POWER magazine from HK featured a travelogue to Bhutan for its December 2008 issue by Adam Skolnick. Below is an extract.
“
This remote mountain kingdom is a symphony for the soul
OVERTURE
At the remote 13th century Phajoding Monastery, set high on a Himalayan ridge, Kencho Doji, a smiling 23-year-old monk swathed in burgundy robes, holds a piece of a man’s skull. Not just any man’s. This skull fragment was that of a Rinpoche (an incarnate lama), a Tantric master and the founder of the monastery. “I found it in a cave nearby,” says Kencho, “where Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava, or the Second Buddha) was cremated.”
Fascinated and slightly disoriented thanks to the altitude my eyes dart around the cramped room and notice it’s stacked with Buddhist texts; some bound, others handwritten and scrolled. Plumes of burning incense rise towards the shafts of sunlight filtering through the tiny windows overlooking Thimphu Valley. Then Kencho unfurls a zip-lock bag filled with little black balls that look like peppercorns. “This is the Rinpoche’s burned flesh,” says Chencho Tshalup, my guide. “When someone is the victim of black magic, they see the lamas and eat one of these.” Both men smile. I offer a nervous smirk back. I’m no Buddhist scholar, but I know enough to realize that black magic and cannibalism are not part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
The lesson: in Bhutan it’s best to forget what you think you know; to disregard fixed thoughts and ideas; to leave your mind open.
MOVEMENT 1: BECOMING BHUTAN
“Welcome to the Land of the Thunder Dragon,” said Chencho, 28, as I stumble out of immigration and into the daylight of Thimphu, Bhutan’s laid-back capital. After a 4:30am flight from Bangkok via stormy Calcutta, I am a mess. Luckily, Chencho is there to lead me to an SUV bound for Amanresort’s luxurious Amankora Thimphu. Sometimes it’s nice to be going five-star.
Bhutan is a nation the size of Switzerland and home to just 620,000 people, most of them living in high Himalayan valleys laced with icy, foaming rivers. Amanresorts has Amankora lodges in five of those valleys, and over the next week Chencho and I will visit four of them on a five-star road trip to explore a monarchy in transition to democracy, an agrarian society moving off the farm, and a wealth of mystical mountain energy.
It didn’t take long to figure out that Thimphu is in the midst of a growth spurt. Hundreds of people flood in from southern and eastern Bhutan daily looking for work, while utilitarian concrete block apartments, dressed up with Bhutanese-style windows and moldings, are being erected on government-purchased farmland, which flanks either side of the Thimphu River.
Some of the young new residents attend arts and handicrafts classes at the School for Traditional Arts, our first stop. I duck into studios where I watch young people learning to weave, sculpt, carve and paint under the gaze of a dozen moneyed tourists (it costs a minimum of US$200 a day for tourists to visit Bhutan). The school is the brainchild of Jigme Singye Wangchuk, the nation’s fourth king – the man who ceded power to the people after historic elections last March, and who handed over the monarchy to his 28-year-old son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, in November.
The School for Traditional Arts serves a dual purpose: to preserve Bhutan’s arts and crafts and teach young people a trade to earn money between harvests. During my vague flirtations in the weaving room (where I learned that a pretty girl named Sonam was in her fourth and final year, and that she – and every other girl here – were the first ones in their family off the farm), I began to put it all together.
Rampant construction, fledgling democracy, migrant labor, cottage industries: Bhutan is developing, and fast. This realization reminded me of another, perhaps the greatest, contribution to his people by the revered King Wangchuk: Gross National Happiness, his inspired policy that is supposedly guiding all of this development.
Fifteen minutes later I am at the Center for Bhutan Studies, sitting across from the center’s chief research officer, Karma Galay. “Public policies based on happiness are far less arbitrary than those based on economics,” said Galay, 37.
In the early 1970s, a little more than a decade after Bhutan paved its first road, the king watched as other Asian countries embraced development with capitalist zeal at the cost of their culture and their environment. Thirty-five years later Bhutan is in the midst of its own development boom, but if the king’s vision is fulfilled, it will come with equitable socio-economic growth, cultural preservation, environmental conservation and good governance, the four pillars of Gross National Happiness.
Galay has a post-graduate degree in economics from Stanford University in the US. He speaks a number of languages and local dialects. It’s his job to assess how well Gross National Happiness is being put into practice. He and his team have conducted hundreds of face-to-face interviews across the country, during which they’ve assessed the population’s individual income, health and education, among other factors. On the whole, Galay is encouraged. And although this idea of legislated, collective happiness is an intellectual pursuit, it’s aided by the spiritual.
