Mani stones are rocks, slabs, or pebbles engraved with Tibetan Buddhist mantras and images that have a profound meaning and spiritual significance. When travelling across Tibet, they can be found almost everywhere such as monasteries, beside villages, crossings, along paths, and on mountains. Living in such a vast land, mani stone mounds become the prayer halls and shrines for local people who build these unique works of art to show their piety to their deities and the Buddha's teachings. Upon encountering a mani stone mound, local people will circumambulate it clockwise as a prayer offering for health, peace, and protection.

Some devout Tibetans will pick up a stone and place it on their foreheads while they murmur mantras.

Songtsam invites their guests to paint their own mani stone. First, guests will head to the bank of the Lancang (upper Mekong) River located in front of Songtsam Lodge Rumei to personally choose your stone that can be found in different shapes and colours. Then, under the guidance of a teacher, guests will learn how to write and paint a six-word mantra. The form and beauty of Tibetan characters have been used on ancient phonemic scripts for thousands of years. Afterwards guests will place their stone on the highest mountain or roadside anywhere along the Yunnan to Tibet route presenting their wishes to the sky.