Day 1- March 18 – ARRIVAL IN BHUTAN – Amy

Ah, Bhutan. You both exceeded my expectations and totally underwhelmed me. While not the radically unwesternized Shangri-la we were dreaming of, you were fairly rad nonetheless.

We arrived at the airport in Bangkok at 5 am to get our hand-printed tickets to Bhutan. Although our return flight was 1 week away, it was only at this moment that we were able to get the (supposed) time of departure. The flight was lovely, with some of the best airplane food we’ve had. (This would later prove to be misleading. The food in Bhutan was, to my taste, some of the least interesting in Asia. More on this later.) Shortly before our arrival, the pilot came on the pa system and warned us that some passengers considered the landing style of the plane to be rather alarming, but assured us there was nothing to worry about. We flew past some incredibly steep peaks – well, the steepest – we got a great look at Everest poking through the clouds – and then we plunged rather sharply downwards and came to a stop.

We deplaned, and found ourselves in a beautiful valley next to a very small and beautiful airport. The airport building is covered in paintings of religious symbols. (We found out later that most public buildings are required to be.) We were very excited to be on the ground, passed quickly through customs and waited at the front entrance for our guide and driver. And waited. And waited a few more. All the other passengers had left with their smiling guides. After another 10 minutes or so, we saw a new pair arrive. They were, as were all the other guides, dressed in the traditional Go – a sort of knee-length kimono for men, worn with tall dress socks and dress shoes.

Our fellows, I noted had bright, candy-apple red mouths, smeared a little beyond the perimeter of their lips. This turned out to be the product of betel nut, the slightly narcotic, highly addictive chewing substance of most adult Bhutanese. It is actually a nut, smeared with a paste of lyme (which looks like ash) and wrapped in a leaf. You place the whole package in your mouth and chew it to the degree you want to get high. Later that day, they shared some with us, but warned us not to swallow, as we would get pretty woozy and probably have terrific diarrhea. We took their advice, but as a result we didn’t really feel much, though I still got the terrific diarrhea. (surprise!) We spat out a ton of red juice – the ground in Bhutan is covered with huge, bright red blotches from where people spit! Anyway. After meeting Kinzang, our guide, and Pima, our driver, we went back to our hotel in Paro. The room was *beautiful*. Although it was two single beds – a repeat problem on our honeymoon! – it is perhaps my favorite of all the rooms we’ve stayed in anywhere. Outside our window, there was an incredible view of a snow-capped mountain, over which the moon rose, and the surrounding Paro valley.

Inside, the room was covered floor to ceiling with religious paintings – dragons, swirls, brilliant patterns of interlocking squares.

We started our tour that day by visiting the ruins of a Dzong (fortress) out in the countryside and a visit to the local monastery. We entered the monastery by walking around it clockwise first, as Bhutanese Buddhist custom proscribes. All along the exterior wall were prayer wheels – little spinning tops, upon which are written prayers, permanently affixed to niches in the wall . They, too, were to be spun clockwise as you go by. (Apparently, this increases exponentially the number of prayers an individual can say. Each spin of a prayer wheel is considered a complete prayer, and you spin it clockwise so the prayer goes in the right order. Saves time! Maximizes blessings!)

The interior of the monastery was dark, with very old, wide-board wooden floors, walls covered floor to ceiling with religious paintings – this time with very huge, detailed portraits of mythical figures, and an altar filled with ornately sculpted, bright pastel pillars made out of butter! This would prove to be a very typical Bhutanese monastery – very ancient and very beautiful.

We returned to our hotel for the night, and I felt we were truly in a different world.

Day 2 – March 19 – PARO TSECHU & NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM – Amy

The following morning we went to what I can only describe as the most medieval experience of my life. On the grounds of a 15th century fortress, in a natural amphitheatre with hay strewn around my feet, the people all in traditional dress, we watched day 3 of the five day religious ceremony known as the Paro Tsechu. We saw only 2 and a half dances that day, as each dance lasts between two and three hours. The musical accompaniment is comprised of 6 foot long telescoping bugles, played by monks standing on the rooftops in flowing orange robes. Other monks sit below and play rhythmic bells and drums. A monk/dancer wearing a many-layered colorful skirt and a large deer mask with a full rack, streamers dangling from each horn, twirls continuously in a slow dervish motion.

