Author: rr_admin

We fly from the Andamans to Calcutta. It’s not as ghastly as we first fear. Considering that from 1772 to 1911, Calcutta was the capital of British India, it has a distinctive character. Some tree-lined streets, some interesting neighbourhoods.

We visit the nearby Indian Museum, a beautiful building that dates from 1875. Like most Indian museums, it’s sadly in need of upkeep.

The most stunning exhibit is the Bharhut Gallery. This features 2,000-year-old carved stone gates from an ancient Buddhist complex in Madhya Pradesh state. (Virtually nothing is left at the site today.) Photography is prohibited, and the photos on the website don’t do them justice, but the carved and polished sandstone pieces are some of the most beautiful objects we’ve seen in India so far.

There are better photos and descriptions here.

We like the fossil room, it’s wonderfully Victorian. Dusty wooden cabinets everywhere.

There are hundreds of schoolkids around. These girls insist on a group shot with Maria, because she’s so exotic.

While walking in town, we are caught in a torrential downpour. We take cover in a shop that sells fountain pens.

We then duck into a place for a samosa and a chai. These flavourful little beauties cost 30 cents each – Canadian! – served in a terra cotta container. Eat your hearts out, Starbucks patrons.

We come across the Tipu Sultan Mosque. We’ve been fans of Tipu Sultan for a long time.

I remember being mesmerized by Tipu’s Tiger the first time I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in – well, let’s not mention the year. Then when Maria went to southern India for business a few years ago, we followed a sort of Tipu circuit – on rented bicycles – visiting Seringapatam, Tipu’s summer palace, and Tipu’s tomb.

We wonder why this mosque is in Calcutta, far from Tipu’s usual stomping grounds in Mysore. All is revealed here.

We visit the grandiose Victoria Memorial.

Our hotel is the Lindsay. It has a nice rooftop restaurant. You can see the Howrah Bridge from here. (But not from this direction.)

We’re across the street from the cavernous New Market.

Outside our door is a dynamic chai-wallah. There is a constant queue in front of his stall.

As mentioned, the British were here for a long time. The ghostly remains of their buildings are still around.

Many of these buildings would not be out of place in WC1.

Except for the fact they’re now a bit slummy.

We like the archaic old business signs outside many buildings.

Some buildings are definitely Indianesque.

This is a letter-writer in front of the post office.

A common sight in countries with high rates of ilitaracy illiteracy.

We visit the Marble Palace. It’s free, but you have to get a special permit. This, of course, turns out to be a Herculean challenge. Long story.

It reminds me a bit of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The display of works is, um, a little eccentric. And the house is falling to bits, but so is every building in Calcutta.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We make our way through interesting streets to the house of Rabindranath Tagore.

He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. We’ve never read any of his stuff, but writer’s/artist’s houses are usually worth a visit. Interesting man. Interesting house.

We arrive in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. Officially, it’s the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. We come here because we like islands.

We are here for nearly two weeks. Because it is monsoon season, it rains most of the time. Like, 80 per cent of the time. And not in occasional sprinkles, as we see elsewhere in India – the rain comes down in cataclysmic deluges. In gushing inundations. In cascading torrents. In cats and dogs and tigers. You get the idea.

But it’s all good. We have no illusions that we can expect anything else when traveling at this time of the year. It’s very relaxing. Especially because we are essentially cut off from the world: no internet or phone service.

The Andamans were in the news recently when a would-be American missionary was killed by the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island.

These islands are the home of many different tribal people, most of whom are now ‘assimilated’ to Indian rule to difference degrees.

One of our first stops is the Cellular Jail. A main reason for the British taking over the Andamans was as a warehouse for Indian political prisoners, beginning from the time of the Indian Mutiny. It’s an unusually solemn place for Indian visitors.

