Small Moments

It's hard to really tell you what it's like, traveling.  There are all these little things that happen along the way, and you can't always make a whole post out of them, or fit them in with another one.  These aren't the highlights of the trip, but they help turn it from just rushing from place to place into an experience.

For example, on the way out to Drukgyel Dzong the first day, we saw some archers practicing, and we stopped and watched them for a while.  Sree told me a little about Bhutanese archery, and I was interested to see them using modern bows, since the Mongolians use traditional ones.  The last day of the trip, we passed a friendly match between customs officials and taxi drivers - it's that sort of country - and I got to take this video of the dance they do when someone hits the target.

Buildings here are already so well-decorated that I didn't expect to see street art in Bhutan, but I found some nevertheless (there's another photo on my Gross National Happiness post).

Also, I think Jeep may have grounds for some sort of copyright infringement lawsuit.  Wagonr?  That sounds vaguely familiar...where have I heard something like that before???

I was really looking forward to seeing some traditional handicrafts in Bhutan.  Unfortunately I have the worst timing ever, in a lot of respects.  Turns out that the art schools in Bhutan are on holiday right now, too.  However, I did get to see a hand-made paper workshop (I bought a beautiful piece of this paper, but I left it in the damn Lhasa airport.  Have I mentioned how much I hate the screwy immigration process on the way back from Kathmandu, or is that still to come?) and some backstrap weaving, which is one of those arts that to this day I still don't fully understand.  How they make the designs is pretty much magic to me.

Finally, if you know me you know I love a good bath.  From the jjimjjilbangs of Korea to the hamams of Turkey, I've tried a few in my day.  But the traditional stone bath I had on my last day in Bhutan was something new and different.

The water doesn't start out hot, I don't think.  They heat stones in a fire, and then add them to the water, which is what makes it hot.  They also put some sort of leaves to it that adds a gorgeous smell.  I asked Sree what it was, and she told me, but I can't remember the name of it.  The tub is a lot deeper than it looks...I was afraid I was going to be crammed into the thing, but there was actually plenty of room.  After a nice soak we ate a traditional dinner in the farmhouse, sitting on the floor.  The food was delicious and it was great to experience how people live, but I did have to sit though a meal with this Canadian douche who acted so offended that Sree thought he was American.  No offense to my Canadian friends, of course - the objectionable thing was his personality, not his reaction to being thought American.

Oh, and one last thing, and unfortunately I don't have a picture, but there's a little bakery on the main drag of Paro called the Cafe Brioche.  They make the most amazing cupcakes.  If you've been living in Asia as long as I have and are dying for a nice cupcake, you have GOT to give them a try.

Getting the Shaft

Just by way of warning, this is going to be one of those sorta inappropriate blogs.  All in good fun, of course, but if you're easily offended, get out now.

They say you never forget your first.  Mine was on the way out to see the ruined fortress of Drukyel Dzong.  Bhutan is well-known for its policy of Gross National Happiness.  And it's best-known, most iconic architecture is the Tiger's Nest perched high above Paro Valley.  It is a beautiful country with a rich cultural heritage.  But what did I really come to see?  Penises.  Glorious phalli adorning houses all across the country!

An auspicious start...

I had a feeling that Friday was going to be the best day of my vacation when after breakfast I went to pay for my drink, and they'd written "cock" on my bill instead of coke.  Soon enough, we were on the road toward Punakha.  There's stuff to see along the way - for example, the Dochula Pass is topped with 108 Bhutanese-style stupas (yes, there are different styles of stupas), commemorating lives lost in one conflict or another.  But it was foggy up there, and I wasn't paying the greatest attention to Sree, because I was worrying over whether or not the other tourists would beat us to Chimi Lhakhang.  I really didn't want a bunch of homeslice whities to overrun the highlight of my tour.

Okay, so back up, Great One - you haven't actually explained what the hell any of this has to do with the Almighty Penis.  Right.  So.  About 500 years ago, Bhutan was visited by a Tibetan lama called Drukpa Kunley who had some unconventional...teaching methods.  They were so unconventional that he became known as the Divine Madman.  He was all about wine, women, and song, and he used his personality to shake up the stodgy, self-righteous Buddhists.  He was so ridiculously successful that to this day his magic "thunderbolt" is still painted on houses as a protection against evil and as a way of keeping the male ego in check.

