The Beauty of Bhutan

Our last installment comes after our return to the States, but it is of a land well worth sharing about. Many people don’t even know where Bhutan is, or that it even exists. It is a small country, about the size of Switzerland, surrounded by eastern India on three sides and China on the northern border. It is a newly democratic society, who, given the opportunity to elect anybody to govern the country, elected their already ruling king because they love and respect him so much. Bhutan’s government does not measure Gross Domestic Product like so many other countries; rather they measure Gross National Happiness. Clearly, they have different priorities in this peaceful, verdant country. And the people there reflect it; they are kind, generous, and peaceful. Bhutan is the only country we traveled to where I always felt that even if something went terribly wrong, we would be in safe hands. If we were caught without shelter, it would be offered to us. If we were lost with no food, somebody would gladly feed us.

I think it is important to mention how we got into Bhutan. Typically, a tourist pays $250 a day to be there and must always have a guide. Fortunately for us, when Ryder was teaching in India back in 2005, the princess of Bhutan was one of his students. He had stayed in touch with the royal family and learned that they were opening a new college in Thimpu, the capital city. They were interested in interviewing him for a position at the school, and we were interested in exploring Bhutan (Ryder’s second time, my first). We were given a special guest visa and were able to enter the country for no fee. We were very fortunate, and a rarity. Throughout our time there, it was not uncommon for somebody to ask, in a perplexed tone, “Wait, where is your guide?” We always joked that we were getting the “Hey, who let the white people out of their cage?” look. It’s not that they do not appreciate Western tourists coming in, rather the high tariff to enter the country and the mandatory guide are ways to limit tourism; they believe in all things being sustainable.

Ryder and I arrived to Bhutan via Jaigon, India after leaving Darjeeling. We crossed the border and immediately released sighs of relief. Just by crossing an imaginary line, we suddenly found ourselves in a new world. The streets were not littered with trash, they weren’t overcrowded, there was no honking, and all the people smiled happily. We visited the immigration office, grabbed some breakfast, and found a shared taxi to Thimpu, the capital city. "City" is a relative term here. Although about 100,000 people live in Thimpu (this is the largest city in Bhutan by far with only about 500,000 people in the country total), it is not your typical city. There are no traffic lights, just a lone traffic director whose hands dance in a ballet like serenade to direct traffic through the only “busy” intersection in town. It’s a peaceful place with smaller foothills of the Himalaya surrounding it and beautiful monasteries up and down the valley. We stayed for a couple of days, eating our first Bhutanese meals and meeting with our contacts in the city. The food in Bhutan is well worth a mention. The national dish is ama datsi, translated: chilis and cheese. The dish is literally hot chilis cut into quarters and cooked in a light cheese sauce. It is very tasty, but almost impossibly spicy. My first few experiences with the food in Bhutan left me with tears streaming down my beet red face, on a total body high where I felt like my face was slowly crumblintg off my head. Ryder made fun of me as I got more and more talkative during the meals about absolute nonsense, and the kitchen staff would come out to watch me eat and suffer, laughing the whole time. One night, I thought I’d take a break and eat some “vegetable noodle soup”; I was given a bowl of Wai Wai (a better Asian version of Top Ramen) with about 30 chopped up chilis and a couple slices of cabbage. I think it was one of the spiciest meals I had the whole time there. After about a week, I stopped having such strong reactions to the food and actually began craving my daily bowl of 10 chilis. I’m surprised my stomach held up considering “the people in Bhutan have many problem with ulcers from such hot food”, as Bhutanese friend pointed out. There was only one dish that I did not finish, and that was after a Bhutanese man saw me involuntarily crying over the food and said “Yes, this one very hot…even me, I do not finish”. I hastily pushed away the remaining half of my ama datsi, happy to feel justified in wanting to stop the pain, and told Ryder “He's Bhtuanese...if he can’t do it, then I don’t have to either!”.

Anyway, our most interesting trip near Thimpu was to Tango monastery. A beautiful, sacred site, it is a 30 minute hike through rhododendron forest to reach the monastery. Perched on the hillside, looking out over the forested mountains, it is truly a place of refuge. While we were there, we watched the monks make torma, detailed yak butter sculptures used in ceremonies. They use different dyes in the butter to create a whole array of colors and create ornate images of different sacred symbols and scenes on sculptures sometimes 2-3 feet high. The monks equally took us in and fed us a fantastic meal of shamu datsi (wild mushrooms, chilis and cheese), red rice, and other fantastic foods. They eagerly spoke to us and shared their own stories of when they arrived at the monastery and how long they have been monks. Stranded 40 minutes from town as our taxi had dropped us and ran, at the end of the hike a nice man from the power company gave us a 20 minute ride out of his way to where we could catch a shared taxi back to the city. The whole day was quintessential Bhutan.

