The original painting was executed just outside the fortified town of Chuksang, along the Kali Gandaki River in 1999. It represents a small temple, or Lhakang, nestled into the ruins of a much larger eroded ruin. All the buildings in this region are made of rammed earth, a kind of adobe that is formed by hammering moist clay until it acquires the consistency of concrete. Such buildings can last for centuries, but once they begin to erode, they are difficult to tell from natural formations. This image also inspired the visual development of the Himalayan area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom where a similar ruin rises out of the realistic but artificial mountain.