Bhutan

This is a very quick summary of my experiences in Bhutan: 10-27 February, 2016.

In many ways our group was lucky. We were five people plus leader who did not know each other, all single and between the ages of 60 and almost 80 (me). The leader was a NZ teacher, sensitive and very low key and it was a typically Australian group in that people were very respectful of each other. The second man on the trip was a geologist, just a year younger than me, who had been in charge of the Australian geological survey (and gone to the same school as my brothers). He had spent a lot of his life in the bush, particularly in the Kimberley. At one point he had also been invited to contribute to Himalayan geology and as we travelled he was looking for signs of the Indian plate crashing into Asia to throw up  the Himalayas. In our first week he gave us a talk on the geology of the region. (We all wondered a bit why he always described the Himalayan rocks as “nice” till I suddenly realized it was “gneiss” he was talking about.) There was a lot of opportunity to analyze rocks on our trip because all the formerly one lane roads through the mountains were currently being widened to two lanes, all at the same time with different sections contracted out to different mainly Indian firms. These had brought the Indian workers over with them that were camped by the roadsides. The roads were all quarries during the day with the rocks, gravel, sand, earth etc. blasted off the cuttings being transported and used on other sections of the road. (Overland Roads in Bhutan are then closed from 7pm to 7am for actual road work.) This provided good opportunities for a geologist to see how the layers of rock were folded and what they were made of.

The women in the group were: Pnina, who had just retired and moved from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast. She was a trendy and somewhat cheeky but lovely person. Ro, was a former nurse from Lilydale with three adult sons (they had once owned a house in Ubud, Bali, and spent their holidays there), and Jenny had been a teacher and then moved on to a job where she hosted overseas visitors to the NSW Education Department. She had recently had an operation on her foot and walking could be a problem; she was also allergic to a great many foods so the hotels had to cook special dishes for her. Jenny carried three heavy cameras around with her and will probably end up having the best photos.  Pnina, Len and Jenny had all done an amazing amount of travelling in their lives and it was interesting to hear about it occasionally.

Three of our group had tummy bug problems at various times but nothing really bad (you have to be careful if you are not used to the water in Bhutan). The other potential health problem was altitude because the villages we visited were separated by high mountain passes (up to 4000 meters) and some of the valleys were also above 3200 meters. I had one day where I felt a bit funny and migrainy probably due to altitude but that was all.

We were also lucky because the weather was beautiful, cold at night but sunny during the day, and no rain which meant, however, that the countryside was very dry, sometimes reminiscent of outback Australia. We were in Bhutan from February 10 to 27. When we arrived it was still winter; the pond in our Paro residence froze overnight,  and we initially got very excited when we found an occasional daphne tree with blossoms or some tiny blue primulas. But by the second week, spring had set in and there were occasional red and white rhododendrons, daphne trees covered with flowers, huge magnolia trees in flower, and big patches of blue primulas, once an orange orchid and all the tiny flame-like new leaves of birch-trees and willows. (On the highest pass to Haa we were also shown dried up miniature Edelweiss and on one valley walk  dried up marihuana plants. Our guide was a very knowledgeable naturalist.) The mountains are covered mainly with various tall conifers – pines, hemlock, spruce, firs, larches – and a lot of prickly holly trees apart from the rhododendrons or similar bushes. There was, however, still often snow on the high passes, once thick fog, and once we even saw a frozen waterfall. And nights were still quite cold; some of the places where we stayed had electric heaters (Bhutan has a lot of hydro-electricity) while in the east we had little wood heaters in our rooms, which were hard to keep going but very hot when they were actually burning. It was lovely to experience the sudden change of season at that moment of the year.

We were also lucky because we arrived at a very propitious time. The young queen had given birth to the crown-prince a few days before we arrived, and also just a few days before the king’s birthday; of course both events had to be celebrated with holidays. Schools practiced and performed concerts for these occasions, and we could watch from the sidelines. The Bhutanese love their photogenic royal family and there are big photos of them in public places and small ones in homes and restaurants. The country was only united under a king at the beginning of the twentieth century (1907) and the five kings have all been respected reformers. The fourth king, who had to take over the reins of the country at the age of sixteen when his father died, was an exceptional ruler. He turned the country into a constitutional monarchy and supervised parliamentary elections before he abdicated in favor of his eldest son (2005/6) and withdrew to the forest.  He had decided to give guidance to his son without getting in the way. The posters around town always show father and son together.

