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| Is that a dragon wrapped around a penis? Yep, you gotta read on now. |
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| View from the plane on the way in from Nepal. That could be Everest, we're not really sure, they just told us we were flying by it at some point |
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| Yak, right on the side of the road |
For those that don’t know about Bhutan and are asking “wait, that’s a city in what country?”, maybe a little info will help. Yes, Bhutan is it’s own country, a tiny one at that. Surrounded by India on three sides to the south, east, and west and Tibet (or China if we recognize their invasion of Tibet) to the north, it is a very small country buried in the Himalayas. It is a mountain nation with a population of only 700,000 people who mostly live in rural areas. There are a few cities but for the most part they are very small and quite peaceful as far as cities go (very few cars with uncrowded, wide, clean streets and almost no pollution). 75% of the land is covered in forest, something they are very proud of. The government is a constitutional democratic monarchy, meaning they have a democratic system with a beloved king similar to England, but their parliament is informed almost entirely by Buddhist principles (the only of its kind in the world). This leads to a few very interesting ideas of how to run a country:
1) They are obsessed with conservation, of both nature and their culture. On the radio you hear all sorts of messages about conserving electricity, wood, gas, etc. Always positive messages and almost everyone seems to embrace them. The government will decide that a city is becoming too overcrowded in one area and will literally force thousands of people to move to a new area and finance the construction of an entire new city. Strange idea to us but the people seemed to tolerate it. To conserve their culture they do a few interesting things as well. First, everyone is required to wear National Dress (see picture below) when doing anything official, going to school, or visiting any sacred place, but most wear western style clothing the rest of the time. In dealing with tourism, they preserve their culture through a policy they call high value, low impact. Meaning high value tours for tourists but few tourists to impact the country because the prices are so high it keeps many people away. This meant we had to be accompanied by a tour guide at all times (to keep disrespectful tourists from taking pictures in sacred places, dressing inappropriately, and all the other obnoxious things tourists do that slowly erode traditional cultures) and pay an absurd cost to enter the country. They have a flat rate per person per day to enter Bhutan which is paid to the government through a very confusing bank to bank transfer (thanks papa Carlson for figuring this out for us, we couldn’t do it ourselves from overseas) and then the tour guide gets paid by the government after the tour and assuming no complaints were filed by the tourist (ensuring across the board great service). The flat rate includes everything: transportation, meals, hotels (luxury ones for the most part!), guide, museum fees, etc. Very interesting tourism policy but kind of annoying for us as we are quite used to living on our own schedule and not being shuffled from one place to the next by a tour guide.
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| Our tour guide wearing national dress inside of an old fort |
2) They have flipped the concept of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on it’s head. Most countries judge their progress as a nation by measuring GDP, a measure of how well their economy is doing by way of how much they are producing. In Bhutan, however, they shun GDP and instead measure GNH, Gross National Happiness. The government implements new policies always with the overarching goal of increasing the GNH of the people. Seems like a better way to measure progress to us. After all, do we really care how much we produce or how happy people are?
3) Because Buddhism sees animals as sentient beings and do not wish for sentient beings to suffer, killing of any animal is illegal in Bhutan. No hunting, no fishing, no slaughterhouses, and no killing chickens for dinner (there are huge fines for any of this). The ironic part, and in our eyes the quite stupid part, is that 90% of the population eats meat. They’re not vegetarians. So instead of producing their own meat, they import all meat from India (along with everything else, even most of their souvenirs), simply exporting the killing to another country so that it‘s not done within their own borders. Kind of a dumb policy to us, after all what does it matter if it was killed somewhere else or killed within your borders, either way an animal was killed to eat the meat (part of the natural food chain in our eyes as long as it‘s done in a way that respects the animal).
4) We’re not sure why, because it’s not part of the Buddhist principles that we are familiar with, but for some reason Buddhism and Hinduism are the only legal religions in Bhutan. It is actually illegal to practice Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religion. Most of the Buddhist teachings that we are familiar with actually embrace other religions, saying that different religions match with different dispositions of people and it is foolish to think one religion could or should be practiced by all. This comes from Tibetan Buddhism, but the form of Mahayana Buddhism they practice in Bhutan is quite close to Tibetan Buddhism so we can’t figure out why they would have this restriction on freedom of religion. Because this is something we hold so dear to us in the US, we asked our guide about it but he didn’t seem to find anything wrong with this. Probably because that’s all he knows but it seems strange to us and quite frankly just plain wrong.