Another monk/dancer wearing a giant man’s head mask represents the hunter. They slowly act/dance out a 3 hour morality tale about Bhuddist conversion. Meanwhile, a clown dressed all in red, wearing a commedia dellárte-type red wooden mask with a huge nose, carries an 18 inch wooden penis and makes his way through the crowd, cracking jokes, hugging people, and soliciting donations for the monks. (Did I mention the presence of the ‘male organ’ – as our guide and we agreed to refer to it – in the catalog of religious symbols of Bhutan? It is revered, painted on houses, and all of our hotels, even in Thimpu – the ‘big’ city – had a mobile of a penis and a sword dangling from all four corners of the roof. It is considered a warning to evil spirits to stay away, as in: “There’s a weenie here! Look out!”)

After lunch we went just up the hill to visit the strangely conch-shaped National Museum of Bhutan, which was moderately interesting, for an arduous two hours. I was itching to get back to the Tsechu the whole time. The dances of the Paro Tsechu were some of the most amazing things I have ever seen. They were incredibly long and repetitive, but I was riveted. I could have watched it all day long for the whole five days. Unfortunately, our pre-arranged itinerary did not permit this. Plus Kinzang seemed a little bit over the mystique of the Tsechu, being more interested in impressive ring tones, and we ended up getting a total of about 2 full days in, but MAN. Were they incredible. For me, the highlight of the trip.

Day 3 – March 20 – Ramon

TAKSTANG MONASTERY! This morning we´re trekking up to the Tiger´s Nest (AKA Takstang Monastery) which is perched on the end of a steep cliff above the Paro Valley. This is the day I´ve been waiting for since we decided to come to Bhutan and the Tiger´s Nest doesn´t disappoint even a little bit.

We get to the bottom of the mountain at 8 AM ready to hike up before it gets too hot. The trek is steep and difficult, and many people choose to ride donkeys to the top but we prefer to walk it. Of course, the Bhutanese who are used to this terrain take even steeper shortcuts up the mountain at inclines twice as steep as ours, and what takes them only an hour and a half takes us 4 hours.

Most of the way up is beautiful and great smelling pine forest. Every now and again we get to a clearing where we can see the monastery getting a little bit closer and a little bit bigger.

It´s getting harder to breathe and even harder to believe that people carried materials up by hand to build this thing. On the trek we learn that the path we´re hiking on is only a few years old, and that the materials were carried up what we were calling the shortcut. Wow!

After 3 hours, we make it up to the height of Takstang, only it´s on the other side of a gorge from us.

From here, we have to hike down into the gorge and back up to reach the Tiger´s Nest. We stop several times. The air is thin and we´re real short of breath but finally we make it up. It´s incredible that this exists here. It is built directly into the rock face on the side of a mountain. The drop from the cliff is over 6000 feet. Inside, there are several prayer rooms, living quarters for the monks, and incredible vistas down into the valley.

It´s called the Tiger´s Nest because it was founded by the Guru Rimpoche (known in Bhutan as the second Buddha) who arrived at this spot by riding a flying tigress (who was actually his wife who had taken the form of a tigress) to meditate. The reason it is so difficult to access is because the Bhutanese believe that one must suffer in order to gain merits, and walking up here is suffering. It is because of this that so many of the monasterys and nunneries in Bhutan are built high up in the Himalayan foothills.

On the way down the mountain, we´re trying to hustle because we´re afraid we´ll miss out on the Paro festival which we wanted to see some more of today. We´re debating skipping lunch to go straight there but there´s no way. This has been challenging and we need to eat something before continuing. Unfortunately, by the time we arrive at the festival we only get to see about 20 minutes of the last dance before it´s all done for the day.

Disappointed by this, we decide to try and make the best of it by visiting the Rimpong Dzong (fortress). Kinzang, our guide, doesn´t want to go because it´s now raining and he says, “Once you´ve seen one Dzong, you´ve pretty much seen them all.”

We don´t cave, however, and are rewarded for our obstinance as we witness a crazy procession of performers from the festival, monks, and some high ranking lamas as they enter the Dzong. The musicians are blasting away on their reedy horns and banging cymbals and it´s chaotic and awesome. It only lasts a minute or so but it´s really cool. If you´re a lama, everywhere you go you are followed by a procession like this. Intense.

This evening we´ve scheduled some traditional Bhutanese fare, so when we leave the Dzong we head to Kinzang´s uncle and aunt´s house for some afternoon butter tea. Yes, butter tea. It´s a traditional drink here and it consists of black tea, hot water, butter, and salt. You can also put some popped rice in it. I don´t know what to say about this drink. I think you have to really like butter to enjoy it. It´s very heavy and doesn´t sit too well with either of us though Amy´s reaction (she´s lactose intolerant) is less violent than feared.

