom of Mustang looks like he would be more at home on horseback.

Mustang, a tiny thumb of Nepal that juts out into the Tibetan plateau, was out-of-bounds for outsiders for centuries. It is only now being opened up to international tourism.

Every year, the King of Mustang emerges from his walled capital of Lo Manthang and rides for three days south to an airfield in northern Nepal for an hour's flight to Kathmandu.

The king is one of several local rulers who were allowed to keep their titles and limited autonomy by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of modern Nepal who unified the country in the late 18th century.

Mustang's remoteness - it lies at an altitude of 4,000 meters on the arid plateau beyond the Himalayan mountains - has kept the region and its Tibetan Buddhist culture frozen in time.

King Jigme is usually busy supervising the harvesting of barley, wheat, mustard crops, taking animals to pasture, settling local disputes, granting audience to visitors and gracing local festivals with his wife, the Rani.

Mustang is to the international tourism circuit, what Antarctica is for naturalists. With its pre-Buddhist Bon Po culture, its dry and starkly rugged vistas, Mustang is even more exotic than Tibet.

Learning from its past mistakes in opening up fragile mountain areas to tourism too quickly, the government in Kathmandu is trying out a unique experiment in limited, high-value tourism for Mustang.

The Upper Mustang Conservation and Development Project (UMCDP) is in charge of the effort. The theory is that fewer, richer tourists will have a smaller ecological and cultural footprint. Money from tourism will be spent on preserving the local culture and the environment.

But while limited tourism may have limited damage to the environment, the effect on the culture may not be as benign.

"We provided the locals with plastic sheets to cover the priceless murals in the gombas (monasteries) but they used them as roofing for their houses," laments a UMCDP field-worker. The Abbot of Chyodi Gomba in Mustang agrees: "Sensitizing our people to the need to conserve our heritage has proved a challenge."

King Jigme is also worried about the high fortifications that surround his capital of Lo Manthang. He takes a walk around the walls every day, and despite attempts by the UMCDP, the King and the police, villagers continue to break down the historic ramparts to take a shortcut to their barley fields.

The government only allows a quota of 1,000 tourists to visit Mustang every year.

Unlike the rest of Nepal, tourists have to pay $700 for a 13-day visit. An agreement with the UMCDP stipulates that 60 per cent of the tourism fees should go into local projects, but so far only 30 per cent has been spent locally.

Perhaps it is inevitable that with tourism the rest of the world will not be far behind. Already there are signs that the outside world is at Lo Manthang's gates.

A videotape machine run on a generator provides daily screenings of Hindi and Hollywood movies. Tourism also brings the glint of consumer goods and has monetized this pastoral land which lived for centuries on an elaborate barter trade between India, Nepal and the Tibetan plateau, a four-hour horseride to the north of Lo Manthang.

Long exposure to cold and indoor pollution from stove fires has resulted in a high mortality rate among children, primarily from respiratory infections. A health worker, Yum Gurung, is constantly on the move seeing to patients in seven villages.

During the harsh winters, when the temperature falls below 20 degrees Celsius, Gurung is busy seeing to the old people and children in their homes.

Before trade with Tibet was disrupted, all of the salt and wool on the mighty Kali Gandaki River would pass through the area, bringing prosperity to Lo Manthang. Today wealth is measured in land, horses and social standing.

And the limited tourism may not be benefiting the locals as much as the UMCDP would like to see. To protect the local environment and culture, almost all the food and fuel tourists need on the trek is brought in from the outside and they sleep in tents. This means the foreigners spend almost nothing locally.

In the long run, tourism cannot be the answer for the development of the remote mountain region. But a cash-strapped government in Kathmandu just does not have the money, and is banking on limited, high-value tourism for opening Mustang.