Himalayan Highs : Confronting the Mysteries of Bhutan

Gelong Rinzin fingered the last of the yak stew into his mouth, stood to clear away the bowls and resumed the deep bass rumble of his evening prayer.

“ Madam khadam nampi samcha ,” the monk chanted, absently. Sniff. “ Thamchay lama sangay choki .” Snuffle, sniff.

We’re at 12,200 feet in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, as locals refer to Bhutan. The mid-January sun has dropped somewhere over the Himalayan crest, and it’s cold inside the monk’s planked room at Phajoding Monastery, where we’re passing the night after a one-day walk from Thimphu, the capital city. Exhaling crystals, my guide, Pasang Tshering, watched the monk jaw down on a tiny green bundle and followed suit. “Here,” said Pasang, handing me a green leaf wrapped around a fossilized wedge.

Ninety seconds later we’re wheeling away to the tropics. Fresh betel nut has all the wallop of snuff. But these nuclear chunks had aged up there in the monk’s quarters, and our Celsius soared. Pasang’s face glistened. I threw back my coat, goose-down vest, wool sweater and flannel shirt, and still my T-shirt was getting drenched. Like some comic-strip character’s, my brow gushed fat drops.

Then, just as suddenly, the sauna quit. And the sweat . . . began . . . to ice.

Snuffle, sniff. “ Jager penchey bela kadenche ,” Rinzin muttered from across the room, moving into another prayer. “Oh great saint so kind.”

I’d come to this lofty kingdom called Bhutan lured by rumors of a cultural Shangri-La, where the rituals aren’t staged and the last storyteller didn’t die off three years ago. The Bhutan I found is startling in its unconventionality, driven by a king who dismisses much of the 20th Century that’s begun to pound on his golden gates, even as he cracks them open.

There is no television in Bhutan. Nor a single stoplight, billboard or disco. The men all wear robes. Most women bob their jet-black hair. For dinner, everyone eats fiery chiles, the national dish. And the kingdom’s only airfield opened less than 15 years ago.

But purity is quick to spoil, and the time to visit is now. I saw no tour groups during my two-week stay in Bhutan, which is unlike nearby Nepal, where the trails are overrun with Western trekkers. But the kingdom in recent months has privatized its travel industry, boosted the annual cap on visitors to 4,000 and is adding electronic guidance to the airfield, where planes now land on a wing and a prayer.

Besides, that monk’s betel nut supply is only getting stronger.

The Druk-Air jet from Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, takes 60 minutes to skirt the Himalayan mass that reaches into Bhutan, which is wedged deep in the mountains ringing India. Lemon-shaped, one end of Bhutan points west to Nepal, the other east toward Myanmar (Burma).

Tibet wraps around Bhutan’s northern half, separated by a narrow band of the Himalayas with peaks above 20,000 feet. Through its high passes, nomadic traders still move along routes as old as granite.

Only recently has Bhutan modernized the easier southern approach from India; the trek from the Indian border to Thimphu used to take 10 days through one of the 18 gates, or duars , cut by glacier-fed rivers. An asphalt road was built in the early 1960s, and now that route is a winding five-hour drive. The airfield at the town of Paro, a two-hour drive west from the capital, averages something less than one plane a day, wild weather permitting.

The flight is startling. So thin is the air that it seems possible to pick out mountaineers kicking crampons up the sides of Lhotse, Makalu, Chomolhari and Everest. Like the view from their climbing camps, all is ice and rock and azure from the plane’s windows. (Also prominent on the skyline is the world’s third-highest mountain, Kanchenjunga.)

As we neared Bhutan, our pilot, an Australian buckaroo named Allen Larson, warned us not to panic if it looked like we were going to re-enact the powdery plunge in “Lost Horizon” (the 1937 film epic set in a Himalayan Shangri-La sometimes said to be Bhutan). He dropped into the 7,000-foot-high Paro airfield by carving a 180 along the valley walls--a maneuver on a technical par with paddling a Class 5 white-water wave through the Grand Canyon.

Twelve hundred years ago, the Guru Rinpoche (regarded by the Bhutanese as being on a par with Buddha) made a similar sweep into the Paro Valley aboard a tiger en route from Tibet, and Bhutan was pulled into the Asian fold of Tibetan Buddhism.

Until his arrival, the people of the Thunder Dragon practiced an animist religion known as Bon. Its mysticism lingers today, giving an edge to Bhutan’s own blend of Buddhism.

