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Published: August 6th 2007
Waking up in the annex I fall prey to the usual tug of war; and as usual the warm bed always seems to lose in favour of a cold water shower, I don't know quite how that works. Dorji comes by to pick me up to drive me over to the hotel for breakfast, the token toasts with jam and some tea. It is a lovely morning, sunshine and quite warm already. I have some time to walk around town while we wait for the dzong to open up. Some of the shops located at the main square have already opened and I peek into the photo shop to inquire about film; turns out they don't stock such material at all, only an assortment of frames in various size and colour.
After a short ride to the dzong it is once again time for the guys to don their kabneys, the white scarves to hang over the left shoulder of the gho. Without it they will not be allowed inside. The dzong of Trashigang is strategically located on a cliff overlooking the Gamri Chhu valley and the highway leading to Mongar far below. This location also means that the building
itself is rather compact and save for the front side facing you it is not possible to view its other sides unless you fancy a trip to gain a bit of distance, preferably climbing the other side of the valley. On the other hand, the view from here is great. So, a bit of give and take I guess. During our visit we interrupt young monks chanting their mantras, some of them continue their monotone chanting, each doing their own verse in their own pace, leading to a perfect cacophony, a piercing wall of random noise. We notice two young monks who have withdrawn to a window where they sit and listen to the radio using a cell phone. Ambition between individual monks differs greatly, while some are truly dedicated and have volunteered most are placed here at a very young age by their parents, some of them clearly having little interest in the spiritual realm. Times are changing though, not so many kids are placed in the monasteries as before.
After our brief visit it is time to leave Trashigang for our excursion to the town of Trashiyangtse. Situated due north from Trashigang it is the centre point
of a province of its own. However, travel services are limited, and seeing as we will cover a long distance tomorrow we will not stay for the night but return to Trashigang in the late afternoon. The distance to Trashiyangtse is 45 kilometers from
Chazam checkpoint, adding up the total to 55 kms from the city proper. Once again the proper documents are necessary for you to proceed, as the Chazam bridge effectively controls access to the entire central and western Bhutan.
The road to Trashiyangtse follows the Kulong Chhu river ravine as it cuts its way through the dry and dusty cliffs. The climate in the east of the country really is quite different to central and western Bhutan. The cliffsides are often bared and landslides of course not uncommon. The scenery is quite beautiful though, and on a dry and sunny day it gets really warm and comfortable. Some thirteen kilometers out of Chazam the road finds its way past the
Gom Khora lhakang, a beautiful and small temple located just by the river just below the road. At this stage of the trip I had set the task upon myself to record the distances and names
of towns and villages we drove through, making use of the ever present white and yellow milestones dotting the roadside. The primary goal was to add some more detail in the photo descriptions which otherwise tend to blur into a mess of forgotten places. The milestone information is not always accurate but on the whole quite useful.
Apart from the occasional stop for a photo there isn't much action on the road between Gom Khora and Trashiyangtse. There were some sections were we had to roll up the windows and switch off the A/C, as the road turned into sand and dust in sections where rock- and mudslides had occurred, the sand and dirt lying bare and open for more erosion.
Nearing our destination we come upon a big sign informing that the province is declared tobacco free, and smokers risk being fined on the spot, and attempting to sell it doesn't fare any better. Of course there are still people smoking here and there, but I cannot recall having met anyone smoking on my travels through Bhutan so it obviously takes place in a more discrete fashion. Shortly before driving into Trashiyangtse the old dzong comes into
view, lying on a small hill on the opposite side of the valley a few kilometers out of town. In this dzongkhag there are actually two dzongs, the monks stay here while the provincial administration has moved into a rather newly built dzong (1997) on a hill overlooking the town. Actually, to be precise, the proper name of the town is
Karmaling, the name Trashiyangtse pointing to the location of the old dzong, but this name has been used synonymously with Karmaling town as well.
After driving through the narrow valley the hills suddenly give way for a slope big enough to produce a settlement, and as the road turns around a hill the town of Karmaling finally comes into view in the valley just below the road, and it does so in a spectacular fashion. On the opposite side of town the new dzong overlooks the town while at the base of the valley, just by the river, lies the main attraction, the large
Chorten Kora compound. This is another of the large chortens inspired by the famous
Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu. Seeing as the local people of the valley were deeply religious and wanted to visit the
Boudhanath stupa in Nepal a local lama went there and carved a design of the Nepali stupa into a radish which was brought back and used to raise the Chorten Kora. However, it is not an exact replica, seeing as the radish carrying the inscription shrunk a bit during the journey home and hence the dimensions of the design were affected. There is also a more touching side to the history of the chorten. It is said that a young girl sacrificed herself and was literally placed inside the stupa, the exact reason for this I do not know.