The majestic takin

Protection against evil?  Why, yes!  Among other things he did with his penis, the Divine Madman used it to subdue demons.  There are tons of stories about his exploits.  Sree first mentioned him as we were headed up the hill in Thimpu to see the Takins preserve - Bhutan's national animal, which Drukpa Kunley is credited with creating.  Apparently a group of lamas was gathered together, and someone asked for a demonstration of his power.  They'd just eaten a goat's head and a cow's body, so the Divine Madman put the skull on the bones of the cow, said, "What are you doing here?  You've got no flesh on your body?! Get up and go eat some grass!" and with a snap of his fingers the creature came to life and walked away.  And that is about as tame as his tales come.  Sree told me that most women won't tell or listen to Divine Madman stories in front of their male family members, that they are too shy.  I had to laugh at that, because my family has ceased to be shy over the years, as typified by a story involving a Mexican restaurant, Shaggy, and the squirrels in Babysis' backyard that I've already retold WAY too many times.

As for keeping the male ego in check...well, yes, there are penises all over, but they are hardly the kind adolescent boys scrawl on their papers and occasionally desks (although some of these artists could take a lesson or two from my students!)  For starters, they are huge.  They also symbolize a master penis, which could not only subdue demons but could bring women to enlightenment (and I'm not just using that as an innuendo)...if that won't make a guy feel inadequate, I don't know what will!

Anyways, Chimi Lhakhang is the temple that is dedicated to Drukpa Kunley.  The story as Sree told it to me is that a demoness was eating people going over Dochula Pass.  The Divine Madman hid in a tree and was waiting to subdue her, but she got wind of his coming and ran off in the form of a dog.  He chased her to the current location of Chimi Lhakhang - a hilltop overlooking small villages and rice paddies - where she reverted to her true form.  After subduing her, the lama buried her under a stone.  Later his cousin came and build the monastery, placing a stupa over the spot where the demoness was buried.

This temple has more going for it than just a cool story, though.  It has the Divine Madman's personal phallus - a wooden symbol, that is, not some preserved-in-a-jar-full-of-alcohol nasty relic like Rasputin's at the sex museum in St. Petersburg, sicko - which the monks use to give blessings.  Childless women in particular come here to get knocked on the head by his divine thunderbolt in hopes of conceiving.  I decided to give it a try myself - I'm not sure I want to have kids, but I know for sure it ain't happening without a husband, which would be my super-sneaky ulterior motive in seeking the Divine Madman's blessing.  He might be down with that, anyways - I get the feeling he was that kind of guy.

Aside from the penis paintings, which are delightful, my visit to Chimi Lhakhang was the highlight of my tour because it was so beautiful.  When I looked it up online, I was not impressed, but people have failed to do it justice.  To get to the temple, you must first walk downhill between rice paddies, the irrigation for the fields trickling through a ditch on one side.  The hills rise up all around you, and the temple crowns a small hill in the midst of it all.  You then take a small path up the hill between some trees before you get there, where the whole scene spreads out before you in a panorama.  I was so taken with the beauty of the place that I stopped paying attention to where I was going and ended up with one foot in a wet rice paddy (good thing my boots are waterproof!)

While there were lots of phalli to go around in the vicinity of Chimi Lhakhang, I had to watch carefully to spot any in the bigger towns.  When I was doing my research prior to coming to Bhutan, there was some suggestion that the modern Bhutanese were embarrassed by the...thunderbolts...painted everywhere, and that unofficial policy in the cities was to get rid of them.  When I asked Sree, she said she'd never heard of that, and suggested that it had more to do with the difference between a city and the countryside (I'm sure my fellow Americans can sympathize, and tell you all about things you can do on the farm that just aren't cool in the city...the "snot rocket," for example).  If they were trying to quietly get rid of them, it would be a shame, because this is something that really is unique.  If the Divine Madman were American, all those stories they tell would be tall tales, and part of our cultural heritage (this is probably unlikely, America having been built on Puritan ideals, but still).  However, as much as I love the phallic decoration, I do have one suggestion for Bhutan: you might want to stop using the Latin conjunctive "cum."  I know what it means, and you're using it correctly.  However, in a country where buildings are decorated with ejaculating penises, another meaning springs to mind.  Just saying.