“Pssst,” the young boy beckoned as, later in my wanderings around the kingdom, I walked up a valley east from Thimphu. He stood in the doorway of a temple called Pangri Zampa, its white walls thick and sloping inward toward the timbered roof three stories high. My interpreters were elsewhere, so we communicated by sign language. With a jangle of huge keys in hand, the boy led me inside and up three flights that resembled ladders more than stairs.

Creak went the final door and we entered the monastery’s 16th-Century sanctum. One sooty window gave just enough light to see. The floors and walls were rough-cut timbers, darkly stained and smooth. The smell was sandalwood.

In the room’s center stood an altar on which sat a row of silver cups filled with butter that burned like wax. Silk tapestries hung from the ceiling, depicting Buddha in half a dozen forms. Painted directly on one wall were rows of demonic skulls. On another hung swords and war shields--some metal, others rattan.

Turning to look into a corner, I caught my breath. There stood a seven-foot-tall replica of the Bhutan god of war, a wizard-like creature draped in frayed black silk and holding a monstrous snake. I stood mouth agape. The boy understood.

The eight major dzongs --religious and administrative centers that combine major monasteries with government buildings--and 200 regular monasteries and temples of Bhutan are its most fascinating attraction. Many are officially closed to tourists, but a soft knock and a smile will likely get you in to some. Many loom fortress-like (the Bhutanese have had wild battles with invading Tibetans over the centuries, more stagelike drama than bloodthirsty fights), only to reveal inner chambers of exquisite fragility. Typically, each will have hundreds of daphne-paper books of the teachings of Buddha, fearsome masks, a trio of dice to tell your fortune, a statue of Buddha.

Later, back in Thimphu, inside a nunnery one evening, the heat from a butter lamp stirred the air, which turned a silk prayer wheel. Eight young nuns sat on the floor, cross-legged, chanting, beating drums and ringing bells in a discordant, unrhythmic free-for-all. They reminded me of the looseness that characterizes Buddhism, which a Tibetan once likened to keeping two ledgers--one for the good things you do, one for the bad. You try your best to make the good come out ahead, but it’s no big deal when the bad gets its share of entries.

Bhutan’s tourist facilities max out in March and again in October when the monasteries hold their biggest festivals. The courtyards are filled with masked monks performing spectacular dances with names such as Judgment of the Dead, the Black Hats, the Lords of the Cremation Grounds.

More intimate village rituals are held year-round. The family of Phub Lakey--another of my interpreter guides, whose second name means “good, happy”--holds a puja , a religious ceremony to honor ancestors and seek prosperity, every three years. For three days they prepare offerings of food and drink, topped off with the fire blessing in which wine is poured into a butter lamp to see if the flame shoots up high enough to burn a triangle of paper, a good omen if it does, especially if the flame is white.

Spring and autumn trekking is another big draw in Bhutan. Trips can be as simple as an overnight ramble to a farmhouse or a monastery. Pasang, a professional guide, conducts a three-week sojourn known as the Snowman trek, which covers 221 miles, crosses 8 passes (three of which are at elevations over 16,000 feet) and is guaranteed to bring out the best in you . . . along with the worst.

Or visitors can stick by the main road, an adventure in itself as it winds, switchbacked and potholed, through Bhutan.

On my six-day drive to eastern Bhutan, our Jeeplike wagon never edged past 20 m.p.h., and still it left us ragged. But from the road we encountered a red fox in winter wheat, small mountain deer, a herd of yaks prancing around with fresh snow on their backs, a wild boar, cormorants, a pair of quite rare black-necked cranes--they migrate from the Central Asiatic Plateau--two kinds of monkeys, paddy fields of yellow blooming mustard, and high-altitude dwarf bamboo.

At the dormlike Yangke Hotel in the town of Jakar in the Bumthang region, Ama Dalha and her 18-year-old daughter, Sonam Chanzom, served us rice, potatoes and curries cooked on their stone hearth.

Farther east, in the weaving village of Ura, we huddled around a potbellied stove as our red-cheeked hostess urged cup after cup of sweet milk tea on us, and I learned to say “ Misha, mish ,” or “No more, please,” respectfully.

Waltzing down the back side of some obscure mountain, Phub Lakey told really bad jokes. We passed by a startled farmer, and Pasang--who speaks fluent English--called out in exaggerated staccato, “We are here ‘cause we are lost,” and we doubled over in laughter, happy in the warm sun. Bhutan is one of those places where the littlest things bring joy, and it’s probably not only the altitude.

At the cliff-side monastery of Phajoding, little has changed in the 800 years since the first Buddhist saint clambered up here to meditate. Long-haired yaks still winter in these meadows, tossing their crimped white tails. Baths are taken in a frigid spring. The red-robed monk Gelong Rinzin, 25, is unflinching in his devotion to the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism and its requisite flow of prayer.

Even in the valleys below, buckwheat planters roll out of bed lighting butter lamps to Buddha. Prayer wheels in brilliant designs dot the countryside. High priests, not parents, choose names for the newborn, for whom astrologers then schedule a lifetime of ritual.

Everyone bows to the king, and, although rarely done today, those citizens who remember the 1,000-year-old story involving a devilish assassin will take off their hats to show that they don’t have horns, and stick out their tongues to show that they don’t breathe fire.

To see Bhutan’s future, it’s only necessary to pick up the weekly newspaper Kuensel. (Publications reflect Bhutan’s various languages: Dzongkha, the official tongue, English and Nepalese.)Issues last winter had pieces on a museum robbery, a drunken murder, the Asian Development Bank considering a stock exchange for Bhutan (like Mongolia got last year), a shiitake mushroom cultivation workshop that drew 100, and the inaugural flight of Druk-Air’s international mail delivery, which was set on the advice of astrologers.

In recent years, the capital of Thimphu has taken on an urbane flavor, with one shop selling croissants, another cafe billing itself as a bistro, and hip young Bhutanese frequenting stores to rent videos--the only TV fare available.

The future weighs on King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who took the throne in 1972 at age 17.

There’s a longstanding fear of incursion in tiny Bhutan, surrounded as it is by populous neighbors, particularly Indians to the south and Nepalese to the west.

Bhutan managed to carve a niche for itself after centuries of battles with Tibet, then came under British and Indian influence in the late 1800s. The current independent monarchy was established in 1907. Its neighbors have not fared well in the past few decades. The former kingdom of Sikkim, to the west, was seized by India in 1975, and Tibet has come under China’s rule. Within its own southern border, Bhutan faces a clamor and increasingly violent protests from immigrant Nepalese hungry for arable land.

The Nepalese are flooding Bhutan’s low-lying border area, threatening to overrun Bhutan’s main population, which is of Tibetan origin and is estimated at 600,000-900,000. (It was the early Tibetan visitors who were said to have heard thunder and dubbed Bhutan the “Land of the Thunder Dragon.”) Crime against visitors is nearly unheard of in Bhutan, but an aggressive insurgency is hurling violence at the peace-loving Bhutanese.

In some of the forms most obvious to visitors, adherence to Bhutanese tradition is officially encouraged--and sometimes mandatory. By the king’s direct edict, all homes sport brightly painted window frames and shingled roofs. Under threat of fine, the men must wear the bathrobe-like garment called a kho or gho or baku . All government employees are required to take training in traditional Bhutanese etiquette.

Still, the Bhutanese are an easygoing, soft-spoken, deferential people who love their king. For now, few here seem inclined to utter that word--democracy--sweeping the world.

GUIDEBOOK

Escaping to Bhutan

Getting there: Travel to Bhutan has to be prearranged through a travel agency. Visa authorization numbers must be issued before Druk-Air will sell you a ticket. Numerous international travel companies have Bhutan itineraries or work directly with Bhutan-based firms. Consider combining Bhutan with Nepal, Sikkim (in India), Thailand or other Asian countries.

For expert advice on traveling throughout the region, I used: Mukesh Gupta, Himalure company, 5815 Lemona Ave., Van Nuys 91411, (818) 786-4128. Also highly recommended: Brent Olson, InnerAsia Expeditions, 2627 Lombard St., San Francisco 94123, (800) 777-8183 or (415) 922-0448.

Once there, you’ll probably want a guide/interpreter. I highly recommend mine: Pasang Tshering, Raven Treks & Tours, Post Box 557, Thimphu, Bhutan, telephone/fax from U.S. phones: 011-975-23213.

The cost: Bhutan is expensive by Asian standards. Figure on a daily rate of $150 off-season, $250 during the spring and fall when trekking is best and festivals are held. That should cover everything from lodging and meals to transportation and guides. The government takes 40% off the top.

For more information: Two generally recommended guidebooks are “Bhutan, the Himalayan Kingdom” (Passport Books, 1991) and “South Asian Handbook” (Prentice Hall Travel, 1992 edition available).