The prison gives many details of savage atrocities supposedly committed by the British. There is a suspicious shortage of documentation for this, outside of the usual stories of cruel hardship common to all contemporary prisons. For example, the linked Wikipedia article says this:

‘It is estimated that of the total 80,000 political prisoners the British Raj held at the Kalapani, a very few survived. ‘

Does this imply that, say, 79,937 political prisoners died in captivity? Proof, please. And not to indulge in ‘whatabout-ism‘, but modern-day India is not exactly known for the Scandinavian mildness of its prisons.

Port Blair from above.

‘Well, there we were stuck in Port Blair,
Where boats break and children stare…‘ – Jack Johnson, Holes to Heaven

This song is the only one in existence that I know of that mentions Port Blair. It’s a sort of hapax legomenon of popular music. (I believe the term came into use from Homeric studies, where a hapax legomenon is a word that is only used once in the body of Homer’s work.) I mention echidna as another one in an earlier blog entry.

On Havelock Island, which they say has some of the most beautiful beaches in Asia in the proper season, we venture further afield on the rare occasions that it is not raining.

This is our Robinson Crusoe-style hut that we live in for a week. It is VERY open to the elements. Maria surprises a small snake in our room one day.

On a morning when it’s not raining, we head for Radhanagar Beach on the west side of the island.

‘Wading’ is more accurate – very few people in India know how to swim.

There are salt-water crocodiles around, which is something else to consider.

Our waterlogged week is up. We wait for the ferry back to Port Blair.

On another day in Port Blair, we take a boat to nearby Ross Island.

This is where the original British settlement in the Andamans was located. These days, it’s like Angkor Wat, except the jungle is reclaiming Victorian English structures rather than Khmer ruins.

It was abandoned after an earthquake and the administrative centre moved to Port Blair.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Indians really hate the British. As reported, the chief tourist attraction in Port Blair is the cellular jail. Because it held political prisoners of India’s independence movement, it is a shrine-like destination for people from all over India.

Never mind that millions of South Asians took the first opportunity to move to the UK – the official line of the modern Government of India is that living under British Rule was no different than life under the brutal occupation of, say, Nazi Germany. Every museum we’ve been to makes this abundantly clear.

It’s understandable that India would be happy to see the backs of the British and to become maître chez eux. But to equate the rule of the British with the extermination campaigns of genocidal monsters is not true. And because it’s not true, it does a disservice to history as a science and a discipline, as opposed to history as the propagation of feel-good stories for the simple-minded. (A notable recent trend in the West is ‘history as the propagation of feel-bad stories for the simple-minded’.)

It seems ironic that the Moghul Era and centuries leading up to it – when marauders from central Asia swept into the subcontinent, imposing a foreign religion, burning cities, and razing temples – is often considered as the ‘Golden Age’ of India. While the railway-building, archeology-inclined British are officially reviled. (Even though they introduced cricket, a national obsession.)

It’s also ironic that with this attitude, India celebrates as one of the greatest heroes of her independence struggle Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, a man who in fact did spend his time in the company of actual genocidal monsters. Like Heinrich Himmler.

And here is Netaji Bose at the far right with his fellow-quislings flanking General Tojo.

Calcutta’s airport is renamed after Netaji. (We like its previous name – Dum Dum Airport.)

Point of interest: it’s not as if by gaining independence, India has escaped the shackles of misrule. A frankly incredible 43 per cent of Indian Members of Parliament have been charged with serious crimes. So in a final irony, the once-globe-straddling British can now scarcely govern their own small island. While the citizens of India are ruled by people who routinely rape, rob, and murder them with impunity.

We fly from Kochi back to Delhi to take care of some business. Our Air India flight has a female pilot. (For why this seems unusual, see below.) Our landing in Delhi is the smoothest we’ve ever experienced in hundreds of touchdowns. Just sayin’.

We need a break from India. So we fly to Singapore for a week.

We love Singapore. We’ve been here before on this trip. Twice. We could live here in a heartbeat.