Tackling the Tiger

Hiking makes me a little schizophrenic.  I love it.  I hate it.  Last fall I came to the conclusion that really I love it, as long as I can take whatever time I need to do it.  After visiting Taktsang Monastery, the iconic Tiger's Nest that Bhutan is well known for, I'm not sure that I can still say that.

The day started out well.  After a light breakfast of an omelette and coke (because you need the protein for a long hike, as well as that crazy burst of energy that coke gives you to get you started.  Don't you agree, Coca-Cola company???) we were on the trail by 7:30 a.m., before the horses could even get up there.  Not that that was even an option...my family is full of outdoorsy sort of people and there is no way I was taking the easy out.  I never have, although there have been moments when I kind of wished I could (usually about halfway up, to be precise).

The ascent to the Tiger's Nest is gradual.  No, really, it is!  The trail consists of a LOT of switchbacks, but very few stairs, at least until you get to the very end.  It's not until you come to a break in the trees and see how high you've come that you realize it.  And THEN you'll see how far you still have to go, and you'll cry a little bit, if you're a wuss like me, anyways.

Still, the forest is lovely, and even though you are sweating buckets, the sun is not out, and there are lots of things to take photos of.  And if you're lucky, your guide will be supportive.  Mine was.  Sree kept telling me how well I was doing and that she appreciated me.  Maybe two-thirds of the way up, she wanted to know if she could ask my age.  I told her I was nearly 34.  "Oh, that explains your good walk.  The driver and I were talking, and even though you are fat, you have a good walk."  Oh.  Um.  Thanks?  My size has been discussed and pointed out a LOT while I was traveling this summer, in spite of my effort and some success in getting it under control.  Sree went on to explain that they agreed that my size suited me, that unlike some people, who are only fat in their faces or their stomachs, that I am fat all over, and I said that I was lucky to be tall, and that in spite of being fat, I am really healthy.  She said that she could tell that by how I walk.  All this would, I guess, serve to help me accept myself, which is also part of my current mission, but it's still a topic I'd just as soon not talk about.  Guess I have a ways to go.

And speaking of having a ways to go...man, but does that hike go on and on!  The closer we got to the Tiger's Nest, the more we saw of these.  They are little tiny stupas made of human ashes and clay, hidden in the hollows of rocks.  Knowing that the Bhutanese follow Tibetan Buddhism, I couldn't help but ask about sky burial...do they practice it still in Bhutan?  Sree said no.  They used to, but now people get cremated.  And apparently turned into tiny stupas.

Finally, after what seemed like forever we came to the Tiger's Nest.  Peppermint's been lying low this trip, although she did pose for me at the Potala and Everest.  She's been threatening to start her own blog, but since she's a cat, I have serious doubts that she'll get further than the first post.  She likes her naps too much.  At any rate, we finished climbing up to the monastery and had a look around.  A famous statue of Guru Rinpoche, one of Bhutan's holy men, is up there, and there's a legend of how it has spoken in dreams, twice now.  There is a hole in the floor that you can look down in, and see where he stabbed a demon with his three-bladed dagger.  And in case you were wondering, there was once a tiger's den up here.  The monks used it as a meditation cave before the monastery was built.

And those monks?  I gotta say they were a helluva lot more pious than me!  Heck, Sree is a dedicated woman - she must do this hike once a week, and she hardly broke a sweat.  When we got to the car, I was more like, "I am never hiking again."  By the time we were on our way down, the sun was out, which I was not happy about.  When you go on vacation during rainy season - and it was, I checked my forecasts in Lhasa, and every damn day said, "cloudy with a chance of rain" FOR THREE STRAIGHT WEEKS! - you expect a lot of clouds.  Instead, I came back with a bloody tan (remember what I said about being paranoid about skin cancer?)  And you know that saying (that I hate) about how getting there is half the fun?  Well, when said sarcastically, it's true...the other half is getting back down again!  Which is less work for your heart, but more for your knees.  One of the things I remember about hiking Ulsan-bawi in Korea is how wobbly my legs were afterwards.  The morning walks and occasional hikes this year must have helped me a lot, because my legs were okay, but my feet hurt like hell!

Still, I made it, and I think I am as proud of that hike as of just about anything I did on vacation.

Shang-ri-La Shuffle

I've got writer's block regarding that enlightenment blog I mentioned yesterday, so I'm ignoring it for now.  Maybe it needs to be written in the order it happened, and while I'd like to keep all of my writing about Nepal together, you can't argue with the Muse.  So let's go to Bhutan instead.

