Both Sides of the Glass
22 - 25 Feb, Ian
The last time I wrote we'd had a one night hotel
stop in the middle of an eight day trek. Reaching the hotel in the middle of
the morning enabled us to take a stand against camping's ineluctable pull
towards a state of total damp and dirt but we need an entire 24 hour cycle to
re-boot ourselves properly. Upon arrival at the hotel we each had a shower,
swapped clothes around in our bags, did some washing and drying and then had
lunch. After lunch Zoe and I went to the Punakha Dzong that I wrote about
before, while Paula continued with the chores and had some alone time and Heidi
restored herself with a couple of episodes of
The
Simpsons (since we'd met up again with my
mac). After returning from the Dzong I had a couple of hours before dinner to
organise and back up my photos and write a blog; and after dinner we watched an
episode of 24
and then had an early night in our comfy
beds.
Before breakfast the next morning the receptionist was kind enough to let me unplug the phone line from her PC and stick it in my mac and then log me onto the internet using the hotel's access credentials so I could check mail and post my blog. They're nice like that here: in many places that would be a firing offence.
We finished the trek today. Over the last four days - two full ones followed by two shorties - we've headed uphill and down again sinusoidally, reaching peaks of 2,500m, 2,700m and then 2,200m before dropping back down into a new valley this morning. We began from a crematorium behind the Punakha Dzong, where there was some action underway. Since we were right at the wall I was a little curious to see how they arrange the corpse to be sitting when they burn it, but good manners got the better of me and we didn't stop to gawp. Instead we crossed the river into which ash from the crematorium is released, using the longest suspension bridge in Bhutan with a span of 150 metres. It was just wide enough for two people walking in opposite directions to pass and it wobbled a great deal, but this didn't discourage a motorcyclist from coming over, driving past as I was bracing myself against vertigo.
Along the far bank of the river we met up with the ponies who would carry our bags. On this half of the trek we also pressed a pony into occasional use for carrying one of the girls - more often Heidi - up the steeper climbs. Once Bhim had mentioned the possibility as we set out for the Tiger's Nest monastery last week Heidi had asked about it more than once, and it seemed unkind not to let her have a ride. As we waited for the ponies to be prepared a lady from the nearest house came and gave Zoe a length of sugar cane. We had it once we'd made camp later in the day, and enjoyed it. The next day another lady pulled some small oranges out from under her kira for the girls to take, and they were also good.
Although the days were not too long and the altitude gain wasn't too severe, in the heat of midday the walking was sometimes stern. While the ponies ferried our bags (and sometimes a child) from site to site, Bhim, our guide, carried little with him, and the only water and first aid supplies we had with us were those we packed ourselves. Maybe we're brought up to worry too much - or maybe not, since the life expectancy at birth is 25 years greater in the UK than in Bhutan.
Early in our walk we passed a house where a woman was making "whisky" outdoors. Our local guide bought some, which I feared I might have to taste on the spot. It was sold in an old soda bottle and was cloudy and grey in colour, and I could think of nothing I wanted to try less during a steep uphill walk in the sun. Luckily, he didn't buy it to share.
But I did try the doma, or betel nut. You can tell that everyone has it by the red stains on their mouths and teeth (when we first met Bhim Paula thought he was bleeding at the mouth) and the uniformly appalling state of dentistry. Partaking in it is quite a routine: you take a nut and cut it to the right size. This is then rolled in a leaf that had been smeared with a pink/white lime paste and you chew the whole thing slowly. It brings a hot glow around the face starting with the ears. It has a very distinctive taste - and if you spend any time around one of the locals you'll soon recognise the smell - but it's not one that I can recommend. Most people spit it out and you can frequently see the tell-tale red circles on the ground. The government has half-heartedly discouraging doma because of its ill effects to the teeth and mouth, which ultimately include oral cancer. If they really wanted to discourage it they'd ban it, as they've banned tobacco - a useful piece of knowledge for any smokers planning on spending much time here. Unlike doma, tobacco got the thumbs down from the religious authorities, who opined that it was not only unhealthy but also un-Buddhist. I haven't seen a single cigarette since we got to Bhutan but doma is ubiquitous. When I asked him Bhim claimed to have doma about five times a day; indicating the nearest red-toothed pony guy he said that he probably had about 40 per day.