5) Another bizarre aspect of conservation, we suppose, is that the government controls what art is produced. There are only a handful of scenes that may be depicted in paintings, sculptures, etc. and there are only 2 art schools in the whole country. All artists are sent to these schools and learn how to do only this small set of scenes. This means everywhere has the same art repeated over and over, a little strange. We think it’s pretty bad to stifle artists like this, particularly in a democracy, but it’s just another one of the weird things about unique Bhutan.
Speaking about weird things, now to the penis paintings. You might be asking yourself, Todd and Maggie, why did you offend my delicate vision by putting such vulgar pictures at the beginning of your blog post? Well, easily offended reader, the penis paintings are EVERYWHERE, truly a part of the landscape of Bhutan. On the outside of buildings, inside of buildings, on the sides of houses, most places even welcome you with a penis sculpture hanging over the doorway. It all stems back to this crazy dude called the Divine Madman who wandered around Bhutan singing curse words, sleeping with married women, killing possessed children, and bopping people on the head with a penis sculpture. It is said that he had his crazy ways for a reason; to break people of their habitual thought patterns and open them up more fully to the world around them, vulgarity or not. It is also said that he had the ability to heal people and cure infertility with one tap from his penis sculpture. As a result of all this, he is revered throughout Bhutan and to commemorate his unorthodox ways, it is considered good luck to be greeted by penises everywhere. There, now are you less offended? We actually gave you good luck!
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| Welcome to my shop |
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| Oooh, handmade, it must be nice |
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| Yep, that's a skull and a penise, a very warm welcome |
Ok, enough describing Bhutan in general, let’s talk about what we did. The first day there we did the most incredible hike of our lives. It took 2 hours along a strenuous winding path through pine forest to lead up to the crown jewel of Bhutan, Takstang monastery (Tiger’s Nest). Along the way we had sweeping views of the valley thousands of feet below, passed a spectacular waterfall (a great hike by itself without the amazing Tiger’s Nest at the end of it), ducked under and admired innumerable colorful prayer flags, and then climbed a seemingly unending number of steps the rest of the way to the monastery/temple. Both of us got chills the moment we crested a hill and Tiger's Nest came into full view directly in front of us. Legend has it that Guru Rinpoche (who brought Buddhism to Bhutan and is considered to be another Buddha, a fully enlightened being) flew to this spot on the back of a tiger (actually his favorite wife who he turned into a tiger) and meditated in a cave for 4 months to dispel the evil demon of the valley in the 7th century. Somebody then came along 1000 years later and built the temple to commemorate this event and created a monastery to train monks in this holy spot. Incomprehensibly built into a cliff in the 1600’s, supposedly a group of fairies flew the construction materials up on their backs. Climbing up there, we couldn’t imagine how in the world this place was built 400 years ago, nor how in the world it continues to cling to the side of a cliff like that, so fairies seem like just as good of a theory as any. “Wow” is the only word that seems to fit.
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| They love prayer flags on bridges |
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| The ultimate Bhutan picture, prayer flags, prayer wheels, a horse and Tiger's Nest in the background |
We spent the rest of our time visiting temples, old forts (that they call Dzongs), museums, an elementary school (great for Maggie to compare to school back home) and driving on the windiest roads on the planet. We greatly increased our holiness during this leg of our trip by spinning a thousand and one prayer wheels (thought to be the equivalent of reciting a prayer a thousand and one times), ducking under a thousand and one prayer flags (thought to scatter a thousand and one prayers out over the landscape every time the wind blows), and walking clockwise around a thousand and one stupas (a stupa is a shrine built to be used for walking meditation/prayer and they are always walked around clockwise, apparently counterclockwise is quite unholy as prayer wheels are also always spun clockwise). Our private driver stopped whenever we wanted to take a picture, our private guide gave us great little tidbits about the things we came across and taught us some of their very difficult language, and we stayed in places fit for a king (luxury for the most part, but a couple nights were a bit iffy. Frankly though, after the hotels during the previous two months of our trip everything seemed like the Four Seasons, even the iffy ones). The food, on the other hand, was kind of terrible. It was a set Bhutanese meal everyday in the hotels for breakfast and dinner and in tourist-only restaurants for lunch and we can say with some confidence that the Bhutanese do not know how to cook. The food was the only part of our time there that was less than spectacular.
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| Spectacular Dzong |
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| The smaller white building is a stupa, yep we went clockwise around that |
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| Action shot of Maggie becoming holier |
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| Somehow he looks more natural spinning prayer wheels than Maggie does |
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| Us with the class of 5th graders |
Kids saying hello to Maggie's school back home, Eastridge. Kuzuzangbo is how you say hello in their language
The last part of our trip to Bhutan worth mentioning is the spectacular mask dances that we saw during a festival. There are a few festivals throughout the year and we were fortunate enough to have come at a time when one of largest was happening. They are famous for their mask dances and we can see why. They don incredibly elaborate wooden masks and perform ancient dance rituals that were supposedly created during moments of divine intervention by previous Buddhist masters. It is said that viewing one of these mask dances can wash away a lifetime of negative karma (another way we became super holy during that week!) so they are widely attended by locals and everyone comes in their best National Dress. The mask dances are interspersed with weird “clown” shows that seemed to be meant to entertain the crowd but most definitely did not entertain us. While we were bored for a large chunk of the time that day, the mask dances were certainly worth it, an amazing sight to see.
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| The mask dances are enjoyed by all generations |
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| One of the "clowns" |
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| Mask from another dance we didn't get to see |
Our time in Bhutan ended about 2 weeks ago (these posts are getting harder to keep up with) and we flew directly to Thailand. We’re absolutely loving life in northern Thailand. Right now it is Song Kran, the Thai new year, which is celebrated with the largest water fight in the world. We’ve been right in the middle of the most intense part of it in Chiang Mai, so we’re a little tired of being wet (4 straight days is enough), but we’ve had a blast. We’ll update all about these first few weeks in Thailand on our next post. Until then, you stay classy America.
Top things we’ve never done before this trip:
1) Had an incredible hike up to an even more incredible temple that clings to the side of a cliff, what a sight!
2) Visited the world’s largest sitting Buddha that looks out from high on the mountain over Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan.
3) Flew first class into the country (all other seats on the only airline that flies there were full), then lived first class for a full week, a lifestyle we could kinda get used to (some aspects at least). Car doors were opened for us, we never touched our own luggage, we were offered tea every time we turned a corner, and every moment of our day was well thought out by someone else.
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| Our guide on the right, our driver on the left, with our wheels behind us |
4) Saw a king riding his bicycle. We were driving along and then our driver stopped, said “Oh look, there’s a flag car, here comes the king” and then a moment later the king rode by, fully spandexed out and pumping his legs up a hill toward the palace. Not much of a security entourage and not much of a big to do for our guide, it just seemed like normal everyday life for them, but pretty cool for us.
5) Witnessed an ancient mask dance, the sight of which has cleansed us of all of our previous bad karma (goodbye teenage mischief!).
6) Watched an archery tournament. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan and wow are they good at it. For the tournament we saw, they were lined up 150 meters (over 450 feet) away from the target! And they hit it a decent number of times. Every time they hit the target they would do an awesome little dance and bow at the target. When they missed, the other team would yell taunts all the way down the archery field, talking crap the whole time. The tournament was amazing for their skill as archers and hilarious for their skill at talking crap to each other.
The dance after they hit the target
7) Saw a Takin, a weird animal that looks like a cross between a goat and a cow that is the national animal of Bhutan. Definitely not an animal we have seen in zoos back home (although the Bhutan government is trying to give one to a zoo somewhere in the US).
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| Somehow we imagine it making the noise of Chewbaca from Star Wars, but sadly it didn't |
8) Saw a man with severe Cerebral Palsy creating sculptures (and drink tea) with his feet as he was unable to use his hands. Pretty remarkable.
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| His finished work |
Looks like you two are having a great time,
ReplyDeletekeep it up! Love Uncle Matt