Bhutan is a small country bordering in the north on Tibet, which has of course been annexed by communist China, and in the south and east on Indian states, some restless with Maoist (Bodo) insurgents who recently tried to invade Bhutan. The fourth king had to do battle against them and won in spite of having the smaller army. We passed a monument of stupas/chortens on one of the high passes in memory of this fairly recent (2003) victory. The Bhutanese kings, the Wangchuks, have always tried hard to be role models. We were told that the present king lives in a very modest house. On his wedding day he and his queen walked through Thimphu all day till seven in the evening in the rain so all their people would have the opportunity to speak to them. It is always emphasized that the queen is a commoner, though she comes from a good family. And to celebrate the birth of their son the queen has seen to it that epidural anaesthesia will now be available to all Bhutanese women who want it in childbirth. If the queen has it then everyone should have the choice.

In its politically threatened position, Bhutan has aligned itself with India, particularly in matters of foreign policy,  and the Indian army has a presence in the country. The Haa valley with its Indian army barracks which we visited on our second day, was a closed military area till just recently. Bhutan’s army has a mere 5000 men; the country itself has less than a million inhabitants. Trade links with India are also strong. Bhutan’s currency, the gnultrum, is tied to the Indian rupee and can be used interchangeably. 50% of Bhutan’s income derives from selling electricity to India and it also sells some timber and agricultural produce from the south to India. Almost anything can be grown in the subtropical south at the bottom of the steep slope that is Bhutan, falling from the highest Himalayas to the coastal plain, whereas the middle subalpine regions we visited grow a limited range of crops. Red rice is the staple food, apples and potatoes also grow in places like Paro and  buckwheat among other vegetables and potatoes in the eastern valleys. (Buckwheat pancakes are an acquired taste). Cabbages including cauliflower, beans, a kind of sinewy spinach, eggplant, and chick peas (the favorite food of the deer in the Thimphu sanctuary) always seemed to be available for our lunches and dinners as well as Bhutan’s favorite food, chilies, which are often just served up as a vegetable in a cheese sauce.

Health and education are free in Bhutan. In the old days it was the Buddhist monasteries that provided schooling, for boys only of course, but now there seem to be a great variety of schools with their different uniforms. (The school year started just a few days after we arrived). The language of instruction is now English and a surprising number of younger Bhutanese speak very good English. Their own language, Dzongkha (the language of the dzongs), can sound a little like French: fast, elegant and a bit nasal. There is a lot of emphasis on education as the way into modernity. Schools and universities seem to be very good if our guide and driver are anything to go by. And the school grounds are always full of idealistic slogans. The children of the Indian road workers Bhutan employs also all get free education up to the tenth grade.

Virtually everyone in Bhutan wears traditional dress from a variety of often home woven and naturally died striped fabrics, the men a knee-length gho and the women a full length kira. The latter is a rectangular length of material pinned at the shoulders and held by a tight belt in such a way as to create a pouch to carry things in breast height. The men’s dress also has this pouch. Women usually also wear a colorful silk jacket and look very elegant; men have to drape a shawl, white for ordinary people, colored for office bearers, around themselves when they are in public places like the dzongs.

Dzongs are the fortresses in which everyone used to live in former dangerous times. Tibet seems to have been the main threat then. Dzongs usually still house both the religious government of a region, usually including a monastery and temples, and the secular government. The religious festivals with their masked dances take place there too. We were lucky enough to go to a tsechu or festival in Punakha. Amazingly, there has been a political separation of powers in Bhutan since the Buddhist saint Ngawang Namgyal unified the country in the 17^th century. Every regional village has its dzong, beautiful buildings to be compared with European cathedrals, in the traditional ornamentally crafted Tibetan colors and style. Ordinary houses too are built in that style; even the new apartment buildings in Thimphu try to look Himalayan.

