Advertisement
Published: April 2nd 2014
Edit Blog Post
Day 4 - Thimpu
The day started with a breakfast of banana flavoured cornflakes, served with hot milk - different was the best description. There was toast and marmalade, and tea, so it wasn't all bad.
After packing in quite a lot the previous day, we still had some of the main sights to visit. First on the agenda was the National Memorial Chorten. This Tibetan style Chorten is one of the most visible sights, and we had seen it lit up the night before. It was built in 1974 as a memorial to the 3rd king. Here we saw people circling the chorten similar to those we had seen in Tibet clutching their prayer wheels and 108 beads, chanting to themselves and off to one side a section for those who wished to postulate either half, or fully. We went round once, and then after saying lets go round again, we had to do 3 turns, you can only do it in odd numbers. Some of the older guys were taking their circuits as more of a route march than an amble round. There were some huge prayer wheels near the entrance that took some shifting!
We
then travelled to just outside the edges of Thimpu, which isn't hard, it's hardly what you would call a sprawling metropolis. The fort of Simtokha Dzong was built in 1629 and is said to be the first built in Bhutan. Inside, and slightly oddly, tied to the pillars in the temple were guns and armour including shields. We have never seen that before. There was also a large statue compassion Buddha with its many arms and heads reaching out to all. Unfortunately as with all these places, once inside you can't take pictures, but trust us the size of all these statues and the detail on them and the embroidery hangings that surround them is impressive. I guess if I was being critical, they could do with a dust!
From here we set off up the surrounding hillsides even further. Thimpu is in a valley, so all these fortresses etc are on the hills that surround it. We arrived in a building site, no health and safety here! And walked straight in to where they are building what the Bhutanese are tentatively called the Eighth Wonder. It is a 42m tall guilded bronze statue, which will eventually hold 125,000
smaller statues of Buddha. The statue was made off site and transported in, and is being funded by private donations from Thailand amongst other places. It commands an impressive position on the hillside gleaming at Thimpu below, and when completed will house several chapels and will be completed in the next couple of years.
We took a short walk into the National Park, clearly a good picnic spot for the locals, to get a view out over Thimpu and of the bronze Buddha. There were also countless prayer flags, some of the traditional small red, blue, yellow and green ones - goendhar, wind flags - lungdhar erected for good luck, and victory flags erected to help gain spiritual help towards winning.
Our final destination before lunch was to Changangkha Lhakhang, again perched on top of a hill. Outside were prayer wheels the whole way round the outside of the building which we turned. Inside we rolled die, and Russ rolled 11 with his first throw - very auspicious as it is the number of that temple. I had to have two turns before I rolled a good enough number. Parents traditionally take their children there as newborns for
a blessing, and as we descended the steps, a young couple were coming up and they kindly let us take their picture.
Lunch was at the Bhutan Kitchen, a different place from the day before. We were brought traditional butter tea made with water, butter and salt. Slightly alarmingly it was pink in colour, only luke warm and just like drinking pure liquid butter - we didn't finish it.
After lunch we went to see the national animal of Bhutan - the Takin. Originally established as a zoo, the king decided that keeping animals in this way was against the beliefs of Buddhism and it was disbanded. The animals were released into the wild, but the Takins were so tame that they wandered onto the streets of Thimpu, so they put them back into captivity. It has to be said, they are rather odd looking creatures, sort of a moose with no antlers. Legend has it that it was born from story of the Divine Madman (famous for his unorthodox way of teaching) where he demanded a whole cow and a goat for lunch. Once devoured, he took the head of the goat and stuck it onto the
bones of the cow, and snapped his figures and it got up and began to graze...... It looks like they are going to open a cafe/visitor centre as there is a brand new building that it empty, just a shame it wasn't open.
What we had come to expect, was that our guide went a little "off piste" from the given itinerary that we had been given, and next he took us to the Zilukha Nunnery, which had an enclosed Chorten in its main courtyard but a distinct lack of nuns. Normally it is home to about 30 nuns, but there was just one! The rest were on visits away from the nunnery.
This was our program for the day finished, so we asked if we could visit the post office as the guide book had indicated that they were big on stamps for all occasions and we wondered what all the fuss was about. To be fair, they weren't wrong, once you have got passed the royal wedding stamps, they had British trains, space exploration, the Olympic Games, animals, flowers and images of Buddha, all of which you could buy as a souvenir.
From here we
persuaded our guide that we didn't need accompanying, and he dropped us outside the row of handicraft stalls. Each was in a raffia style hut which reminded us a little of the Christmas markets at home, but with less variety! We made a couple of small purchases, and headed back to the hotel on foot, passing the archery ground, where the quality of bow had been upgraded to carbon fibre rather than bamboo, and they were taking it all rather more seriously.
Dinner wasn't buffet style, as the hotel was hosting a dinner, so instead a lot of small dishes were brought out to us. It was actually a bit better, and at least the naan was hot, but we still couldn't manage the mushrooms in milk nor the cottage cheese!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.207s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 23; qc: 95; dbt: 0.1733s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb