A lake made by a landslide, a village of Bon
Tens of thousands of years ago, a vast landslide fell into the valley of the Suligad river and blocked it. Behind the dam, water rose to form Phoksundo Lake. The dam is thought to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old, and the village of Ringmo is built on top of it. The lake's outflow cuts through the debris and plunges over a 167 m waterfall just south of the village, before rushing down to the Thuli Bheri. The lake is still young, in geological terms.
Ringmo is a small village of Tibetan-speaking families, most of them followers of Bon, who live by trade, yak herding, farming and, more recently, tourism. Its seasonal population is around 200. A Bon gompa, also named Ringmo, stands just outside the village, and another gompa on the lake's eastern shore holds annual prayers. Families keep their houses of stone and timber close together against the cold, with chortens, prayer walls and fields of barley and buckwheat around them. In winter, many families move down to lower villages and the lake shore falls quiet.
Above the lake, Dolpo extends north into some of the highest inhabited valleys in the world. Peter Matthiessen and the biologist George Schaller came this way in 1973, heading for Shey Gompa, the Crystal Monastery, to study blue sheep and look for the snow leopard. Matthiessen's book won the US National Book Award. Today the park protects snow leopards, blue sheep, musk deer and wolves, and the lake has become Dolpo's best-known destination, yet it remains far quieter than the Annapurna or Everest trails.