Bhutan is a matriarchal society. The eldest girl in the family inherits the farm and the men move in with their wives when they marry. But Bhutan is also a very equal society. Names are chosen for religious reasons and make no distinction between men and women. And we saw men and women working together in the fields and couples walking together with their prayer beads. (Of course men can still often have an advantage because they are stronger and don’t become pregnant and due to sensible divisions of work. Kunzang Choden’s stories do also tell of discrimination. She is the lady of the manor house-museum we visited and one of Bhutan’s most respected authors.) It seems that commoners usually do not have surnames. Until recently Bhutan was a feudal society but our visit to the manor house suggested that feudalism was by intention a functional and mutually beneficial relationship with the manor house being the center of trade and the crafts in the area. Farmers would bring their grains and exchange them for Tibetan salt, for example and there were workshops for every kind of production.

Apparently Bhutan did once have slaves as well as serfs - slaves were usually debtors or prisoners of war - but slavery and feudalism have since been abolished. However, it currently has an unresolved problem with 100,000 Hindus from the south not considered Bhutanese citizens and exiled to Nepal where most still languish in UN camps. Bhutan’s model of national independence and cultural uniqueness is one the millions of struggling and displaced people throughout the world are no longer prepared to respect whereas Bhutan has always been intent on protecting its borders and its difficult terrain has helped. Bhutan is the only country in the Asian region that has never been colonized. The British tried but after bloody wars for the fertile southern duars or river valleys found that cooperation in reaching Tibet was more useful. They ended up renting the duars to help feed the teeming millions of Bengal.

Even fifty years ago Bhutan was a country without roads. Our guide took us for a forest walk high up on the Dochu pass between Thimphu (the present capital, not long ago just a village) and Punakha (the former capital, still just a village, recently rebuilt after floods from an overflowing glacier lake had washed it away). Part of our walk was along the royal way, a track with rough stepped paving on the steeper parts, that not long ago only the king and his retinue could use. It was the closest to an overland road there was. The journeys from one village to the other across the passes were so arduous that few undertook them. Road building has since become the foremost national project. There are now one lane roads between the main valleys but you need to be brave to use them, particularly while they are being converted to two lane roads. There is also an airport at Paro, the only valley wide enough for small jets to land, but still so difficult to negotiate between its towering mountains that only a handful of pilots are licensed to fly there. And they have to fly manually and stay put when the weather is bad. On our flight up our landing in Calcutta had to be cancelled and the Indian passengers were taken up to Paro instead where thankfully the weather had slightly improved at the last moment.

Bhutan has only had internet and television since the turn of the century but mobile phones are now ubiquitous and there seems to be coverage even in the most remote places. The monks in the monasteries were often playing with phones. Our guide would ring from somewhere on a pass to book our lunch in the next valley. Hotels for tourists have now also been built though visiting out of season we saw very few other westerners. Bhutan strictly regulates tourism; travellers are provided with a guide and a driver along with accommodation and food but must spend a specific amount a day to pay for this. Tourism is now a growing industry offering employment and an income to many Bhutanese whose parents still labored on farms.

Maps divide the subalpine belt of Bhutan into three regions: western, central and eastern. The west is more developed with Thimphu, stretched along a lengthy, narrow valley, now trying hard to become a modern town with pizza parlors and karaoke bars. For us the center was represented by Trongsa in its deep, deep valley and with its superb dzong, the seat of administration for the east. The closest to the east we saw was the valley of Bumthang, higher but also more open farmland than the western valleys. The houses there look slightly different with their attic story closed off with woven bamboo mats rather than being left open for ventilation as in the west. The east is ethnically slightly different, more Burmese-Malay than Tibetan. Buddhism reached it earlier in the Nyingma form; the east is also the country where demons of every sort and their tales still exist. What may surprise a Westerner is that in Bhutan even ghosts and zombies and ogres and the like are considered sentient beings who deserve to be treated with patience and kindness. They can also, against all expectation, work as helpers of man.

