The best thing I have done so far this year or in the last decade or so is taking the break I just did and going to Bhutan. The Kingdom of Bhutan – the last Shangri-La and the jewel of the Himalayas is a must-see for any nature lover. What I had read about Bhutan before actually going there - About the size of Madhya Pradesh, perched high up on the snow-capped mountains of the eastern Himalayas nature and religion are the two things that stand out in this little kingdom. Its 8 lakh population with a colourful culture, tradition, unique architecture, peace and tranquility live in this unpolluted habitat, which makes Bhutan a unique destination. Bhutan is also the last bastion of Mahayana Buddhism. It is not merely the religion but the way the people live their daily lives. Its rich and diverse flora and fauna earned the world's recognition as one of the Top 10 Global Hot Spots. Bhutan opened to the outside world only in the 1960s. Planned development was initiated with Gross National Happiness as its development vision. Television and Internet found their way to the country only in 1999!
My experiences -Bhutan turned out to be a delightful place, full of surprises and extremely peaceful and serene. A tip to anyone who wants to go there – please keep your camera handy at all times. Every sight makes a pretty picture. Our flight to Paro International airport was delayed due to bad visibility at Kathmandu. On days of good visibility one is blessed with the experince of flying above the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayan range between Kathmandu and Paro. It is a sight to remember. One of my friends took this picture on our return journey.
Paro airport is a small one, between two mountains and as soon as I took in the cool, crisp air of Bhutan I knew my vacation had just begun.
We were met by Raj, our guide for the trip. It is said that Bhutan encourages only a limited set of tourists each year to make sure that the number of tourists do not exceed the infrastructure of the country. Hence you need to book yourself through an agent and make sure that you have a guide for your entire stay. You cannot enter a monastery or a Dzong or museum without a guide. Since I had gone through Women on wanderlust all the arrangements were taken care of by Sumitra Senapaty – the founder of WOW. She is probably the first in India to start a venture that arranges tours only for women. I hope to go on many more trips with WOW.
Thimpu -
We first drove to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. The drive from Paro to Thimpu takes about 90 minutes and is a very picturesque one. Thimpu is a very small city. The city centre square is surrounded by shops selling handicrafts popular in Bhutan such as thankas, statues of Lord Buddha, prayer bells, incense sticks and more. Bhutan is not thickly populated and the country has ensured that it has preserved it’s traditions and customs.
The national costume is widely used and is very nice. Women wear the Kira while men are dressed in the Gho. In Thimpu one does see some youngsters in jeans and trousers. We did the usual things in Thimpu like a visit to the Memorial Chorten, which is a memorial of the third king built by his mother, and then a visit to the School of arts and crafts. School education is free for boys and girls and since handicrafts is a major source of income in Bhutan every child is encouraged to study painting, mask making, weaving etc. We also went to the paper factory. Bhutan is an environment conscious nation. They do not use palstic and encourage the use of handmade paper. The paper factory in Thimpu is worth seeing, and the process is easy to understand. The biggest challenge for us was the visit to the Cheri monastery.
Most of the monasteries are located out of the main city and are generally up in the hills. They say that the energy in the mountains is very pure and doing your meditation there is a very peaceful experience. Raj had told us that the Cheri monastery would involve a half hour trek but it took us almost an hour to get there. I realised that day how out of exercise I was. My legs were shaking and I could hear my heart beat and it was a scary experience. So when I did reach the monastery my prayers were fervent and heart felt. Cheri monastery is a beautiful and simple one. One of the monks there asked me where I was from and when I said that I was from Dubai, he did not know where that was. That’s how cut off they are from the rest of the world.
Punakha –
Punakha is picturesque valley and the erstwhile capital of Bhutan. The drive from Thimpu to Punakha is a three hour one and over the Drochula pass which is at 3000 mts. The hills are green and the prettiest sight is that of the magnolia and rhododendrons, all in full bloom making the drive a very colourful one. On the way to Punakha there is a halt at the Chimi Lhakang which is a memorial built by the people of Bhutan in memory of the people of Bhutan who lost their lives in the war against the Assamese Bodos in December 2003.