The village we pitched at on Wednesday struck me initially as particularly poor. Although the houses were large many weren't plastered and those that were weren't painted with motifs like many others we've seen. The woodwork was also undecorated and sorry looking, and the sense of poverty was heightened by the procession of women walking past burdened underneath huge bundles of leaves. These leaves are collected in pens and later spread over fields of chillies where they are burned, which apparently helps the chillies grow.
In fact, the village was an affluent one, and one of the handful of houses that stood above our site was the family home of the current Prime Minister of Bhutan.
Our tents were set on level ground just below the village. Looking out, acres and acres of terraced fields ran up to the head of the valley between forested hills. Just at the other side of the valley there was another hamlet. As night fell and we turned in we heard the women who after a day in the fields were getting going on a new house, stamping down the watered clay into mud bricks in situ and singing as they did so.
Our pitch on Wednesday night was our least favourite. We camped on a small patch of land next to a run-down temple. As well as lacking the charm of the others there were flies everywhere, to the point where I feared for the food: none of us tried the pork dish that evening. The site was redeemed a little the next morning when Bhim took me round the temple and explained its history. If you come to Bhutan you'll hear of the divine madman - Lam Drukpa Kinley - who is well liked here. He lived through the turn of the sixteenth century and had unconventional methods for a lama. For example, since he knew the day that people he ran into would die he often helped them by killing them in advance so as to arrange a more propitious transition. He was also peripatetic and notoriously promiscuous, with consorts in many of the places that he wandered between. His favourite consort lived in the temple we camped next to, which became a temple after her death. Alongside the tigers and dragons, many of the houses sport what are politely called "fertility symbols" painted brightly on their exterior walls, which celebrate the mayhem of Drukpa Kinley and have protective value.
The walk yesterday was shorter and easier than those that preceded it, although our spirits were not raised when Bhim told us as we crossed the only road of the day that if we walked for three km along it we'd reach the hotel where we were staying the next night. This was unnecessary information - we approached the hotel by a diffferent route and don't have good maps - and presenting us with it was not an act of psychological mastery. But we soon forgot it.
Everywhere we've been in Thailand, Laos and Bhutan the locals have been entranced by the girls, and particularly their hair. Yesterday was typical.
At the first village we reached yesterday cries of "Chilips! Chilips!" - "Foreigners!" - rang out as we approached. The women and girls ran round to see us arrive, and one woman rushed to turn the large prayer wheel that dominated the small village square. I could see the men looked more coolly out from the house where many of them were gathered, but even one of them jokingly shouted out a word of greeting in English.
At the next village there was a ceremony in progress that involved a posse of monks chanting goodwill blessings for a house. If the household can afford it - for monks cost money - this is done every year. If funds are tighter the top-ups are done only whenever bad luck visits the house. It was a quaint affair - the chief monk wore mirror sunglasses and one of the others held a parasol over him. After each round of chanting the monks picked up a range of local mediaeval instruments and played a refrain. I thought that one or two of them seemed displeased to have Zoe and me watching them (we had raced up to see them), especially since I was, at Bhim's suggestion, taking some photos and even a couple of movie clips. Bhim reassured me that they had asked if we wouldn't stay for tea (we didn't).
The third settlement we came to was larger and had a school alongside our path. As we walked through the village, with Heidi in the lead on a pony, all of the school kids and the adults stopped what they were doing to watch us pass. When we reached a pathway that traversed the top of the village and paused for a minute a throng of children, all dressed, of course, in their traditional clothing, gathered round. With distant high mountains at the other side of the valley and a clear blue sky it was quite a picture.
Some of the kids followed us on to our last pitch. This was the prettiest of all of them, in a large tranquil area covered with needles from the green pines overhead. I had to apologise to Bhim because this most pleasant spot reminded me so much of France. (It also reminded me of Where Did you Sleep Last Night? from Nirvana Unplugged but I kept that to myself.) For the rest of the afternoon four girls of about Heidi's age, occasionally supplement by passing friends, clung to the trees and studied everything that we did. They repeatedly signalled to me that they wanted their photos taken, again and again, so that they could see themselves on the LCD screen afterwards, shrieking with laughter whenever I zoomed in to whichever of them had pulled out her tongue. But what they liked best was brushing Paula's and Zoe's hair. They all had hair that was jet black and dead straight, cut in a straight fringe, and they enjoyed playing salon (especially with overseas blondes) as much as most of the girls' friends seem to.