The East is the region where the traditional art of weaving is practiced in its greatest variety. It is still wild country. On our first lunch stop after crossing the pass we were told that a black bear had recently mauled a man just across the road, a man competing for the bear’s berries and mushrooms. Leopards are also a constant menace for the people in the more remote areas. In the Phobjikha valley we were shown the white skeleton of a cow they had just killed. They come at night but apparently don’t attack humans. The Phobjikha valley is home to wintering black necked cranes every year and the people there have only just got electricity because the wires had to be put underground to protect the cranes.

On all the high passes we encountered a good many yaks that shared the roads with cattle and dogs and quarry trucks and tiny old-Polo-type cars and vehicles like our little bus, though the yaks’ normal territory is the forest and grassy slopes. They belong to nomad herders who nowadays drive round in cars to their next camp. They milk the yaks and make butter and cheese which are apparently quite expensive to buy because they are supposed to be particularly tasty and healthy. We asked whether the nomads were an ethnic group or whether herding was simply a profession and were told it was the latter.

Bhutan has many unusual animals that only exist in the high Himalayas. We were taken to the Thimphu zoo high up on the ridge where we saw Bhutan’s strange national animals, the takins, classified as a cross between a cow and an antelope. They were up there with Samba and red deer and a sad black goat who couldn’t get into the enclosure with them. The king had tried to release the takins from their prison but they refused to leave. They actually look rather stupid. The Bhutanese are very respectful of animals and apparently the zoo keepers use entrance fees to cook chick peas for the deer because this is their favorite snack food. As Buddhists, the Bhutanese believe that they or their friends could be reincarnated as animals so they do their best to be kind to them. Many do not eat meat; we were in Bhutan during a holy month when no animals were slaughtered though our hosts usually did try to accommodate us perverse westerners with dishes of splintered chicken bones that had morsels of meat attached. A farmer in whose house we had a meal said she did not keep chickens because they ate worms. One dish we were offered in a buffet was labeled chicken but was in fact hard boiled egg in a sauce.

Paro and Thimphu are overrun by stray dogs who during the day lie everywhere in the sun or walk the roads at a leisurely pace expecting motorists to avoid them and who have lots of energy to bark all night. I asked whether sterilization was also considered to be cruel and was told that the government was just starting to do that. On our last day we were scheduled to walk the 900 meters up to the Tiger’s Nest monastery stuck like a wasps’ nest high over a precipice or, what most of us “oldies” did, just climb the 500 meters to the ‘cafeteria’. (Like so many of Bhutan’s temples with their butter lamps this monastery/temple had burnt down in 1998 but been partly rebuilt.) Most of the shorter stretch of the way could be done on mule- or horseback but we were told that this was only for people who really couldn’t manage themselves. Farmers also avoid letting their animals work for them.

The Bhutanese are very devout Buddhists. We visited countless temples on our trip. The earliest two had been built in the seventh century to incapacitate an ogress threatening the country, the latest was the as yet unfinished giant golden Buddha that towers over Thimphu and was built with donations from the people. The temples often had similar murals and statues and similar silk hangings but usually apart from the “historical Buddha” different saints or deities were in prominence. Some were local temples where families brought their little children and taught them to prostrate themselves, some were primary schools where we saw little monks being tested on their Sanskrit while others were cuffing each other or doing some job; in one temple butter and amaranth meal sculptures were being made for some festival, in others there were just the caretakers going about their chores. One large chorten or stupa in Thimphu was the center of a festival week for the Medicine Buddha and was being briskly circumambulated by great numbers of people. Exercise and devotion in one. Everywhere there were prayer wheels being turned, by water from the forest runnels whenever there were no people to do the job. The forests were dotted with nests of 108 white prayer flags for someone who had died, (you could see these white patches from the plane) or strung about with colored flags representing the five elements: water, air, fire, earth and wood – blue, white, red, yellow and green. These or the white wind flags were always in windy places on the high passes from where the prayers printed on them would be blown far across the land. It was sometimes hard to imagine how these flags could have been made to span such deep gorges or high cliffs.

