Sacred, scenic and very special

By Roger Beaumont

First impressions are both dangerous and invaluable. Dangerous because the visitor doesn’t know the intricate forces that shape a region, invaluable because they can see the result of the dynamics that formed it.

I have been told that some tourists say that although they love visiting Bhutan, there is a slight frustration. In their limited time here, a few claim that it takes too long to travel between places of interest. I think this is a misguided perception. For if there was anywhere on earth where the journey was equal to the destination, then Bhutan is probably it. For travelling through this kingdom can rejuvenate even the most jaded spirit.

The landscape, always breathtaking, is sometimes serene and often majestic, but there’s also something wild and unfathomable about it, which only the Bhutanese will ever know. I love the immense, sacred solitudes and the lonely, homely farms perched at impossible heights, and, if the cloud deities are in a good mood, the epic, snow-slashed horizons.

And so a five day journey begins. With a beer. Which I don’t normally drink. My well educated English friend, having driven the length and breadth of the kingdom many times, knows both the roads and the driving habits of the Bhutanese. I trust him. There is little choice but to do otherwise. Our destination is Bumthang, the spiritual heartland of Bhutan, home to some of the oldest and most revered monasteries in the Himalayas; a valley of real beauty, abundant orchards and supreme spiritual importance not only for the Bhutanese, but also for the entire Tibetan Buddhist world for hundreds of years.

Many sacred items have been discovered here – items that had been buried or hidden, on purpose, only to be discovered by suitably enlightened people, when the time was right.

Even to a non Buddhist, the valley, the monasteries, the profound history, all leak soul and mystery and will send a visitor home with far more questions than he arrived with. I think this is all for the good, for nothing of true value and depth can possibly be revealed in such a short trip. Hell, I have been here 18 months and I am still annoying everyone with my curiosity.

I had been to Bumthang before, but it was rushed trip, and I was travelling with an elderly Bhutanese lady who started chanting every time we passed a stupa. It was like being in a mobile monastery. What visitors just don’t realise is that it often takes five hours to cover 100km as the roads are steep, narrow, pot holed, and it’s just one zig zag after another. Years ago, while travelling through Nepal on a motorbike, one had to become agile in avoiding the many and large potholes that featured in all the roads. I was advised that anyone seen driving in a straight line was almost certainly drunk.

Most drivers on Bhutanese mountain roads rarely get up to 40 km an hour. Those who do, and insist on maintaining it, are always in danger of never reaching their destination, let alone returning from it. Corners are misjudged or missed, entirely. A plunge ensues. And all that is found is shredded luggage and broken bodies. It’s a truly stupid way to leave this world.  Even though I have driven across Australia, Thailand and much of Ladakh, when I suggested to my friend that I could perhaps share the driving, he looked at me as if I had just shot a puppy.

During the two day journey, we drove through every kind of weather, yet for much of the journey the Himalayan sky was a theatre of reliance while the mountain air fizzed with clarity. I couldn’t stop grinning and at any moment expected Sir David Attenborough to come out from behind a rhododendron bush to explain why we have facial expressions.

The night we arrived it was lethally cold. Thankfully, there was a welcoming log fire at Jakar Lodge. Nestled just below the medieval and mighty Jakar Dzong, the lodge consists of three beautiful, traditionally-built houses, surrounded by mounds of well-stacked wood. The whole venture continues to be a long labour of love.

The rooms are artfully arranged, cosy and modern. There are no mini bars. I consider this a positive omission, for I have had the privilege to review several luxury hotels in Asia, and have finally realised that the only service a mini-bar provides is allowing you to see into the future, and to discover today, what a can of Coke will cost in 2030. The food at the Lodge was some of the finest fare I have ever tasted in Bhutan. Thank you, Karma.

On my first visit to Bumthang a taxi driver had asked me how much a shooting star was worth. From memory, the conversation went something like this:

“Why? Have you got one?” I asked incredulously.

“Shh…don’t raise your voice. It might be seen.”

He then unwrapped a piece of silk and handed me a meteorite. It was the size of a large TV remote. It was certainly different and incredibly smooth as I turned it over in my hand. His grandfather had found it and eventually sent his alien rock to New Delhi for testing. Just as he’d thought, it was not of this earth.

“So, how much?”

“No idea,” I whispered. “Say US$50…?”

Silence. Then, with a voice mixed with quiet menace and rising desperation he said, “I was thinking it would be more like US$25,000….”

I stifled a laugh and started to walk away.

“Excuse me good sir, but where is your tourist guide?”

“I sold him.”

“How much?”

“For about half the price of your meteorite…”

A Bumthang resident told me that in the days before TV, when the population was about 400, one form of entertainment were dramas about Bhutanese kings performed by Tibetan refugees, which were much loved by the locals. And he remembered the days when as a student he’d steal apples. “You had to be fast,” he recalls with a smile. “The farmers had big sticks.’’ He also informed that me that it’s a seven day walk to Lhasa, in Tibet, “…where these days, you’re never far away from being told what to do.”

Certain things were noticeably different on this visit. There were the remnants of two recent fires on either side of the old main street, and there was a long runway being built on the valley floor; an airport in the making. In both fires, everyone had lost something and many had lost everything, and yet the rush to help and rebuild had been quick and impressive, largely thanks to His Majesty the King. I asked two Jakar shop keepers if they had been surprised by the fires and the helpful reaction.

“We are Buddhists,” one smiled. “Nothing surprises us.”

I also noticed many new lodges being built in the valley, no doubt to accommodate the expected rise in tourists the airport will bring. Much depends on it. But will they come? It’s obviously far too early to tell, but I am sure the 20 minute flight from Paro will be welcomed by those visitors frustrated by time and distance. But then discussing the future challenges of tourism in Bumthang – and indeed Bhutan – is like trying to understand the reasons behind a divorce. There is his version, there is her version and somewhere between the two, there will be the reality.

On the last evening, I stood for what seemed a very long time admiring a beautiful new moon rising over the floodlit Dzong, known as ‘The Fortress of the White Bird.’ I doubt I’ll ever be that quiet, or be that still, again.