At night we heard the women's stamping and singing from two separate houses being built and we saw one of them in progress during our walk this morning. The houses take about six months to throw up and are done collaboratively by relatives and neighbours of the prospective householders. Later, I was awoken in the night by a loud chorus of dogs barking. This is such a common phenomenon in Bhutan that visitors are advised to bring ear plugs. The roving dogs, of course, can't be culled because it would be un-Buddhist, especially since dogs are believed to act as our guides to heaven when we die.
This morning we arrived at our hotel in Wangdi. It's cited next to a river that gushes relaxingly past our room. The grounds are very pretty, too. The place is vegetarian and run by Indians. It has surprised me to find that although Bhutan strikes you as an oriental country it appears to enjoy a closer relationship with its neighbour to the south than with China to the north. The Ngultrum - the currency of Bhutan - is interchangeable with the Rupee and the cuisine overlaps - yesterday, for example, we had mutta paneer for lunch. Assam separatists aside, the relationship with India seems warm. Bhim, whose only experience outside Bhutan was time spent studying in Calcutta, speaks his excellent English with Indian inflexions. By contrast, people here seem very suspicious of China. Bhim is reluctant to be drawn into political discussion but notes that the land area of Bhutan is decreasing year on year as more areas along the mountainous northern border are annexed by China. The dark experience of Bhutan-like Tibet under Chinese rule must be an increasingly ominous cloud for the Bhutanese as China progresses towards superpower status.
As well as a couple more Poirot novels I've read A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright over the past few days. Regular readers (or even anyone who read my blog from last week) will know that the two political topics that concern me most, especially in the long dark night of the dreadful Bush administration, are (mis)understanding between nations and the dubious sustainability of our way of life on this planet of finite resources. The first of these issues is the subject of the Fisk book that I've recommended so many times. The second is addressed in A Short History of Progress, which is an excellent little book that, at about 130 small pages plus notes, can be read in one or two sittings. It speaks eloquently to the worries I expressed last time, which in part reduce to the problem that in our democracies we have a mandate to elect governments that rule with decreasing checks on their power while neither we electors nor the elected are educated in the crucial science and economics of our ecology. This book supplies some of the disturbing facts.
As to Poirot, he is always keen to dispatch his villains to the hangman Here in Bhutan convicted murderers are locked up in small prisons, which are few and far between and always cited next to army or police bases (we saw one in Wangdi), where they remain until they die.
Before breakfast the next morning the receptionist was kind enough to let me unplug the phone line from her PC and stick it in my mac and then log me onto the internet using the hotel's access credentials so I could check mail and post my blog. They're nice like that here: in many places that would be a firing offence.
We finished the trek today. Over the last four days - two full ones followed by two shorties - we've headed uphill and down again sinusoidally, reaching peaks of 2,500m, 2,700m and then 2,200m before dropping back down into a new valley this morning. We began from a crematorium behind the Punakha Dzong, where there was some action underway. Since we were right at the wall I was a little curious to see how they arrange the corpse to be sitting when they burn it, but good manners got the better of me and we didn't stop to gawp. Instead we crossed the river into which ash from the crematorium is released, using the longest suspension bridge in Bhutan with a span of 150 metres. It was just wide enough for two people walking in opposite directions to pass and it wobbled a great deal, but this didn't discourage a motorcyclist from coming over, driving past as I was bracing myself against vertigo.
Along the far bank of the river we met up with the ponies who would carry our bags. On this half of the trek we also pressed a pony into occasional use for carrying one of the girls - more often Heidi - up the steeper climbs. Once Bhim had mentioned the possibility as we set out for the Tiger's Nest monastery last week Heidi had asked about it more than once, and it seemed unkind not to let her have a ride. As we waited for the ponies to be prepared a lady from the nearest house came and gave Zoe a length of sugar cane. We had it once we'd made camp later in the day, and enjoyed it. The next day another lady pulled some small oranges out from under her kira for the girls to take, and they were also good.
Although the days were not too long and the altitude gain wasn't too severe, in the heat of midday the walking was sometimes stern. While the ponies ferried our bags (and sometimes a child) from site to site, Bhim, our guide, carried little with him, and the only water and first aid supplies we had with us were those we packed ourselves. Maybe we're brought up to worry too much - or maybe not, since the life expectancy at birth is 25 years greater in the UK than in Bhutan.