Coming back to Paro one evening along the busy and narrow road, the bus suddenly slowed down for a group of people who were prostrating themselves on the road. Our guide told us it would take them fifteen days to reach Thimphu in this fashion. Our guide himself was a devout Buddhist who took each visit to a temple seriously but was also prepared to give us as much information as we could cope with and always very ready to laugh with us.

Some two thousand six hundred years ago the “historical Buddha” was born a prince in a little Himalayan kingdom that like others of the time was constantly at war. He was appalled by the suffering all around and eventually realized that it was ignorance, desire and anger that caused so much unnecessary distress. If you followed a balanced “middle path” and learned to ignore your desires and passions until your ego had been completely overcome then you could enter a state of peace, Nirvana. The Buddha called on each human being to concentrate on his own development towards inner peace and the destruction of his self once the state of Nirvana had been reached.

Six or seven centuries later a new version of Buddhism, the Mahayana, began to develop. It was now no longer the purpose of life to destroy yourself and your unfortunate human nature by becoming a Buddha and entering Nirvana but rather to work on yourself so that you would be capable of helping others towards a better life culminating in Buddhahood: to become a Bodhisattva. The central figure of worship became the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara  or in Bhutanese Chenresig.

Buddhism came to West Bhutan in the Mahayana form. But it developed further from there to what is known as Vajrayana, or the diamond vehicle. The passions, imagined in the form of the demons of earlier Bon or folk religion were now no longer to be destroyed but rather converted to serve the Buddhist ideal of peace and universal happiness. Local deities and spirits were honored. We now see murals of all sorts of demons. Even revered Buddha-figures can look angry and take on the likeness of demons.

And then there was a final Buddhist figure who has become something like the patron saint of Bhutan, the “Divine Madman”. This is a summary given on the back of the translation of his biography: “In contrast to other more ascetical teachers of the East who teach negation of the body and its desires, Drukpa Kunley used desire, emotion and sexuality to arouse disillusionment, insight, and delight in all he encountered. With consummate skill he followed the path of Tantra, or the realization of Bliss in the union of opposites, employing sexuality to quicken the awakening of his consorts.” For Drukpa Kunley there is no value in conventional morality: it is more likely than not to lead people astray. Tantrism is perhaps the most accurate designation for Bhutanese Buddhism and it is a very sophisticated, un-judgmental and open form of religion.

Bhutanese Buddhist temples usually display a variety of early and more recent Buddha and Bodhisattva figures to make the whole range of Buddhist thought available to worshipers. It is believed that the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, went through 499 incarnations before he reached Buddhahood indicating that his path was not as direct as generally thought. Some of the legends told about him seem to echo the story of King Ashoka, who on acceding to the throne followed the customary path of kings by declaring war on a neighboring state and there causing terrible loss of life and devastation. It was the experience of the immeasurable and unnecessary suffering he had caused that led to his adoption of the compassionate ethos of Buddhism. The Buddha is not represented so much as a saint but as someone who learned from his experiences and reached solutions by approaching the problems of life rationally and through psychology.

It is perhaps in this Buddhist context that Bhutan’s contribution to world politics must be seen. When discussing the process of modernization that Bhutan was entering upon, the fourth king remarked, perhaps half as a joke, that the yardstick that was needed was not “gross national product” and simple economic success but “gross national happiness”.  Bhutan has since come up with four criteria by which gross national happiness can be assessed: preservation of the natural environment, nurturing of cultural identity, economic welfare and good governance. The United Nations have picked up on this idea and over sixty countries have signed an agreement to follow this path. Several large American cities have also decided to base their policies on these criteria. It is probably right to say that they grow directly from the compassionate ethos of Mahayana Buddhism, only that happiness is now sought not only in Nirvana and “pure land” paradises but in everyday life on earth as well. The Bhutanese are rightly proud of their international influence.