Quite possibly the smallest commercial flight I'll ever be on, and it wasn't even half full.

If you've never heard of Bhutan, you're not the only one.  It's kept a fairly low profile, with only a handful of flights into the country, and just a single border crossing by land.  They charge $250 per day to visit, and all these combine to limit the number of tourists that make it there.  And they like it that way.  It's not that they don't want outsiders to come to Bhutan, but...well, Bhutan is a marvel in this modern world, a country that apparently cares more about the well-being of its citizens than the bottom line, a policy they call Gross Domestic Happiness, or GNH.

There were three major motivations behind me going to Bhutan, and this GNH was one of them. My guide, the lovely Sree, is one of two lady guides currently in the field and has been involved in conferences about GNH.  She explained that the four pillars of it were:
1. to preseve and promote national culture.
2. to preserve the environment.
3. sustainability.
4. good governance.

The ruins of Drukgyel Dzong, watching the way to Tibet

If Tibet was "paradise lost," then Bhutan is the Shang-ri-La I hoped to find.  Ironically, I have a feeling that if Tibet's history hadn't converged with China's (how's that for diplomacy?) it might be on the path that Bhutan is on.  After all, Tibet has a lot in common with Bhutan.  Bhutan practices Tibetan Buddhism, shares a border with them, and is nestled up in the Himalayas.  As far as good governance goes, I can't imagine anyone better qualified than the current Dalai Lama.  Unfortunately, that's not the way the cards played out, so we'll never know.

On the last day of my tour, the Counting Crows' cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" came up on our driver's playlist, just as we were coming up to the Dochula Pass.  Bhutan actually seems to have figured out what they had before it could be lost, through some combination of luck and the strategic move of throwing in their lot with India around the 1950's (the vision of their leaders no doubt played a part in that, as well).  Besides limiting the number of tourists that cross the border, GNH plays out in ways such as choosing to move towards organic, locally grown fruits and vegetables (rather than importing from India) and making the national dress - kira for women and gho for men - a sort of uniform in a lot of places, such as schools and museums (which is, admittedly, one of the less popular aspects of GNH for the younger generation, who would prefer to run around in t-shirts and jeans...and we thought it was bad in high school when we had to wear collared shirts and at the very least colored jeans on band trips!)

Even in Bhutan, where things seem to be going fairly well, GNH isn't a panacea.  While Sree, a divorced mother of two, considers herself to be one of the luckiest people in the world, our driver pointed out that there is a huge gap between the rich and poor.  While health care is available to all, it's not as simple as walking into a clinic and being treated; bureaucracy must be given its due.  Bhutan is the last kingdom in the Himalayas, and their royal family seems to be liked well enough, but politics is full of self-serving hypocrites wherever it may be found.

However, the fact that the ideal is there, that they're working on it, says a lot to me.  As does the fact that they're not hypocritical about it.  The first day I was in Bhutan, as we were driving out to the ruined fortress, Drukgyel Dzong, we passed a lot of of workers, widening the roads.  They were Indians, which is not so unusual, considering the fact that India is the other country which shares a border with Bhutan, but I lived in the Middle East for two years, and seeing Indian workers always makes my breath catch, because they tend to be given a really shitty deal.  So I asked Sree about them, why the government was outsourcing.  The answer is usually cheap labor, but she explained that they were more experienced in road work than Bhutanese laborers; they do a better job.  And as we continued to drive, I was amazed by the numbers of Indian children and wives I saw.  Again, normally these workers spend long periods of time without their families, because their host country will not sponsor visas for their dependents.

But then, Bhutan is not a normal country.  If you want to experience it for yourself, I have to recommend Adventure Planet Travel.  They did an awesome job organizing my tour and finding a guide to suit me (I think I mentioned that there aren't that many lady guides working in Bhutan).  Anyways, check them out.

Flied Rice

I was going to write you a nice, tongue-in-cheek blog about enlightenment today, but I'm too exhausted.  I ran a miracle mile yesterday to make my flight back to UB in time to say good-bye to Five and nearly had a breakdown in the Beijing airport.  I even yelled at a very nice Pakistani kid with the same name as an elephant from a children's book (not Elmer, btw), who was just trying to be nice to me.  I made it back and saw her off, and today I am playing tour guide to a girl who's here from Korea for Naadam, which is also quite tiring.  Perhaps I'll write about that too at some point.  But for now, you're getting a food blog.