A really nice part of this is that we get to spend some time with Kinzang´s aunt, uncle, grandmother, and cousins, whom he refers to as brother or sister. (We later a devise a system where he calls his relatives brother brother or cousin brother so that we understand). Also, we get to see a traditional farmhouse. The Bhutanese government has some rules concerning the construction of houses and one of them is that each one has a prayer room. This contains very colorful and beautiful paintings on the wall of the buddha, and Guru Rimpoche in many of his 8 incarnations, and of the 8 talisman´s of good tidings. Bhutan is a magical place in this way. The worshipped all have many different physical incarnations with different powers and there are many icons of good fortune. Throughout the country, there are paintings of these everywhere, on the outside of buildings particularly, which is also mandated by the government.

After butter tea, we head back to the hotel and rest for a bit before going back to Kinzang´s family´s for a traditional dinner. There is a reason that Bhutan is not known for it´s cuisine. Because of the country´s isolationist policies, there is little in the way of imported food, and because of the landscape, there is little in the way of fertile farmland. This is not a good combination. The dinner consists of red rice, which is eaten with every meal, very hot red chilis, and fried slabs of pig fat. Neither of us like it so much but we smile and we eat it. The family has decided that they won´t eat their dinner until later so they just hang out with us and watch while we feign delight. The truth is that it´s actually pretty great to be here. We feel really welcomed, and that far outweighs the funky pork.

Day 4 – March 21 – Ramon

Today is the final day of the festival. Our plan is to get to the Paro Dzong by 2:30 AM to see the ritual of the monks processing down the mountain carrying the giant thongdrol (hand painted scroll) of Guru Rimpoche and then unfurling it. Kinzang insists that as long as we get there between 4 and 5 we´ll see it. We ask him several times about this, our itinerary says it´s at 2:30, but he´s lived here his whole life, and he promises us that 4:00 is fine.

We get there a little after 4 and the scroll is hanging unfurled from the building on the square. This is a huge blow as we both really wanted to witness the procession and unfurling. We talk to some folks and it turns out that to see it, we should have been here at 2:30. Imagine that.

Now that we´re here, we´re watching the monks chanting, and a huge line of people trying to get to the scroll to touch it and give it money…this is to provide good luck for the next year. There are a few police officers with their arms linked, trying to contain the masses who want to get through, and allowing only a few through at a time.

Even though people keep trying to sneak by, and break the chain, the police are actually very jovial and laughing and joking with the crowd. At a certain point the chain is broken and chaos ensues. The mass of people surge forward and there is such a crowd at the scroll that many people can´t reach it so they just start hurling money at it. It´s hilarious, and helps us to forget about how cold we are for a moment.

The monks blessings continue and a new one starts to lead who has this incredibly low gurgly (frog-like actually) voice which he chants in, seemingly without taking a breath, for an hour or so. This sound coming out of him is ceaselessly entertaining, and the sun is rising over the Himalayas as well, warming us, and continuing to lift our spirits.

When the monks are finished saying their blessings, food is made available to everybody, mostly butter tea, popped rice, and loaves of bread are on the menu. Boys are running around filling up their go´s (traditional male Bhutanese dress, basically a bathrobe but fancier) with loaves of bread and taking them to their families. One boy next to us keeps reaching into his go and pulling out one more loaf, I think he had about 7 in there. People also come by with huge sacks of popped rice and just pour it into the go´s. All the men are carrying so much food they look 20 pounds heavier.

Once the food is distributed, the square is cleared and the last day of dancing begins. We´re glad for this since we saw so little yesterday. The best of these is the DANCE OF THE GING AND TSHOLING. The Ging are a collection of heroes made up of deities and fairies, and the Tsholing are the protectors of buddhism. This is a purification dance to discourage external demons before the arrival of Guru Rimpoche. The Ging dance around and beat everybody on the head with drumsticks to chase impurity out of the body. They then chase even the Tsholing away and perform a victory dance by beating their drums.

After purification, our time at the Tsechu is over, and we are off to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. We leave Paro behind and arrive in Thimpu at dusk, just in time to have a quick bite and walk around town, which at first glance seems like a conglomeration of crafts stores, before passing out, exhausted.

Day 5 – March 22 – Ramon

Today is our first full day in Thimpu and the beginning of the second half of our stay in Bhutan. we´re doing what amounts to a sightseeing tour and there´s a bunch on the agenda. Thimpu is quite small so it shouldn´t be too difficult to get everything in.