Mahayana Buddhism is a religious faith rather than a practice or life-style like early Buddhism or Theravada Buddhism. Leaving aside considerations of “truth”, religions can be a very unifying social force. What westerners might perceive as superstitious practices, such as the rules the gatherers of medicinal herbs must follow, are often just effective ways of enforcing best practice. Prostrations, circumambulations, the turning of prayer wheels and the stringing up of prayer flags are active and practical things people can do publicly and together to allay their metaphysical worries without giving away anything personal and private. The doctrine of reincarnation allows people to accept their fate as something they must have deserved in a former life rather than an injustice to be resented, and the likelihood of another chance at life – hopefully at a better life – is perhaps a stronger and more hopeful incentive to do good than just the fear of heaven or hell for all eternity. A benevolent, compassionate, accessible half human half divine Bodhisattva like Chenresig must also be a great comfort. A national religion can do a lot to shape and guide a society.

Bhutanese people in general seem to be particularly relaxed and happy. What Buddhism hasn’t taught them their roads have. I sat behind the driver on our bus, a seat nobody else seemed to be keen on, and watched with amazement at the extraordinary skill and courtesy with which people handled their vehicles. A wrong move could quickly hurtle you a hundred or a hundred and fifty meters into the abyss. Nobody who isn’t prepared to die can use Bhutanese roads, in spite of the average 20km an hour speed. There was often hardly a centimeter between passing vehicles and frequently wheels were so close to the edge of the precipice that it needed superb judgment to avoid a tumble. Everyone’s survival depended on complete cooperation and concern for the others using the road.

In Bhutan people seem to accept death as a fact of life. The old people turning prayer wheels in the temples will tell you that all they want is a good reincarnation. Reincarnation is a very ancient and universal belief in Asian countries. Death, people believe, is something that has happened to them innumerable times. And it is something that happens not only to humans and animals but also to gods and demi-gods and hungry-ghosts and the demons of hell: to all sentient beings. According to the Buddha and his perception of the “wheel of life” it is however best to be a human because you have more choice than the other beings. When people die in Bhutan their bodies are returned to nature. They will usually be cremated and their ashes scattered in the river or if they are a little child they may just be entrusted to the river as they are. We also came across a “sky burial” site on a high mountain pass. Here there was a large rock on which bodies were placed as food for the birds and beasts. They apparently disappear completely in the shortest of time.

There are many things I have not mentioned in this brief account: Staying in the former penlop’s (governor’s) palace in Paro; having lunch in unadorned beam and daub farmhouses (unadorned except for pictures of the royal family) and climbing up tree-trunk ladders to the higher floors that always contained the family rooms; watching the farmers plow with wooden hand plows or efficient new little tractors, spread manure, and plant potatoes with most of the village helping; putting up with the haze from burning rice stubble that spoilt our photos; getting glimpses of the highest Himalayan mountains; walking through vegetable markets and testing the weight of the women’s baskets; learning about the innumerable Himalayan medicinal plants being put into capsules at the traditional medicine center; listening to the indefatigable dogs barking through the night; using the ingenious squat toilets that might hover over a gorge or be two parallel boards off by the roadside; balancing across ancient swaying wire mesh suspension bridges; visiting a factory that made hand-crafted daphne-bark paper and supplied work for the whole family, young and old; inspecting the weaving museum and workshop, or a little gallery of modern art; doing the walks through forests or rural areas and seeing flocks of protected cranes or other birds at a distance; attending an archery contest, archery being the national sport, in Thimphu; tasting the six or eight vegetarian dishes always on offer for lunch and dinner; watching the girls at the local middle school using their holiday to do their washing in ice-cold water; being welcomed to our hotels by six elegant young ladies waiting to carry our luggage; reading the gross national happiness slogans scattered around school grounds; the radiance of the elder daughter from one of the farms where we had a meal, the cousin of our driver, who had just graduated from school fifth in the country and was hoping to head overseas on a scholarship; seeing the little boy monks being taught Sanskrit in the temple; eavesdropping at dinner where we sat right beside the table of the Minister for Public Works and his large retinue; learning to light a fire and keep it going; for me, not having a hot stone bath which caused Pnina to faint and injure herself; watching the amazing dances of the Punakha tsechu or festival, in particular the dervish-like Black Hat Dance performed by monks. But this is where my photos will have to take over. Unfortunately we were never allowed to photograph in temples so they and their murals and statues and drapings and butter sculptures will remain a private memory.

Silke Hesse