Advertisement
Published: September 26th 2007
Edit Blog Post
My third day in Thimphu began with an alarm at 5:15am. I needed to shower for the annual bath. Basically you need to shower early in the morning before attending the festival and then receiving a blessing from Buddha. And at six am I was to meet Tshultrim for an early morning brisk walk. Brisk actually turned out to be frigid and I was poorly dressed, despite having brought hat, gloves, scarf and fleece, which I left in the hotel. Oh well…it woke me up, that’s for sure.
At breakfast, I ate by myself this time…which I don’t mind since it gives me an opportunity to listen to other peoples conversations and seriously, people talk about the weirdest things. One woman had a whole meal on the topic of doughnuts (I don’t think there are any in Bhutan). Anyway, she continues to discuss the doughnut makers and how they are nuts and drunks…I don’t understand this…did I miss something?? And then proceeds to say how upset she is her doughnut maker left the shop she likes in NYC but then a new one finally came in and she is now happy…I wish someone else had been there to hear this
crap!
Afterwards we made our way back to the festival again. This was the last day and the last dance was incredible! So much was going on and it led to the final Buddha being escorted in. You’ll have to see the pictures to get an idea of this…not to worry I took over 500 pictures today (I don’t know whether I am proud or embarrassed or I guess it is just the product of being a packman). Oy and my battery died! I couldn’t believe I didn’t bring my spare battery with me..thankfully my little camera had some juice in it. But the end pictures are not as good as they could have been, when Guru Rinpoche and his eight manifestations entered the courtyard. Prior to this, there was another masked dance in which I received a blessing from a dancer with a curved drumstick essentially, I suppose they are supposed to tap your head but it seemed as though they were nailing people on the head…it definitely wasn’t so gentle! But, ah what I do to try and fit into the culture.
Some of Tshultrim’s questions are fascinating to me, as well as everything I am
learning about him…Do you have cactus in your village? Just the fact that he calls NYC a village is amusing or maybe it’s the difference in translation. And he maybe eats a hamburger and pizza once or twice a year.
Speaking of food, it has been delicious! I am in serious carb heaven…what better person than me to offer rice, noodles and potatoes to for every meal! I’ve eaten some curry, questionable chicken, beef, tofu, red hot chili peppers…My favorite so far is red rice. I had never heard of this…and on the notion of rice, obviously I love my rice paddies (photographing them) and it is nearly harvest season, so they paddies are a mix of yellow and green and I have now learned the difference between red rice and white rice. You cant tell by seeing from afar, but it has to do with the height and white is shorter…im sure you were all dying to know. Oh and lots of food is still made with butter…not just butter tea…the onion soup and mushroom soups I have consumed are essentially butter tea with onions and mushrooms in them, respectively…and I still eat…ive buttered out.
Anyway, after
the festival we drove from Thimphu to Punakha. The ride was a little bit easier this go around. We reached the pass into the new valley at an elevation of over 3000 meters. This village or area is called Dochu La and there is a memorial of stupas built there, only recently put up in 2005. I can’t imagine that it’s all that far to Punakha, especially as the way a bird flies but its 78 kilometers I believe and it takes 3 hours! It was kind of reminiscent of when I was in Switzerland with my family in 94. We were taking the train to the ski resort and my father kept pointing out, oh wow look at that little cute town below…he did this maybe six times before he realized it was the same town! We were just snaking up the mountain…and that’s kind of how I felt here but only this time I was in the Himalayas and not the Alps and in a car not a train. Just a funny memory for me. And the curves and turns are ridiculous with very sparing guardrails. There are no lights either so its unimaginable to me to do
this at night! Think of the Rockies and trying to get to Aspen or Steamboat but 10 times worse!
I was also reminded of Vietnam…when we drove to Ha Long Bay there were a zillion locals selling pineapple on the sides of the road, one after the other and I didn’t understand who bought them and how do you choose whom to buy from? In Bhutan, there are similarly (maybe not as abundant) locals selling apples. Also, they may not squeeze an entire family on a motorbike here like in Vietnam, but they certainly fit their entire family and their neighbors family into their cars!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.05s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0197s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb