The word ‘Institute’ fills me with ominous images of two-headed dogs and white-coated men with small spectacles, so, as we approach the heart of Bhutan’s traditional medicine establishment on a hill above Thimpu, I’m much relieved to find that it’s a colourfully decorated, half-timbered building that looks like a well-preserved Elizabethan manor house.
We’re welcomed by three serious men, two of whom are called Dorje. They show us around an immaculately laid out display of traditional medicines in a long, library-like room with beamed ceiling and glass cabinets. The debt to Tibetan medicine is acknowledged in the old anatomical charts showing the five wheels or chakras, the centres of spiritual power that control all our bodily systems. Traditional Bhutanese medicine also borrowed from the Indian idea that the balance of the Three Humours, bile, wind and phlegm, dictates the state of our physical and spiritual health.
Of their prize discovery they are as bashful and cautious as you would expect government scientists to be. They admit that they are working hard to produce products that will have a commercial application, as it brings in the money to keep the Institute going, and that they have recently concocted a mix of five herbs that ‘could possess spermogenetic powers’.
‘Increase virility,’ adds one of the Dorjes, helpfully.
Their mixture is currently on a two-year test, after which conclusions will be examined. When I enquire about its constituents, glances are exchanged and there are mutterings about bio-piracy and international property rights, but it seems the key ingredient is none other than our old friend Cordyceps sinensis, or caterpillar fungus, five pieces of which I bought off the street in Yushu for PS4, and which are currently stuck in dust and fluff at the bottom of my bag. They confirm that the tiny little shoots are very difficult to find and though it grows up in the Bhutanese mountains, there is often a fight with Tibetans from across the border to get to it first.
Our hosts line up to bid us goodbye. The idea that these grave and courteous men in matching khos might be onto a world-beating sex aid seems as unlikely as it would be desirable.
Early lunch with Khendum at a trendy new restaurant called the Bhutan Kitchen, opened two days ago and alarmingly empty. I meet two of her international friends. Linda, a buxom American, is married to a Bhutanese thangka painter and has lived here for seven years.
‘I love Bhutan. Bhutan is so relaxed and peaceful.’
‘Everyone says that.’
She nods and shrugs.
‘But there’s nothing else to say about Bhutan.’
Francoise, a lively, funny French lady, who I feel I know already, as she’s written the guide book that’s become my Bhutanese bible, is a touch more analytical.
‘I won’t call it Shangri-la but there is a certain magic here, which isn’t about wealth,’ she says. ‘Once you’re trapped in, you can’t get out. It’s a magic trap.’
Khendum has lined up some local gastronomic specialities. As a sharpener, I take rice wine with an egg in it and, noticing the ubiquitous betel nut on the table, I decide that the moment has come for me to sample the Himalayan lorry-driver’s staple diet. Khendum prepares it carefully, wrapping the hard nut in its own leaf with a smear of lime paste. The sharp bitterness of the leaf is an ugly taste, but it wears off and after a few minutes of chewing my head begins to heat up as if from deep inside. I feel my eyes water and my cheeks redden as the betel rushes my body onto full alert and soon, like everyone else who chews it, my teeth are stained red and I’m looking for somewhere to spit it out.
The main dishes are challenging. A long, stringy vegetable of some kind seems determined to strangle me from within, smashed chicken and red rice is dotted with small bone fragments and the cow-hide is, well, an acquired taste. One which, I fear, would take armed men with rifles at my head to acquire.
Our time among the flesh-pots of Thimpu is distressingly brief. Tomorrow we head north to Jomolhari mountain to begin a vale-dictory trek, a farewell to the high Himalaya.
By way of preparation, I plan a short training climb with my guide who, almost unbelievably, is not called Dorje. He’s called Doje.
In the foothills near Paro is a complex of holy buildings that draws pilgrims from all over the Himalaya. Takstang, meaning ‘Tiger’s Lair’, is built on precipitous rock ledges and, though it remains almost impossibly difficult to get to, there is now a well-trodden tourist trail up to the crags opposite.
We pass a farmhouse, whose walls are painted with motifs of tigers, devils and the curious symbol of a weasel disgorging pearls. Doje explains. The Guardian King of the North Direction traditionally holds a weasel, so anything emanating from a weasel’s mouth denotes good fortune. Obvious really.
The clouds pile up as our trail climbs through oak and pine forest. Souvenirs are laid out for sale at every other corner. After an hour and a half’s walking, the track levels out at a chorten with prayer wheels inside, from which a wide path leads to a log-cabin tea house with wood-burning stove and good local food. Outside is a terrace with fine views of the temple. It is believed to have been founded by the saint Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, who rode here on a tigress in the 8th century and took on terrifying form to chase away the evil spirits and convert the valley to Buddhism.
In 1998 a fire gutted the main sanctuary. Its restoration proved a formidable technological challenge, but it’s almost completely rebuilt. Newly carved sections were hauled up from workshops 1000 feet below by a system of ropes and pulleys.
From across the valley, the white walls with the maroon band gleam from the top of the sheer tongue of rock that marks Takstang out as one of the most spectacular holy places anywhere in the world.
Day One Hundred and Eight : Jangothang
Just short of 24,000 feet (7315 m), Jomolhari is one of the highest mountains in Bhutan. Seen from our tiny, fragile campsite, it fills the northwestern horizon, an immense hemispherical slab, hung with mighty crusts of snow and ice save where the rock flanks of the mountain, too steep to hold anything, stand out raw and sheer.
Unlike Everest, which kept a majestic distance, Jomolhari looms very close, a presence so powerful and all-pervasive that at times it seems to be growing before our eyes. Unsurprisingly, this is a sacred mountain and no-one has ever stood on its summit.
The far side of Jomolhari is in Tibet and around it wind narrow passes that have long been used for trans-Himalayan trade. Proof of this lies in the half-collapsed dry-stone walls of a castle, built to control this meeting of two valleys. A track continues up beyond our camp and we follow it towards Ngile La, a pass at 15,700 feet (4785 m). Another mighty mountain rises close to us. Jichu Drake, at 22,300 feet (6795 m), is a classic Paramount peak, more shapely than Jomolhari, from which a beautiful glacier trails, covering the rocks in gleaming, blue-tinted ice sheets. A milky-green stream leaks from beneath it. We’re above the tree line here, but there are yaks and the odd farm, on one of which lives a national character whom Doje is keen for me to meet.
The farmhouse is of the traditional manorial style, surrounded by a compound protected by a five-foot-high wall made from stone and topped with birch twigs and dried yak dung.
Inside the compound is a solar panel unit and a number of archery targets. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan.
We climb an outside staircase, at the top of which waits the bony figure of Choni Dorje. He’s 82, and has lived here all his life. He’s that happy combination, a yak herder and poet, and a few years back wrote a song extolling the virtues of his favourite yak, called something like ‘Jewel of the Mountains’. Describing the beast from horn to tail in loving terms, it struck a national chord and he was asked to Thimpu to sing his song to the King. He doesn’t look strong. He has a cataract in one eye, turning it milky blue, white hair tight around a prominent skull, sunken cheeks and a wispy Fu-Manchu beard.
But he seems cheered to see us and happy to give us a tear-jerking rendition of his big hit. Just to bring the tone down, I reply with a verse of the Lumber
jack Song, which, sadly, I can never fully remember.
Choni Dorje’s granddaughter invites us inside to the big, open, timber-floored room, where four generations live together. Bed-rolls are neatly stowed at one side of the room, along with the woven rugs and blankets to keep out what must be bitter cold. A little marmalade cat peers at us from a dark corner. As befits the house of a man who wrote a love song to the animal, there are bits of yak all over the place; haunches of dried yak meat and coiled entrails hang from roof beams and a pile of yak dung is stacked by the cast-iron stove. A small shrine with a Buddha lies behind a curtain off to one side.
As we drink our butter tea, I have to remind myself that Choni Dorje, his family, his yaks and his marmalade cat have lived their entire lives higher than the summit of the Eiger.
Day One Hundred and Nine : Jangothang to Takengthanka
One by one we stumble out onto the frosty grass after a bitterly cold night. The tents are comfortable enough when you’re inside, but squeezing through that tight-zippered door is like coming out of the womb. Doje tells me that Jangothang means ‘land of ruins’ and looking at the state of us, it seems appropriate. I think we’ve been in the mountains too long. Last night was a sharp reminder of the high-altitude conditions that we thought we’d left behind.