We start out by heading to the King´s memorial chorten. A chorten is a monument that begins with a round concrete mound and has a column growing out of it. This one was built in memory of the 3rd King of Bhutan and it´s a yawner. From there, we head to the Changgangkha monastery. It´s quite nice, but after seeing Tiger´s Nest and Kyichu Lhakang (Bhutan´s oldest monastery) earlier on the trip, it doesn´t impress much.

Next on the list is a nunnery. This is nice just because we´ve seen so many monastery´s and no nunneries so far. Of course, this particular nunnery had been a monastery when it was built, so architecturally it´s more of the same, though it does have a particularly lovely prayer room and a great view into the Thimpu valley. It´s also right next to the takin reserve which is just a big fenced in area that has several takin, Bhutan´s national animal. A takin is pretty similar to a yak, it´s as big as a cow and wooly. We feed them some bushes through the fence and then we´re off.

Next we´re supposed to go to the Royal School of Arts and Crafts, where Bhutan´s 12 sacred arts are taught. When we arrive at the school though, we see that it´s closed. This is the beginning of a very frustrating trend that continues until the end of the trip. In a few days it is Bhutan´s very first ever National Assembly elections. The King has recently abdicated the throne and declared that Bhutan will become a democracy. People are both excited and scared by this, and it´s certainly an interesting time to be here, as people are asking us a lot of questions about democracy. But because the election is just a few days away, the entire weekend (today is Saturday) has been declared a national holiday. Our tour operators didn´t make any plans or adjustments for this, so it looks like a lot of things may be closed, and we may have a lot of free time on our hands until we leave.

With the trip to the school cancelled, we go to the weekend market. It´s particularly slow because of the election (people must vote in the town they were born, so many vendors have left to travel home…one woman in her 60´s walked over 600 kilometers!) and as mentioned, there aren´t a ton of natural resources here so there´s nothing to interesting to try except for the dried cheese. It´s eaten as a snack here, but for the life of us we can´t figure out why. It´s incredibly hard, like hard candy actually, but it doesn´t melt in your mouth, and it doesn´t have much flavor. Seemingly, it´s purpose is to create saliva in your mouth, because not much else is happening. I can´t hack it and after a moment or two I spit it out.

To finish up today´s sightseeing tour, we head to the Taschidzong. This is the biggest fortress in the kingdom. It´s quite beautiful actually, and fancy. This is, after all, where the king comes for prayer. The buddha inside the prayer room is enormous, and is surrounded by all sorts of other statues of icons and incarnations of Bhutanese buddhism. We´re just getting a decent sense of what it must be like to worship here, when we have to leave. The dzong is only open to the public for 30 minutes a day, and ours is up.

Day 6 – March 23 – PHAJODING MONASTERY – Amy

Today, we went on a difficult and rewarding mini-trek. We began at 8:30am by driving off the road up into the woods on what appeared to be just a path, until it became too rock- and root-ridden to permit us to continue. There we met our ‘team’ – I had no idea you needed so many people for an overnight hike – and began our ascent. The path up to Phajoding Monastery was very, very steep. I am not much of an athlete to begin with, and my adult-onset mild asthma hinders me even further, so along the 5 hour hike from an elevation of 7000 feet to one of 11,100 ft, I had to stop every ten minutes or so to catch my breath. We hiked all morning, pouring sweat, and stopped to have lunch on the path at around 11:30. Our cook/guide assured us that this was an easy trek. Him and his huge calf muscles. All around us was incredible, old-growth pine forest. The air was very, very fresh. The king of Bhutan had decreed at some point that something like 70% of the country must remain covered with trees. Go him!

After lunch we started up again, up, up, up. The higher we got, the colder it got. By the time we emerged into the clearing before the monastery at 2:00pm, it had begun to snow.

 

It had been about 70 degress in the valley where we’d started. Our team proceeded to set up camp, finding a spot for the kitchen and for our tent. We were served hot tea and cookies as we sat huddling against the blowing snow. A goat came by and knocked over the milk on the tea-tray, snarfing the cookies in the process.