This memorial has 108 stupas and inside each stupa is buried the weapons used in that war. It seems that people came from all over the country to help out with the building of this structure. No wonder I read somewhere on the internet that Bhutan is a country where life is respected in all it’s incarnations. Close to the memorial, a little uphill, is a fairly new monastery. I went up there as an after thought and am really glad I saw it. It is the prettiest place ever, with an impressive statue of Lord Buddha.
We went to the Punakha dzong the next day, where I went completely overboard with the photographs. A dzong is a place of worship and every city has it’s dzong so there is a Punakha dzong, a Paro dzong and so on. It is different from the monastery in that a Dzong is located in the heart of the city and is also a place where district administrative tasks happen where as a monastery is strictly a place of worship and is on the outskirts of a city. The Punakha dzong is located at the confuence of two rivers. The male river, known as the Pho Chho and the female river – the Ma Chho. Ma Chho is darker in colour (the one on the left) and gets it colour from the minerals of the rocks it flows on while Pho Cho is a lighter coloured river and is a snow-fed one.
Punakha Dzong was built in 1637 and it’s courtyard is impressive. The huge peepal tree was gifted to the dzong by Indira Gandhi who had visited the dzong with Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. She is the first woman to have spent a night at the dzong.
One cannot take pictures of the altar of the Dzong. It is a beautiful, calm and lovely place and no words will be able to potray the beauty and uniqueness of sacred altar of the Punakha dzong.
From the Punakha dzong we went to the Souvenir making centre supported by the Youth Development Fund. This place has some unique handicrafts and gift items and is an excellent place to do your gift shopping from. The rates are high in Bhutan but if you can bargain well you can walk away paying half the price quoted initially. The fertility temple is another popular tourist destination in Punakha. One has to walk through some pretty paddy fields for about 30 minutes to get to the temple.
There are monks there who can predict whether you will have a child or not. I had a long drawn process I’m a little wary of writing about though (let it be the little secret between me and my companions) before I finally got an answer based on the dice I rolled. It seems that I will have a daughter and I am supposed to name her Chhimi Dewa. Phobjikha -
Phobjikha is a valley and is a two and a half hour drive from Punakha. Phobjikha means ‘Cup shaped valley’ and the place is the home of the highly endangered black necked crane which visits Bhutan from Tibet during the months of November to February. Since we went in March we could not really see the black necked cranes but were lucky to sight one crane. Locals told us that only two cranes were still in Phobjikha – one adult crane who could not fly back due to an injured wing and another baby crane, too young to fly back. I think we spotted the adult one thanks to Raj’s binoculars. It was very cold in Phojikha and it had snowed the previous night.
The valley has no electricity and our hotel runs on generators. We were told that there would be no electricity in our rooms after 9 p.m. and the only way to keep warm was with the bukharaas in each room. It was quite an experience. I’m not sure if it makes sense to go to Phojikha during months other than November to February. The place is pretty but it is too cold to go for long walks and exlore the surroundings on foot. Also the drive to Phobjikha is exhausting. However this is purely my personal opinion, we met a couple who stayed in Phobjikha two nights because they liked the place so much.
Paro –
We had a long, six hour drive to Paro the next day. One gets to see the changing landscape of this country as one drives through the towns of Bhutan. I liked Paro the most amongst all the our halts in Bhutan.
The National Museum in Paro is worth a visit to. The museum building is a erstwhile watch-tower and you get a fantastic view of the entire city from there. The building also has lovely and hidden staircases and passages which form the various levels of the museum. The collection here is vast and gives great insights into the history, culture and lifestyle of Bhutan. There is one section that gets a little spooky – the section where weapons and arms are displayed in an actual prison cell of the watch-tower. The room is cold, with high stone walls and no ventilation. Prisoners imprisoned there many years ago must have done some horrible things to be sentenced to imprisonment in those two rooms.
Another place worth going to is the Paro playground. If you are lucky to be in Paro on a weekend you must go to the playground to watch the archery competitions taking place. Archery is Bhutan’s national sport and the archers strike from a distance of 145 metres! As soon as a hit is made all the people on both ends of the game get together and dance a small dance. It’s nice to watch the game.
What I liked best about my stay in Bhutan and what I am going to cherish for a long time to come is the visit to the Taktsang or the Tiger’s Nest temple, the most revered temple amongst the Buddhists. This magical temple clings to a vertical granite cliff 800 mts above the valley. Legend has it that in the 18th century, Guru Rimpochey,(also known as Guru Padmasambhava) a Tantric master, flew here on the back of a tigress and meditated in a cave around which the temple is built. Most of our group decided to take the mules up the cliff, but three of us decided to walk up and I am so happy I did that. I had Sumitra for company and we made our way up in good spirits and at our own pace.
We took ample stops in between and caught our breath and finally reached the Tiger’s Nest after a three hour trek. The mules take one to the steps that leads to the temple. There are around 750 steps in all, some of them are steep, but they are not difficult to climb provided you do not run on them. By the time Sumitra and I reached the monastery most of the tourists were already on their way down. We therefore were the only two people in the monastery. The chants in the altar were reaching a peak and the atmosphere was magical and overwhelming. I cannot explain what it was to sit in silence, so high up in the mountains, with the lovely Buddhist chants the only sound around you. It was divine and that was the closest I have been to feeling God with me.
A visit to the Tiger’s Nest is a must for anyone wanting to go to Bhutan. I was chatting with a group of American tourists all above 60, trekking up to the temple. One of them asked me if I was a sporty Indian girl since she hadn’t seen too many climb up and I told her that trekking up was something I wanted to do for myself especially after my disastrous trek to Cheri monastery. She said that it is good to challenge oneself once in a while and I couldn’t agree more!
Paro is a shoppers’s delight and there are plenty of shops in the main market to buy all your gifts from. That evening we had a cultural programme arranged for us at our hotel. A lovely group of youngsters presented some of their cultural dances – some dances that are to appease the spirits of the land, some are performed during harvest times and some are based on the black necked crane. The movements of the dancers was graceful and all of them sang so well! The people of Bhutan are a very artistic and creative.
We had our flight back to Delhi the next morning and all of us left with a heavy heart. I loved Bhutan and I think the place deserves a second visit because there are so many other towns yet to see. The Bhutanese are simple, peace loving and hard working people. There is absolutely no begging in Bhutan. The people really do look happy and content with what they have. Some may insist on seeing the photo you have clicked of theirs, they get really happy when you show it to them. More often than not they are happy to stop and pose for the camera.
Traditions –
There are so many traditions but one that stuck in my mind is that of placing the Chahows. When one dies and is cremated a little ash is collected and mixed with clay to form these small triangular structures known as Chachows. The Chachaows are then kept in a place, generally on a mountain or in a cave, so that it will not get destroyed by the rain. It is kept in memory of the departed soul.
Prayer flags – These seem to be really important. You can buy a prayer flag based on the year you are born in. I am born in the year of the ox so I am meant to buy a brown coloured prayer flag.
Before going to Bhutan I was under the impression that since it is so close to India there will be a lot of overlap with Indian architecture. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Bhutan is a country with an extremely strong sense of individuality. All new constructions follow the style, design and colour they have always had. Not many people know Hindi but you do come across some people who speak Hindi fluently. The Bhutanese currency the Ngultrum is at the same value as the Indian rupee. So if you are Indian you can easily manage with Indian rupees but make sure that you do not carry 500 or 1000 rupee notes since small shops generally do not accept large notes. We, as Indians, are lucky to have such a lovely country as our neighbour and the fact that we do not need a visa to get there makes it so easy to plan a trip to Bhutan. I think the ideal period of stay in Bhutan should be 10 days or so. It makes sense to go with like minded people since this place might disapppoint someone who is keen on man made or urban attractions.
Last but not the least, I must say that I was completely floored by the company I had. We were ten women in all – from Singapore, Coimbatore, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. All of them independent, passionate about travel and some about photography too. Each one unique in her own way and I ended up sharing things about myself with them which I wouldn’t easily share with anyone else. I think the average age of our group was about 30 – 32. They are all women I hope to be in touch with for many years to come. When I got back to work last week my colleagues couldn’t stop remarking on how relaxed I look. I sent the pictures to my boss and now she knows why I looked the way I did. I hope the calm and serenity lasts for some time.
