Rara Lake is the largest lake in Nepal and one of the hardest to reach — no road runs to its shore. It sits at 2,990 metres in the remote Mugu district of the far northwest, an almost oval sheet of water about five kilometres across and 167 metres deep in places. Blue pine, spruce and juniper ring the basin, and beyond them the ridges climb to snow. There is nothing built on the shore at all. The forest around it holds snow leopards, red pandas, Himalayan black bears and more than two hundred kinds of bird. Rara became the heart of a national park in 1976, and it has been protected as a Ramsar wetland since 2007. Horses graze the meadows at the water's edge, and the silence is near-total.
Reaching it is part of the draw. Most visitors fly into the tiny airstrip at Talcha, then walk a few hours down through the pines until the water opens out ahead. The air is sharp with resin and the lake reveals itself only at the very end. On a still morning the snow peaks and sky lie inverted on the surface so cleanly that the shoreline seems doubled. By mid-morning the wind returns and the reflection breaks. The finest view is from Murma Top, a 3,630-metre ridge two or three hours above the shore, where the whole lake becomes a single jewel set between green slopes with the Himalaya rising behind. Far from any road and still among the least-visited corners of Nepal, Rara stays quiet. Roads creeping toward Mugu are slowly beginning to change that.