Of course, the payback for the pain is tremendous scenery, unpolluted air, brilliant light and utter silence. And once I’m up and dressed and have splashed some water on my face, I know I shall miss all these things. By tonight the majestic peaks of the Himalaya will be behind us for the last time, so, while the tents are being struck and our ponies loaded up for the journey, I pick my way up past the monolithic boulders rolled down by the glaciers and through the birch scrub and the tough little juniper trees towards Jomolhari. It’s a final act of homage to the high mountains and, as Jomolhari fills the sky, I feel a bit like one of the characters in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the spaceship has landed.
The Himalayan peaks are seen by the people who live among them as awful places, abodes of jealous gods and places where the dead are gathered, and I have the feeling they’ve got it right. What do we know, we who romanticize them? We who fly in and use them to prove something to ourselves, to plant our flags, talk of ‘conquest’ and then go home. I can almost feel the shoulders of Jomolhari heaving with laughter.
I find a mossy rock and just sit for a while. I look down at our camp, with flocks of alpine choughs swooping noisily in to look for morsels of food, and feel my own personal pangs of regret at leaving all this behind. There are few places outside the Himalaya where the relation of man to nature can be experienced on such a gigantic scale, and something like that may not change your life, but it does stretch it a bit.
Jomolhari is draped in cloud as we set off across the stream and down along the broad, treeless meadow of grass and stones that leads down the valley. Within minutes the mountain is out of sight.
A yak caravan sways up towards us. Doje says he prefers to use horses and donkeys for carrying. He says they’re much brighter than yaks and look where they’re going.
Jomolhari is 11 miles (18 km) behind us by the time we reach our next campsite. It’s in a tight neck of the mountains, where the valley becomes a gorge. Thickly wooded slopes of cedar, blue pine, maple and larch rise behind us and the stream we’ve followed since it left the glacier is now a river, some 30 feet wide and running fast and clear. A fire has been lit and internal warmth is taken care of by a slug or two of Special Courier Bhutanese Whisky. The description on the bottle, ‘brewed at Gelephu Distillery (a unit of Army Welfare Project)’, suggests that we are not only warming ourselves but helping the Bhutanese military at the same time. Very odd. Food is served early and I’m one of the last to bed. It’s a quarter to nine and snowing.
Day One Hundred and Ten : Takengthanka to Sharma Zampa
My tent flap is heavier when I push it aside this morning. A layer of rime has built up overnight and, as I squeeze out into the world, it brushes across my back, propelling me forwards with a shock.
The sun will take some time to penetrate this steeply enclosed ravine, so breakfast is eaten with gloves, hats and scarves on. Our horse drivers are tucking into mounds of red rice and chillies.
‘They can’t move without rice and chilli,’ says Doje. ‘Each man eats a kilo of rice a day.’
I ask him what they eat on special occasions.
‘Rice,’ he says, predictably. ‘Rice with green chilli. Pork slices, dried spinach.’
The horses, meanwhile, nuzzle dried corn from what I’ve come to call Himalayan nose-bags: plastic footballs sliced in half.
The business of reducing our travelling village to whatever fits on a horse’s back is elaborate and time-consuming. Homes are demolished, restaurants closed and packed into boxes, kitchens disappear into bamboo baskets. This morning the horses haul their loads up and over a series of switchbacks, some steep and slippery, before the path begins to flatten out. Very occasionally, we meet people coming the other way. Locals carrying supplies up to the nomads in the higher valleys and, at one point, out of the woods ahead, a party of immaculately dressed Japanese. We descend from the conifer forests and into richer temperate woodlands with flowering laurel and luxuriant rhododendron swelling on either side, and strips of meadow thick with edelweiss and gentian.
But it is a long way and by the time we reach the patch of grassy riverbank near the bridge of Sharma Zampa we’ve covered another 12 miles (19 km). Nigel is limping from a blistered toe and Basil is appalled at what he’s just done.
‘No Pao has ever walked as far as this.’ He shakes his head in dis-belief. ‘Never in the entire history of Paos has anyone walked 23 miles!’ And there’s more to go.