After napping in the tent in all of our clothes and inside our sleeping bags and still being unable to get warm, we had a look around the grounds of the monastery. It was ancient, as they all are, and crumbling with neglect. But the setting was serene – the high mountain air, the flapping prayer flags, the quiet. Prayer flags in Bhutan are placed on the advice of astrologers, who are consulted for everything from babies’ names to the recitation of prayers to the placement of bones. The location of prayer flags is usually influenced by the amount of merit to be gained in the act- in other words, they are put in incredibly difficult to reach places. The more work you do getting there, the idea goes, the more merit you earn. So from every cliff and mountain top, there are usually prayer flags to be seen. It’s quite impressive.

Because of the snow and the cold, we were not able to make the hike up to our actual destination, the mountain pass another hour and a half or so beyond the monastery. Instead, we contented ourselves with wandering the steep goat paths in the area and catching glimpses of the next monastery up the mountain.

We came back down for a lovely dinner in the head monk´s room, next to a toasty heater, and played ´Pick 2´´ – the Bhutan version of Uno – for a couple of hours with our guides. Although it was strictly forbidden, the monks took pity on us and let us sleep in an unused room inside the monastery. I guess they figured it was better to break the rules than to let us die. This was pretty cool. We woke up to the ringing of the gong and the chanting of the monks the next morning.

Day 7 – March 24 – THE ELECTIONS – Amy

We had hoped that we might get a chance to hike up to the pass this morning, as the weather was fine and clear, but the first ever Bhutan national elections were to be held today, and most of our team had to hit the trail back down in the early morning. Everyone who wanted to vote had to do so in the town of their birth, so some people had to drive (or walk) many hours to get to their voting place. While this election business sounds very exciting, it was perhaps more so for the Bhutanese than for the visiting tourist. Because of the elections, everything was still closed, so for us it meant taking our time on the way down the mountain (a much faster trip than the way up!), stopping and meditating along the way (which was lovely and incredibly peaceful), and then accompanying Kinzang to his polling place so he could vote. This was also more exciting for him than for us, though still interesting to see. It was all very peaceable, though each person was searched before going into the voting booth. Their fingers were dipped in ink, a la Iraq. After he voted, we went to visit his sister to have some more Bhutanese-style tea: this time black tea with salt. A lot of it! Weird. We stayed for a nice 45 minute chat with his very lovely sister, and afterwards, since everything was still closed, we were dropped off at our hotel around 4:30 and informed that we probably would like to take a rest. Fortunately for us, the shops opened back up after 5pm (when the elections were done) and we were thus permitted a rare unchaperoned walk around town. We even took in a movie – “Lengo II”, a love story about a deaf and mute Bhutanese guy who meets a deaf and mute Bhutanese girl. It was filled with some most offensive portrayals of deaf and mute people. Because of our pre-arranged dinner hour, we had to leave before the ending was revealed, but I’m sure it was heart-warming.

Day 8 – March 25 – Ramon

Today is our last day in Bhutan. Well, actually, all we´re doing is going to the airport so it´s not much of a day, but even so there´s a bit of drama. Bhutan´s airline, Druk Air, is the only airline allowed to fly into Bhutan (it has an impressive fleet of 2 planes!) and, for some reason, they change their flight schedule every 2 weeks or so.

The booking agent for the travel company told us that our plane would be leaving at 11 AM, but our ticket says it´s at 8:50 AM. we asked Kinzang to call the airline to get this sorted out and he returned saying that our flight leaves at 8;30. That means we have to leave the hotel at at 5 AM. That sucks but no big deal, we´re seasoned travelers now, and are used to leaving at odd times in order to get the least expensive mode of transport possible.

Well, we arrive at the airport at about 6:30, and we notice that there are very few people there. In fact, the airport´s not even open yet. Kinzang makes sure to drop us off and leave before we discover this so we´re just stranded for a while, waiting for the airport to open. It turns out that our flight is at 11, and that Kinzang, instead of calling the airline, called his boss to ask what time he should take us to the airport.

This is a frustrating way to end a trip that, amazing as it was, has had many frustrating moments in the last couple of days. There is some comfort, though not a ton, in that there are other travelers here early as well, as wrong about the time as we are. The worst part of this is that it has added 3 hours on to what was already scheduled as a 40 hour travel route to Uganda.

But consolation does come and here it´s in the form of the flight itself. Our plane is stopping in Kathmandu on the way to Calcutta, which means we´ll be flying by Mt. Everest. We´re on the right side of the plane when we see the peak. Actually, it´s only about 200 yards away and we fly past 3 of the 4 highest peaks in the world, towering over the clouds. It seems we´re at eye level with Everest. People are climbing all over the seats to try to get good photos, and I´m buoyed by the knowledge that beauty can strike when you least expect it.