It’s like Toronto, except with tropical weather, a superb metro system, and a nearby ocean. And no drug addicts, panhandlers, or homeless people. Come to think of it, it’s not like Toronto at all.

(People are often impressed by Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan, dynamic city-state. When we were there, we often found ourselves looking at each other and stating ‘Meh. It’s no Singapore’. Especially now that it’s obvious how vulnerable HK is to being crushed under the Chinese jackboot.)

We make another attempt at having a Singapore Sling in Raffles Hotel. (Last time we were here, it was closed for renovations.)

No luck: when we get to the Long Bar, there is a lengthy queue of tourists with the same plan. We abandon the idea.

Among the many pleasant aspects of being in Singapore is that there are a lot of women around everywhere you go.

Strange for a non-Muslim-majority country, there seems to be a huge preponderance of men around in India compared to women. An extremely non-objective, anecdotal observation: whenever I look up from my usual oblivious reverie in India, about 80 to 85 per cent of the people around are males. This makes for a too-many-dicks-on-the-dance-floor scenario. It’s kind of depressing.

We visit the excellent Asian Civilisations Museum. One of the finest exhibits is an entire room devoted to the artifacts from a Tang-era shipwreck.

We make a visit to the Jurong Bird Park, one of the world’s best.

I make another feathered friend.

Like the Singapore Zoo, you can interact with many of the creatures.

We take advantage of our time here to go to the beach a couple of times on Sentosa Island.

Through the palms, you can see some of the hundreds of ships that sit in Singapore’s harbour.

Then it’s back to Delhi.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Today is my birthday.

Don’t be fooled by ‘Singapore’ in the title – we are in fact in Khajuraho in north-central India at the moment.

Maria gifts me three days in a five-star hotel here. We are treated to a sumptuous al fresco birthday dinner.

Where does the time go? I feel like I just got here. In the world, that is.

When we were in Melbourne, my friend Philip produced an old photo from his archives. It’s 1980. In Pemberton, West Australia, a group of young fellow travelers rent bicycles on a sunny afternoon and visit a waterfall in the forest. The world is a good place. A Zen moment is captured on film.

(And yes, they had colour film ‘in those days’. It’s black & white for artistic reasons.)

To continue – we arrive in Kochi, in Kerala State, after an overnight train trip from Goa. Here’s a brief roundup.

Kochi is an interesting blend of Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial styles mixed in with a port that was an important spice trading centre on the west coast of India from the 14th century onward.

We like it. Lots of old buildings. It seems ‘mellower’ than places in the north.

We wander the area of the old spice market.

A symbol of Kochi are these so-called Chinese fishing nets.

Because it’s a port, there are vessels of all kinds. Like fishing boats

And freighters.

This is the Indian Navy Ship Sunayna, steaming into home port.

The venerable Dutch East India Company had a presence here.

We’ve seen VOC outposts all around Asia, as well as their buildings in different cities in the Netherlands.

This mural is a pretty good statement about the plight of the poor fish in the Arabian Sea.

We visit the Paradesi synagogue. Photography is prohibited inside, but you can use the wikipedia link for interior views.

Jewish cemetery

Sight or Insight of the Day

The media in India is full of news about India’s second moonshot, the Chandrayaan-2 mission. It’s not going well.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why a country where you can’t drink water out of the tap wastes its time, money, and resources looking for ‘possible water sources’ on the moon. To impress the world with its technical prowess? The world – not to mention the citizens of India – would be a lot more impressed if India could miraculously join the limited club of nations in which the tap water doesn’t kill you.

Goodness gracious, we are an entire month behind on the blog. How did we ever get to such a state? Well, it doesn’t help that we spend the last couple of weeks incommunicado in the Andaman Islands.

Since our last entry about Ahmedabad, we have done the following:

• Flew to Goa
• Took a train to Kochi
• Flew back to New Delhi
• Flew to Singapore
• Flew back to Delhi
• Flew to the Andaman Islands
• