A Night in Bhutan

"Look, cranes!" I shout as the car coasts down from the mountains into the Phoebijika valley. We have passed our first yaks on the snow patched summit after hours of hairpin turns through the mountains of Eastern Bhutan. Mark and Ugyen, our driver, squint through the windshield at the large flat expanse. The Black Neck Cranes come to the Phoebijika Valley to winter. In the spring they return to the Tibetan Plataea. "No wait, those are prayer flags!" They laugh, but the flapping white things seem to rise a bit. "Nope, those are cranes." We all squint across the expanse of marshland to see the large white birds take flight.

Ugyen tells us that there are no local hotels in the valley and most of the tourist hotels will cost more than we are used to. In the high tourist season, sometimes tourists have to stay with local families. Mark and I exchange glances, some discussion ensues, a phone call is made, then we are on our way to stay the night with a potato farming family. Tourist hotel be damned!

Ugyen negotiates the car across the dried marshland until the road disappears in the middle valley outside a small monastery. The wind whips across the plain making the bunches of white prayer flags on poles snap back and forth. The sun has begun to set over the far hills and the shadow across the valley is growing.

Ugyen approaches the monks to ask if we can leave the car there. It turns out the monk's car is broken. We help the monks push the car across the tundra as Ugyen gets in the drivers seat to make it start. "This is the reason I bought all that special clothing before we left" I think back smugly on the hours of agonizing decisions in REI and Paragon sporting good stores back in the US. It was so exciting to think of what we might encounter and what gear would prepare me for it. Then I look down and saw that all the clothing I had on today I had bought in a market in Cambodia. The minivan putters 50 yards and Ugyen emerges triumphantly. The head lama thanks him and drives off towards the sun now rapidly setting behind the mountains.

We grab our bags from the trunk and start walking up the hill. "I think its that house" Ugyen gestures to a mud house half way up the hill still golden in sunlight." We march up the hill through the scrub bamboo and over a small muddy stream with muddy rocks. The wind howls and whips up sheer cold as muddy temple dogs pad past me, nearly knocking me over as I battle between warming my hands in my pockets and keeping them out for balance.

Soon a young woman in an olive kira and a grey north face fleece appears on the hill side. She cocks her head and smiles and offers to take a bag. Then she leads us the rest of the way to her 70 year old mud farm house near the potato fields. She and Ugyen stomp their feet and yell at the three temple dogs who have come up the hill and encourage them to go home. "Leopards" she explains. If the dogs don't go home, they will be eaten by leopards. With that, she ushers us into the house. I notice that this is one of the few homes I have been to that has no dogs.

The mother and father appear at the door of the house and usher us in. We take off our shoes and come in to a small dark wooden room. In once corner is a propane stove and some pots and pans on a shelf above. In the other corner sits a neatly folded stack of blankets. In the center of the room is a pot belly stove with some small seating mats encircling it. Behind this room are two more. We put our bags in the corner and sit down.

We spend the evening drinking milky sweet tea around the stove, a cat curled under our knees (proof, I think, that the family had offered us the warmest seat in the house). With Ugyen as an interpreter they ask us where we are from and how long we have been in Bhutan. Then they chat amongst themselves and with Ugyen, who, as it turns out, is only shy in English.

Dinner is local red rice, home grown potatoes cooked with chili homemade cheese and dried beef cooked with more potatoes. The father urges us to eat more and more, refilling our cups from a seemingly endless pot of dahl until we feel drowsy. Then the daughters get up and make our bed in the alter room. "Are you happy here?" asks the 80 year old grandma sitting on the floor across the stove from us. Yes, yes, we say emphatically. Happy and warm. The family laughs. I am afraid you think we are dirty" says the older daughter in English. No, no. We insist.

One of the daughters escorts me to the outhouse with a flashlight before bed. We brush our teeth together on the porch and I ask her about her schooling. She is studying to be a teacher in Paro. Then we are ushered into the Alter room, one wall completely full with calendar pictures of gods and Buddhas and a burning butter lamp beneath them. Large pieces of bacon hang from a rack on the ceiling. Our bed is a series of mats and blankets carefully arranged on the floor. We put on all our clothing on and arrange blankets strategically before going to bed and shiver beneath the bacon.

jl

Mark and Juliah

Adventures in India, Veg and Non-Veg

We found an interesting article in the Kolkata Telegraph about urban professionals who've been robbed with snakes. Kolkata is such a teeming, colorful mess of people, food, and the bizarre. After 6 days here, the idea of taxi passengers have snakes thrown at them in the name of Bholebaba no longer seems strange. Bands of totally naked children run to you in the street, tug at your arm, beg for money, and follow you for blocks. Outside Kalighat Temple, someone tried to hand me a pigeon. You need a sort of evasive grace to make it down the street here: beggars and street children emerge from the corners and come directly to you; adults walk up to you with broad, paan-stained smiles, arms out, as if to shake hands. "Hello, sir!" But shaking hands can be the biggest mistake of your day, as these men have iron grips, and won't let go until they're done with their spiel: a desperate fumbling for a personal connection ("Your country USA...Obama!"), a plea to visit their shop ("No charge for looking!").

We started one day checking e-mail at a nearby internet cafe, but had to leave when an electrical fire started in the corner of the room, flushing out the patrons with acrid smoke. Our other plans that day included a subway trip to Kalighat, to visit the temple of Kolkata's patron goddess: the multi-armed, black-skinned destroyer Kali. I was super-excited by this trip, my 10 year-old undergraduate degree in Religion coming back to me in foggy bits. Kolkata--formerly Calcutta--is the ancient resting place of one of the goddess's severed toes, and one of the holiest places in India for offering a goat.

I thought I would be disturbed, but the sacrifice was quick and the animal was neatly beheaded: one moment it was standing quietly in the corner, eating red flowers from another goat's garland necklace; the next moment, it was walked to a guillotine and decapitated by a strong man with a mustache and scimitar. The family who have brought the goat dipped their middle fingers into the pooling blood and dabbed it against their foreheads, like a kind of tikka.

But Julie and I were hungering for a weirder scene, so we went to Varanasi--also called Benares, also called Kashi--the holiest site along the Ganges River, the city of Shiva, destroyer of the universe, where sadhus come to paint themselves in a holy ochre and roam the steps leading to the water. Our guesthouse was several blocks from the burning ghat, where families bring their newly dead to be cremated. We passed by the cremation sites with hoards of other tourists, foreigners and Indians, and our clothes became saturated with the smell of ash. "No photos! No photos!" a well-dressed Indian man barked at every foreign face, sometimes to no avail as pasty white tourists clicked their shutters at the crowds and the embers. A semi-charred leg rolled out of the fire, and the priest tending it would roll it back in.

In spite of round-the-clock burning funeral pyres, narrow streets congested with temperamental cows, and constant pitches for silk, musical instruments, hashish, imported Chinese toys, prayer baskets, and caged birds, Varanasi is an excellent place for hanging out, walking the length of the city by the holy river, watching funeral processions from the inside of a lassi shop, and taking things in: talking to other travelers, to Indians, to shopkeepers, tea sellers, rickshaw drivers, boat rowers, child touts, and guesthouse staff. After weeks here, you can start to understand the bewildering diversity in this country of a billion; how people can describe themselves as Gujurati, Punjabi, Keralan, Kashmiri; Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Buddist, Jewish; Businessman, Holy Man, Poor Man, Artist, Host, and Friend. In 6 weeks here, we covered over 3,000 miles--most of it by train, usually moving no more than 40 miles per hour. But we feel also that we've barely scratched the surface...but that any more time here might drive us both crazy.

ma

Mark and Juliah

Inventory Time

It's what's inside that counts, right?
Now that we have been traveling for over four months, we'd like to take a minute to tell you about what is inside our bags. What we still have, what we picked up and what we have lost along they way.

Best Thing I Bought:
Juliah: Dominoes! We bought them at a small country store in Sulawesi, Indonesia for 20 cents a set. They're made of cardboard and each set is the size of a roll of film. The dominoes totally save the day. There is often a lot of down time on a trip like this. Having some cheap games makes you a more patient traveler.

Other games we have are Othello, which I bought in Japan, and Connect Four, which we picked up in Thailand. These are good because the rules are easy to communicate and easy to follow. This means you can usually pick up a new player or a spectator at least anywhere you go.

Mark: A new tattoo! Thais are very into spiritual tattoos (though their designs actually come from Cambodia), and there are hundreds of images for a variety of purposes. The one I picked out is a 9 Spire Sak Yant Gao Yord that protects and brings good luck. I don't know why I spent all that money on travel insurance.