From Thimpu we went to Paro where we visited with a rinpoche, met up with some friends of Ryder’s from his last trip, explored the countryside and went to the absolutely fantastic Toksang monastery. Perched on a 3,000 foot cliff, it seems impossible that human hands could have built such a magical place. We hiked an hour and half with many pilgrims to get to the monastery from the valley floor. We befriended a group of school boys about 14 years old on the way up, and they excitedly told us about how Guru Rinpoche flew to this site on the back of a tiger and how we could see the heart of a demon, a perfect smooth oval rock about 2 feet across embedded in an enormous boulder, that Guru Rinpoche vanquished further along the trail. They also played some Akon for us on their phones to keep us motivated on the walk (as random as it is, Akon is the most popular foreign artist in Bhutan).

Our next big journey was about 150 miles to the east in Bumthang and it took 14 hours on a bus to get there. The longest stretch of straight road in Bhutan is 4 kilometers, and there is only one…it wasn’t to be found on the road we traveled. Bumthang is known as the “Switzerland of Bhutan” for its beautiful countryside and dramatic mountain views. Northern and Western Bhutan are dominated by the Himalaya, with some peaks well over 20,000 feet. None of these peaks have been climbed and it is forbidden to do so by the government, as it is believed that they are the dwelling places of the holy spirits and dakinis. Here we enjoyed delicious cheese, stunning countryside, breathtaking temples, and visiting some of the holiest Buddhist sites in the country. The Bhutanese are devoutly Buddhist and it is apparent in every interaction you have with them. They clearly value the happiness of others and building their lives on a stable spiritual foundation. I’ve never been in another country where, when taking a bus in the morning, prayers are played over the radio and all the people on the bus are quietly listening or chanting to themselves. It was in Bumthang that we got to attend two different lama dance events. These are holy dances performed by the monks for the public at their monasteries. They wear incredibly intricate costumes and masks while they leap, bound, and spin Buddhist stories. I think they were one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

After a few days in Bumthang we headed back to Thimpu. Our slightly faster 12 hour bus ride was made interesting by our comical bus driver who threw pieces of bubble gum, at not only my head, but those road workers that we passed along the way as well (I’ll never forget the visual of these poor workers slaving away and looking confused as pieces of gum bounced off their yellow hard hats) and enthusiastically cried “A-Y-K, yak!!!!” in his limited English as we passed the yaks on the road and stopped so we could take pictures.

I’ll wrap this up by mentioning that in our final day in Bhutan, we met up with a friend of Ryder’s mom in Thimpu who took us on a great outing to a mountain pass where we could see the tallest peaks of Bhutan, to a quiet, solitary nunnery where those who have so little sat us down and offered us tea and snacks, and finally took us to visit a high school that would like to hire us should we ever want to move to Bhutan. We ended our adventures in Bhutan with a crazy ride back to the border, during which, to make a long story short, road construction to widen the narrow mountain pass threatened to make us miss our chance to get to the airport in India to fly back to Delhi and eventually home. Scared we would be stranded in India forever if we missed our flight, we pushed the envelope a little too far, only to be saved by a Nepali road worker (there are a lot of immigrant workers in Bhutan) who was screaming at our taxi driver in Nepali not to move another inch on the road, while Ryder screamed back that we needed to go, and only seconds later an enormous explosion went off that made our windshield bend inwards and our ears rattle. As enormous boulders thundered down the cliffs a couple of hundred feet in front of us, Ryder bowed his head to the Nepali man in many thanks for not letting us go one inch further. After they moved all the debris, we passed through, and finally reached the border only to discover that there were road blocks all over that weren’t letting cars in or out of the area. The tribal people of the region were protesting the arrest of their leaders by the Indian government. A friendly Indian man who ran the guest house where we stayed (for $4) when we first passed through and where we left a bag, threw our stuff into the back of his car and said “We must try to make it to train station or you may never get out!” and spontaneously joined a police caravan going through all the blockades (where trucks and cars were lined up a mile each direction and not moving any time soon). As we raced past pretending to be a part of something much more important, the tribal people holding their bows and arrows looked us in the eye but never stopped us. We arrived at the train station safe and sound, happily took our hard, wooden seats and started our journey home.

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