But we’re down below 10,000 feet (3050 m). The valley is wider and more inviting, the river has broadened to 100 yards wide, and there are some substantial farmhouses on the far bank, where the forest has been cleared and the land terraced for cultivation. Though there is a bridge a mile upstream, most of the traffic from the other bank comes through the river. We watch a packhorse, fully loaded, followed by two women and half a dozen children, pick its way through the shallow but fast-flowing waters, and later two cows and a calf, almost submerged as it struggles desperately to get a grip on the wet rocks, make their way across.
Day One Hundred and Eleven : Sharma Zampa to Paro
I must really have been walked out yesterday, the result being a long, deep, wonderfully restorative night’s sleep. Trekking beats any sleeping pill. Doje is tall, good-looking and, until he’s had a drop of Special Courier in the evening, quite a serious young man. His mother was the Queen Mother’s equerry and maybe that’s where his rather dignified correctness comes from. So it’s all the more gratifying to hear him getting quite worked up at the breakfast table. Admittedly, it’s only about Bhutanese history, but there’s a yelp of unalloyed chauvinism as he talks of the Tibetan invaders who used to come down trails like this.
‘16th century, 17th century. I think there were nine invasions. And we trashed them!’
Doje shakes his head with relish, as if it had all happened yesterday.
‘We sent them back. We sent them back!’
A herd of cows is crossing the river towards us. I think this verdant bank where we camped must be their grazing ground, for, once here, they tuck into whatever doesn’t have a tent on top of it, including my jacket. The women who keep an eye on them are a feisty pair. While one looks through Nigel’s camera in wonderment, another attacks one of our horsemen after he’s made a joke about her, grabbing at his crutch, shrieking with laughter and revealing a perfect set of totally black teeth.
Doje keeps well out of it. He says the ladies up here are tough and can out-wrestle any of the men.
We move on. A magnificent landscape of interlocking, conifer-clad spurs stretches way above us to a mountain with a little tongue of snow and ice still clinging to its north-facing summit. On either side of us are meadows and the widening
waters of the River Paro.
Civilization is gradually stretching its fingers up the valley. We pass a large army camp, more and more farms, emerald-green paddy fields, orchards ripe with plum blossom. Pigs scuttling about. After five hours of walking, we cross the river on a steel-slung suspension bridge (financed by the Swiss, I notice) and at last onto a paved road. An hour and a half later, we reach the famous Drukyel dzong. This fortress, raised around the time that England was fighting its only Civil War, commemorated one of Bhutan’s rousing victories over the Tibetans. Reduced now to little more than a circular keep after a fire started by a butter-lamp in 1951, Drukyel dzong must once have seemed impregnable, standing as it does on a strategically commanding crag overlooking the valley, with Paro on one side and Jomolhari and the Tibetan border, 35 miles (56 km) away, on the other. Now it’s a little forlorn.
At its foot is a small, picturesque, alpine village, with two huge cypresses looming above it. The very first house we come to has a fine selection of wall paintings, including a chubby pink penis with wings attached. But best of all, the village contains a bus that will take us the rest of the way into Paro, and the bus contains cold beers.
I pull off my boots and peel down the socks with wondrous relief. One of my toes is bloody but otherwise no ill-effects of the longest, if not quite the most arduous, of our treks so far.
Day One Hundred and Twelve : Paro
The great religious festivals of Bhutan are known as tsechus and commemorate the deeds of Padmasambhava, aka Guru Rinpoche, the saint whose rocky perch in Takstang I climbed up to a few days ago. Tsechu means ‘tenth’, which was the day of the month when, by tradition, these deeds took place. Today is the start of the annual five-day tsechu in Paro. Primarily a religious event, it’s also a big social occasion, with people taking time off from work to dress up in their best outfits and watch dancing, have picnics, attend archery contests, and generally let their hair down. Opening and closing days are the most important and the crowds will be the biggest, so we’re up at 5.30 to make sure of a good position. This is also a big draw for tourists and, though only a few thousand come in every year, the hotel accommodation is easily overrun and we’re staying in a rented bungalow a half-hour out of town.
Himalaya (2004) Page 30