I was a little concerned about the food in Tibet.  From what I had heard, bringing a variety of food to the plateau was just about the best thing China has done for Tibet.  Still, I wanted a Tibetan experience, and I told the Energizer that I wanted to eat at Tibetan restaurants.  The first place we stopped, on the way from the airport to Tsetang, she ordered me some pork fried rice, while she and our driver had noodles.  There was hot sauce on the table, which made me pretty happy, and I was just deciding that Tibetan food wasn't all that bad, when I came across the fly in my rice.

The lack of bugs is one of the things I have taken for granted in Mongolia.  I plan to appreciate it all the more, now that I'm back.  Anyways, never let it be said that I'm too picky an eater.  When you're in Tibet and ready for adventure, are you going to whine that there's a fly in your food and embarrass your guide and the cook?  Nope.  You're going to lower your standards, pick the fly out, and keep right on eating.  And here's my little plug for the Coca-Cola company, who should be contacting me ANY DAY NOW with the news that they want to sponsor my blog...if you want to make sure you don't come home with any parasites, be sure to drink coke when you're on vacation and the sanitary conditions are less than favorable!  Coke kills 99%* of bacteria and other parasites that may live in third-world countries.

Yeah.  That's totally why I've been on a bender for three weeks now.

Anyways, the fly in my rice aside, I didn't have as hard a time eating in Tibet as I was afraid of, and the yak momos (steamed dumplings) were mouth-wateringly delicious.  The worst that I can say about it is that it wasn't as spicy as I like my food, but that's alright, I was on my way to Nepal.  I told you before that Nepal is a lot like India, and it is.  You eat a lot of curry and daal and basmati rice in Nepal.  One of my more recent goals in traveling is learning how to cook a variety of dishes, and since Lonely Planet totally failed me this time - tsk, tsk - I asked my hotel, and they offered to teach me to cook whatever I wanted.  The problem was, I didn't KNOW what Nepali food I wanted to cook, so they suggested a chicken curry, which I jumped at.  Evil's maid tried to teach me almost this exact dish when I visited her in Hyderabad, but I didn't go and buy the spices or anything, and then I lost the paper I wrote everything down on.  Oops.  This time I bought all the spices before I left Nepal, so there should be a whole lot of chicken curry in my future.  I hope my favorite Indian takeout place here in UB, Hazara, won't suffer too terribly when I stop calling them every week.

Besides the great Nepali food, Kathmandu has an excellent range of restaurants.  I was in heaven when I came across the Maya bar in Thamel.  Real Mexican food?  Shut up.  The salsa was really spicy, and served in bowls made out of leaves that had been molded and pressed in that shape.  Impressive presentation, Maya.  Their burritos were mediocre, but the virgin strawberry margarita more than made up for that!

Not far away was Yin Yang, a Thai restaurant, which I stuffed myself on for my last lunch in Kathmandu.  Their spring rolls were more like the egg rolls I love to get from the Chinese place my family goes to back home, which suited me perfectly well, with a peanut dipping sauce that was just a little bit spicy.  The panaeng gai curry and rice was amazing, and between that and the spring rolls, I couldn't finish, which was a little disappointing because it was SOOOO good.

Finally, let me tell you about the food in Bhutan.  If you look into traveling there, you'll find out that it costs a whopping $250 per day, which seems really expensive.  However, that cost covers just about all your expenses.  You'll have to pay for soft drinks and souvenirs, and that's about it.  And when they feed you, they REALLY feed you.  I was embarassed by how much food they brought me - as if I could eat all that!  And in spite of all this, when I saw Five yesterday she was shocked because I seem to have lost weight.

The staples of the Bhutanese diet are red rice (I'm not sure what makes it red, but it doesn't have anything added to it, it just is) and chilli cheese.  This is just about the best thing I've ever tasted.  It's green chilies and I don't even know what kind of cheese, but it burns a hole straight through you.  I may have been a dragon in a former life, because I'm very happy when I feel like I can breathe fire, and that is exactly what chilli cheese does to you.  And the best I had the whole time there was at a farmhouse after a hot stone bath, but that's a story that belongs elsewhere.

*I may have made this number up, but the fact remains that I've never gotten a parasite.  Apparently alcohol is good for the same thing, but it NOT good for good little Mormon girls.  Coke is not effective against food poisoning.