“The concept of moderation, of not being driven by money, is a Buddhist principle,” Galay says. “We’ve found that our wealthiest city, Thimphu, is the least ‘happy.’ And people who practice religious activities are happier than those who do not.”
MOVEMENT 2: WANGDUE
Thirty-six monks sit cross-legged on the floor. Some hold their two-sided drums vertically and strike them with crooked mallets, two others blow rhythmically into long brass trumpets, while the rest intone an extended mantra that becomes a rumbling buzz. Incense fills the air, butter lamps burn and cymbals rattle. In another demonstration of Bhutan’s Tantric Buddhist traditions, this ceremony is being performed in honor of the local deities that govern daily life in Wangdue. About halfway between Thimphu and Gangtey, Wangdue dzong is the gateway to western Bhutan. Bhutan was never colonized, but was once the domain of warrior kings who marked their territory with enormous mountain dzongs, or forts, built with thick mud-brick walls and outfitted with massive prayer wheels and expansive stone courtyards.
Over time, the dzongs gradually became the domains of monks. The Wangdue dzong has stood for over 250 years and this particular Buddhist ritual is over 800 years old. Both will likely stand the test of time for centuries to come, but the same cannot be said for Wangdue village, where the dzong is located. This market town is slated for demolition in 2010.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust when we leave the dzong’s dark halls, but soon I can see the sprawling jumble of shops and shacks that have sprung up along the roadside outside the dzong. “The government talked to the village head. He did a survey of the local people,” said one disgruntled shopkeeper with a shrug of her shoulders. “I guess the people agreed [to the demolition].” The poor were happy because they will get new government housing in nearby “relocated” Wangdue, which is already planned, plotted and paved. Compared to this winding, chaotic, living version, the new Wangdue looks like the soulless subdivision that it is. We duck into Kazang Hotel, a local dive with sticky floors, for some Druk 11,000 Super Strong beer, cheese dumplings and fiery deep-fried chilies. As Chencho and I drain bottles of beer, Kazang Choden, a shopkeeper, fills used whiskey bottles with fresh milk. She’s taken Wangdue’s demise in her stride and plans to open a shop in the new Wangdue. Chencho has mixed feelings about the situation, but considers it all part of Bhutan’s dynamic new age.
“Since the election, life has changed drastically,” he says. “Before, when people talked it was all about the king. Now we talk about the new government, our political parties. We debate about selling natural resources to India, Thailand and Bangladesh, and talk about how that money will be used to develop Bhutan. Even in the remote areas the people can now look forward to some government services.”
MOVEMENT 3: GOURGEOUS GANGTEY
Gangtey is one of those remote places – nearly 3,000m above sea level and accessible by a single road – where mountains enclose a massive valley carpeted in a quilt of potato and buckwheat fields. It is home to just a few thousand people, who live in farmhouses sprinkled on the valley’s slopes.
During the winter, Bhutan’s endangered and elegant black-neck cranes descend from higher altitudes, as do the nomadic herders who arrive with hundreds of wooly yaks, which lure predators such as panthers and snow leopards.
The Amankora Gangtey has a spectacular view of it all. From the dining room, the valley and mountains are on display in all their glory. Upon first glance, one guest says, “It’s like something out of a movie.”
But in today’s Bhutan, even a community like Gangtey, with its ageless natural cycles and rural energy, is experiencing change. That’s why, on my first Gangtey morning, Chencho insists we visit the local primary school.
We arrive during morning break. Kids aged from five to 15 in traditional plaid robes run and play in fields surrounded by mountains. “We don’t have a very good fence, I’m afraid,” says principal Pema Dorji.
Dorji is standing around a wooden table with his staff of 13 teachers, also dressed in traditional garb. While the kids play, the teachers sip tea and snack on chilies stewed in cheese sauce and folded into a light, buckwheat nan bread.
Classes are taught in English (a national policy) in rooms located in three single story mud-brick buildings, which have taken a beating by weather and time. They’re drafty but packed with children eager to learn. Dorji also manages a team of educators who travel to more remote villages.
“When I arrived last year I came from a very comfortable school with electricity and computers. We had none of that here,” says Dorji.
Dorji went to work developing a relationship with Amankora. The resorts’ guests have helped raise money to buy a generator, computers and printers, and build a basketball court for the school.
Unfortunately, the school may soon lose their principal. A 20-year veteran of Bhutan schools, Dorji has grown weary of raising a family on just US$300 a month. He’d rather be a tour guide.
“I have placed an order for a new Hyundai Santa Fe,” he tells me as I leave campus. “Next year, I will resign and begin driving guests like you around the country.”
Development is one complicated beast.