Over at the chorten we bump in to two other small travel parties, one of them being the British couple we'd met at dinner the night before. Tshering also has a sister resident in Karmaling, and before lunch he went over with some supplies for her while I had a quick look around town. The Lonely Planet comments that it takes ten minutes to see the whole town, and while that is an exaggeration it still has a point. Ny now the beautiful weather had turned to ominous looking clouds and the temperature dropped somewhat. As we prepared for our
packlunch the rain started falling and we ended up having it from the boot of the car in a parking lot.
The road ends at Trashiyangtse but you can continue on foot for an hour or so to reach Bomdeling, which is a good spot for seeing the famous black necked cranes during wintertime. Sometimes they will also be seen in the terraces surrounding Karmaling. We on the other hand continue south to reach the old dzong on the other side of the river, but when we reach there the rain is so heavy that we have to seek shelter at the front gate waiting for it to stop. While waiting we speculate about the condition of the road, further landslides cannot be excluded. As the rain eases a bit we begin a tour of the compound. The dzong is fairly small and the chilly wind and smell of wet wood makes me wonder just how romantic dzong life really is. In the main temple I challenge Tshering that I can identify the three main bodhisattvas having seen quite a few of them by now and wanting to prove that I have at least learnt something. In this case
the temple is dedicated to Guru Rimpoche, flanked by Buddha Sakyamuni and Shabdrung Rimpoche.
There aren't really that many to keep track off, the major ones stay well below the dozen, and of these only a handful are typically the main figures. Apart from Lord Buddha in his various forms the most commonly seen bodhisattvas would be Guru Rimpoche and the Shabdrung, the first ruler of Bhutan. To spice it up a bit some characters appear in various forms, such as for example Chann Dorji, the frightful monstruous appearance of Guru Rimpoche when he is out subduing evil spirits. Speaking of these different forms, the Trashiyangtse dzong also has a large study hall with lavishly decorated walls filled with a number of unusual frightful appearances of Guru Rimpoche that we had not encountered elsewhere, which proved very interesting to probe a bit deeper. During our conversation with the monks they ask me about my own religion, do we have characters similar to theirs? Instead of speaking about Christianity I tell them a bit about the legendary gods followed by the Vikings which they find very funny.
Just like in several other temples the study room also contains the
teachings of Lord Buddha, collected in 108 volumes that are each incredibly heavy. We are also allowed to visit the shrine of the local deities, and just as last time, these three local warlords are a force to be reckoned with. Apart from the room being clad with shields, swords and old rifles there is also the skin of a man and a peculiar bonepipe, made from the thighbone of a human. Blowing it will summon evil spirits that will consume your flesh -remember kids, do not try this at home!
The dzong houses around 100 monks, and on our way out we meet with the abbott just outside a study room where about half of them are busy reciting their mantras in yet another cacophony of voices. As we prepare to leave the rain has finally given up and the clouds have begun to scatter a little, but the weather doesn't really improve a lot. We make a short stop over at the new dzong in Karmaling to take some pictures of it, something which proves difficult, as again, the building occupies the highground and there simply isn't enough room to walk around it to get good shots
Monks reading their mantras at the dzong of it, which irritates me a bit as I find it quite attractive. Again, shooting dzongs in Bhutan often requires a tele lens and a cliffside on the opposite side of the valley.
On the way back I say a silent prayer that the road will still be intact not really wanting to spend the night out here. We have a number of interesting encounters along the road. The first is a pack of langur monkeys, possibly the golden variety, they didn't really give us much chance to study but instead the pack races and jumps across the road and throw themselves out into the leaves of the trees in the slope below. Later we come up on two otter like mammals dashing across the road and moments later we nearly collide with a SUV full of monks. Back in Trashigang darkness falls again, and doubly so when the power goes out again, leaving the whole town black.
I sit down with the guys to have dinner at the hotel, we get white rice, vegetables, pork, mushrooms and potato cheese. The mushroom soup has a stroke of ginger in it which
really comes out nice. The restaurant is mainly filled with drivers and guides, as the other guests are dining in the lawn outside. Of course we come to speak to them, and before long half of them are half bent backwards from laughter as I practice my newly learnt dzongkha curses. A man with a littlemoustasch encourages me that this is the way to learn alanguage, and how frankness will always be met with frankness, reservation with reservation and friendship with friendship and so on. The he takes me aside and tells me that he can fix real Bhutanese girls, as a friendly courtesy...
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