Early in our walk we passed a house where a woman was making "whisky" outdoors. Our local guide bought some, which I feared I might have to taste on the spot. It was sold in an old soda bottle and was cloudy and grey in colour, and I could think of nothing I wanted to try less during a steep uphill walk in the sun. Luckily, he didn't buy it to share.
But I did try the doma, or betel nut. You can tell that everyone has it by the red stains on their mouths and teeth (when we first met Bhim Paula thought he was bleeding at the mouth) and the uniformly appalling state of dentistry. Partaking in it is quite a routine: you take a nut and cut it to the right size. This is then rolled in a leaf that had been smeared with a pink/white lime paste and you chew the whole thing slowly. It brings a hot glow around the face starting with the ears. It has a very distinctive taste - and if you spend any time around one of the locals you'll soon recognise the smell - but it's not one that I can recommend. Most people spit it out and you can frequently see the tell-tale red circles on the ground. The government has half-heartedly discouraging doma because of its ill effects to the teeth and mouth, which ultimately include oral cancer. If they really wanted to discourage it they'd ban it, as they've banned tobacco - a useful piece of knowledge for any smokers planning on spending much time here. Unlike doma, tobacco got the thumbs down from the religious authorities, who opined that it was not only unhealthy but also un-Buddhist. I haven't seen a single cigarette since we got to Bhutan but doma is ubiquitous. When I asked him Bhim claimed to have doma about five times a day; indicating the nearest red-toothed pony guy he said that he probably had about 40 per day.
The village we pitched at on Wednesday struck me initially as particularly poor. Although the houses were large many weren't plastered and those that were weren't painted with motifs like many others we've seen. The woodwork was also undecorated and sorry looking, and the sense of poverty was heightened by the procession of women walking past burdened underneath huge bundles of leaves. These leaves are collected in pens and later spread over fields of chillies where they are burned, which apparently helps the chillies grow.
In fact, the village was an affluent one, and one of the handful of houses that stood above our site was the family home of the current Prime Minister of Bhutan.
Our tents were set on level ground just below the village. Looking out, acres and acres of terraced fields ran up to the head of the valley between forested hills. Just at the other side of the valley there was another hamlet. As night fell and we turned in we heard the women who after a day in the fields were getting going on a new house, stamping down the watered clay into mud bricks in situ and singing as they did so.
Our pitch on Wednesday night was our least favourite. We camped on a small patch of land next to a run-down temple. As well as lacking the charm of the others there were flies everywhere, to the point where I feared for the food: none of us tried the pork dish that evening. The site was redeemed a little the next morning when Bhim took me round the temple and explained its history. If you come to Bhutan you'll hear of the divine madman - Lam Drukpa Kinley - who is well liked here. He lived through the turn of the sixteenth century and had unconventional methods for a lama. For example, since he knew the day that people he ran into would die he often helped them by killing them in advance so as to arrange a more propitious transition. He was also peripatetic and notoriously promiscuous, with consorts in many of the places that he wandered between. His favourite consort lived in the temple we camped next to, which became a temple after her death. Alongside the tigers and dragons, many of the houses sport what are politely called "fertility symbols" painted brightly on their exterior walls, which celebrate the mayhem of Drukpa Kinley and have protective value.
The walk yesterday was shorter and easier than those that preceded it, although our spirits were not raised when Bhim told us as we crossed the only road of the day that if we walked for three km along it we'd reach the hotel where we were staying the next night. This was unnecessary information - we approached the hotel by a diffferent route and don't have good maps - and presenting us with it was not an act of psychological mastery. But we soon forgot it.
Everywhere we've been in Thailand, Laos and Bhutan the locals have been entranced by the girls, and particularly their hair. Yesterday was typical.
At the first village we reached yesterday cries of "Chilips! Chilips!" - "Foreigners!" - rang out as we approached. The women and girls ran round to see us arrive, and one woman rushed to turn the large prayer wheel that dominated the small village square. I could see the men looked more coolly out from the house where many of them were gathered, but even one of them jokingly shouted out a word of greeting in English.