MOVEMENT 4: PUNAKHA TIME
From Gangtey our journey takes us through the lowland district of Punakha, where the sculpted terraces are drenched in the Day-Glo green of fields that produce Bhutan’s distinct red-colored rice. Thanks to its milder climate, Punakha is one of Bhutan’s fastest growing cities. Young people are pouring in from the countryside to work in new riverside resorts. Amankora’s eight-room Punakha lodge is one. We first cross a swaying, wooden bridge over a gushing river before being greeted by a cheerful bellhop in a golf cart who drives us up to the lodge. He just got the job. “My family are all farmers,” he says. It takes him two days by bus followed by a three-hour hike to get home during his holidays.
The lodge’s lobby, dining room and meditation room occupy a restored three-story farmhouse, while the soothing guestrooms are built into two dzong-like longhouses.
Punakha’s best view can be found at a new monastery built by a Bhutan queen – a strenuous one-hour hike from the lodge.
“What’s the queen’s name?” I ask Chencho as we leap across irrigation canals, skirt rice fields and tiptoe through thick mud, before beginning the steady climb to the monastery.
“Well, we have four queens, actually,” he replies sheepishly.
“Really?”
“Yes. They’re all beautiful and they’re all sisters.”
Both of us laugh.
From the roof of the monastery we can see a jigsaw of rice fields climbing towards the granite peaks that loom over the Punakha Valley. We linger to enjoy this panorama before strolling back down.
MOVEMENT 5: CATHARSIS ON THE CLIFFS
Happiness is an elusive gift. Sometimes it hits you in waves, one after another, for days, months, even years. Then when it’s gone you can barely remember what it felt like … until it comes back again.
And for all it’s ambitions of Gross National Happiness, after nearly a week of traveling here, I still can’t call Bhutan a “happy” place. There is too much change, poverty, uncertainty. At least, that’s what I thought before Chencho and I hiked up to the fabled Tiger’s Nest Monastery.
Buddhism didn’t land in Bhutan until the 8th century, when an enlightened Indian Rinpoche arrived in the Paro Valley and meditated in a cave in the clouds. Soon after he left for Tibet where he built and ran a major monastery. Then, legend has it, he turned his wife into a flying tiger and soared back with her to the Paro cave, where he spend the next few years teaching and meditating.
After an initial burst of popularity, Buddhism fell out of favor in the 9th and 10th centuries and Bhutan reverted to its animist beliefs. Interest in Buddha’s teachings was revived in the 12th century when the Tibetan Gelsey Tenzin Rabgay arrived.
Tibetan Tantric traditions merged animism – including black magic and local deities – with the Noble Eightfold Path. This solidified Buddhism in Bhutan. “It is said that Rabgay was reincarnated in Bhutan in the 17th century,” says Chencho. “When he built the Tiger’s Nest around the caves where the Indian Rinpoche lived and taught.” The trail to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery is steep and muddy. Crowded with as many tourists as monks, it winds through coniferous forests and past creek-side prayer wheels until it reaches a plateau streaming with colorful prayer flags. From there it’s a short descent to a bridge that spans a steep ravine. Suddenly, we arrive at a massive monastery built into the granite cliff face.
We make our way past the obligatory military checkpoint, where guests must leave their cameras (photos are not allowed at Bhutan’s holy sites), and climb the stairs to a top-floor altar where a monk leads us through the ritual of six bows and fills our palms with holy water.
Just as we finish, the sanctuary is filled with a flock of Bhutanese pilgrims. Chencho leads me to a much-less visited bottom floor of the monastery. Inside, a young monk tends an altar, while an elder sits on the floor, cross-legged, chanting. Next to him is a heavy-set European woman, who also chants, following a Buddhist text originally written by Rabgay.
Their mantra fills the small space. Chencho and I sit along the opposite wall, next to a gated cave, where money is strewn on the floor below yet another altar with flickering candles and butter lamps. Later Chencho tells me that this is the mythical cave where Bhutanese Buddhism was born. Yogis say that if you sit in a room where a great master once lived, you can feel his life force. That’s what this feels like. Over the next 30 minutes, the mantra washes over us along with waves of energy. It’s like a drug … like a dream.
The young monk falls into a sweet, shallow trance. Chencho and I look at each other in wonder. Finally their chanting ends and we all soak in the silence.
For the first time in weeks my head is clear. My mind is completely open and I am in tune once again.
After a few minutes, Chencho and I step out onto the edge of the cliff above Paro. The crowds, the military guards, everyone is gone. He turns and says, “Now you know the power of Bhutan.” “”
Read it at http://www.powerthemagazine.com/travel/index.html
In Bhutan basically marriage is very mutual and practical 
