In the remote region of Upper Mustang, high in the rugged Nepalese Himalayas bordering Tibet, Buddhist artists are locked in a painstaking race against time to restore unique centuries-old artifacts of Tibetan Buddhism, many of which were damaged in last year’s devastating earthquakes, and others that, though they survived the earthquakes unscathed, still bear the scars of the ravages of time and the harsh Himalayan climate.

The massive quakes that struck Nepal on 25 April and 12 May last year killed more than 8,500 people and displaced millions more with the destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes. The devastation also extended to hundreds of ancient buildings, monasteries, and temples across the country. An early assessment by Nepal’s Department of Archaeology suggested that more than 400 historic monuments in the Kathmandu Valley were damaged, while at the national level, an estimated 2,900 sites of religious and cultural significance were damaged or destroyed.

In Upper Mustang, many ancient structures in the walled capital of Lo Manthang were weakened by the temblors. Among them the 15th century Buddhist monastery Jampa Lhakhang, which has the world’s largest collection of mandalas painted on its walls, sustained severe damage. The monastery’s plaster walls cracked and crumbled under the force of the tremors, fragmenting many of the 500-year-old murals. The earthquakes also ruptured the main drainage system, allowing water to penetrate the walls.