At the next village there was a ceremony in progress that involved a posse of monks chanting goodwill blessings for a house. If the household can afford it - for monks cost money - this is done every year. If funds are tighter the top-ups are done only whenever bad luck visits the house. It was a quaint affair - the chief monk wore mirror sunglasses and one of the others held a parasol over him. After each round of chanting the monks picked up a range of local mediaeval instruments and played a refrain. I thought that one or two of them seemed displeased to have Zoe and me watching them (we had raced up to see them), especially since I was, at Bhim's suggestion, taking some photos and even a couple of movie clips. Bhim reassured me that they had asked if we wouldn't stay for tea (we didn't).
The third settlement we came to was larger and had a school alongside our path. As we walked through the village, with Heidi in the lead on a pony, all of the school kids and the adults stopped what they were doing to watch us pass. When we reached a pathway that traversed the top of the village and paused for a minute a throng of children, all dressed, of course, in their traditional clothing, gathered round. With distant high mountains at the other side of the valley and a clear blue sky it was quite a picture.
Some of the kids followed us on to our last pitch. This was the prettiest of all of them, in a large tranquil area covered with needles from the green pines overhead. I had to apologise to Bhim because this most pleasant spot reminded me so much of France. (It also reminded me of Where Did you Sleep Last Night? from Nirvana Unplugged but I kept that to myself.) For the rest of the afternoon four girls of about Heidi's age, occasionally supplement by passing friends, clung to the trees and studied everything that we did. They repeatedly signalled to me that they wanted their photos taken, again and again, so that they could see themselves on the LCD screen afterwards, shrieking with laughter whenever I zoomed in to whichever of them had pulled out her tongue. But what they liked best was brushing Paula's and Zoe's hair. They all had hair that was jet black and dead straight, cut in a straight fringe, and they enjoyed playing salon (especially with overseas blondes) as much as most of the girls' friends seem to.
At night we heard the women's stamping and singing from two separate houses being built and we saw one of them in progress during our walk this morning. The houses take about six months to throw up and are done collaboratively by relatives and neighbours of the prospective householders. Later, I was awoken in the night by a loud chorus of dogs barking. This is such a common phenomenon in Bhutan that visitors are advised to bring ear plugs. The roving dogs, of course, can't be culled because it would be un-Buddhist, especially since dogs are believed to act as our guides to heaven when we die.
This morning we arrived at our hotel in Wangdi. It's cited next to a river that gushes relaxingly past our room. The grounds are very pretty, too. The place is vegetarian and run by Indians. It has surprised me to find that although Bhutan strikes you as an oriental country it appears to enjoy a closer relationship with its neighbour to the south than with China to the north. The Ngultrum - the currency of Bhutan - is interchangeable with the Rupee and the cuisine overlaps - yesterday, for example, we had mutta paneer for lunch. Assam separatists aside, the relationship with India seems warm. Bhim, whose only experience outside Bhutan was time spent studying in Calcutta, speaks his excellent English with Indian inflexions. By contrast, people here seem very suspicious of China. Bhim is reluctant to be drawn into political discussion but notes that the land area of Bhutan is decreasing year on year as more areas along the mountainous northern border are annexed by China. The dark experience of Bhutan-like Tibet under Chinese rule must be an increasingly ominous cloud for the Bhutanese as China progresses towards superpower status.
As well as a couple more Poirot novels I've read A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright over the past few days. Regular readers (or even anyone who read my blog from last week) will know that the two political topics that concern me most, especially in the long dark night of the dreadful Bush administration, are (mis)understanding between nations and the dubious sustainability of our way of life on this planet of finite resources. The first of these issues is the subject of the Fisk book that I've recommended so many times. The second is addressed in A Short History of Progress, which is an excellent little book that, at about 130 small pages plus notes, can be read in one or two sittings. It speaks eloquently to the worries I expressed last time, which in part reduce to the problem that in our democracies we have a mandate to elect governments that rule with decreasing checks on their power while neither we electors nor the elected are educated in the crucial science and economics of our ecology. This book supplies some of the disturbing facts.
As to Poirot, he is always keen to dispatch his villains to the hangman Here in Bhutan convicted murderers are locked up in small prisons, which are few and far between and always cited next to army or police bases (we saw one in Wangdi), where they remain until they die.
Posted: Sat - February 25, 2006 at 09:38 PM
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Published On: Feb 27, 2006 02:18 PM
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Published On: Feb 27, 2006 02:18 PM