Since we arrived in Bhutan, I've also been very grateful for the thin, warm layer I picked up in Phnom Penh's Russian Market. I've worn it almost 10 consecutive days without washing, have slept in it, and spilled yak butter tea on the sleeves. It smells like travel, but it keeps me from freezing.

JL: Mark's only other long shirt of Mark's has affectionately been dubbed "Stinky Blue."

Most Recent Purchase:
Juliah: A clothes line and clothes pins. $1.50. Laundry has become a very satisfying activity for me. I'm getting much better at washing clothes in hotel sinks.

Mark: Prayer flags. These cost something like $10 in the tourist markets, but we picked ours up for $3 at a temple in Thimpu. And they've already been blessed by monks.


Thing We Lost That We Really Miss:
Juliah: Our camp light! We used it for everything: reading late at night, reassuring ourselves after malarone-induced nightmares, bathing with a bucket when the power was out, escorting our British friends back to their hotel late at night past barking dogs. I left it at a home stay on an island in the middle of the Mekong River in Cambodia. Hours later on the bus to Eastern Cambodia, I had a dream that our homestay host asked me "Juliah, why did you leave your camp light here?". The odd thing is that the woman spoke 7 words of English in real life, but in my dream we could really converse. That night we went through our bags and confirmed that yes, we had indeed left our camp light there.

Mark: My lightweight, warm, black shirt from REI camping store, forgotten on an overnight bus from Laos to Bangkok. There's such a crush of tuk-tuks and touts whenever a bus disembarks, that Julie and I had a strategy to get off quickly, grab our bags, and run two blocks away from the bus. Unfortunately, I was groggy and disoriented, and left behind the warmest thing I owned.

Favorite Thing I Brought:
Juliah: Contact lenses and hiking boots. Everything else I think I can find here.

Mark: Journal: perfect for scrapbooking beer labels from across Asia.


Last Thing I Left Behind:
Juliah: A snorkel. I left it in Bangkok. It served its purpose and probably won't get much use in India and the middle east. Thanks for the snorkel,dad.

Mark: Purple, short-sleeved button-down shirt. I have almost none of the original clothing I brought from the States.


Things I Don't Need Anymore
Juliah: Toilet paper. I'm almost over it altogether. Pretty cool, right?

Mark: Asthma Medicine. Amazing how 4 months in Asia can clear up a chronic respiratory problem.


Thing I Would Like to Ditch Next:
Juliah: Mosquito Net. Its pretty light weight and useful but we haven't used it at all! So far we've been lucky with the bugs. It was dry in south east asia or else too cold for mosquitoes.

Mark: Malaria pills. It's horrible medicine that needs to be taken daily, induces stomach cramps and sunburn.


Thing I Covet the Most:
Juliah: more clothes. I just wish I had more choices, but I guess that's a sacrifice you make when you travel light.

Mark: Right now, I covet gloves.


Juliah: Mom and Dad, there is a box of stinky old clothing headed to the house right now, but don't worry, the thai post office said it would take two or three months to arrive.

Mark and Juliah

The Altitude Hits You and You Fall Down

While you catch your breath, here are some interesting facts about Bhutan:

Bhutan has one of the strictest tourist policies in the world. Having witnessed the rise of tourism in neighboring India and Nepal, Bhutan has regulated the tourist industry to keep out low budget backpackers. The average tourist must pay $200 to $250 a day to be in the country.

Bhutan got its first popularly elected Prime Minister in 2008. Most Bhutanese will tell you they wish the king was still in power.

Bhutan uses "Gross National Happiness" rather than mere economic measurements to measure its progress towards society's greater good.

The penis is considered a protective image. Pictures of penises adorn walls of buildings while wooden penises hang from the eves to protect the home. (See our flickr page for extensive documentation http://www.flickr.com/photos/markandjuliah/)

Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it is said that there are so many mountains in Bhutan that many have not been named, let alone climbed.

There are only two flights in to the entire country per day.

Bhutan got television for the first time in 1999.

To enter temples, schools and other government buildings, Bhutanese nationals are required to wear national dress.

There are no traffic lights in the country.

20% of the country is under constant snowfall.

By Constitutional Law, 60% of the country must remain covered by forest. Currently 68 to 72% of the country's land is covered in forest.

They have free health care for everyone--even altitude-sick tourists.

Mark and Juliah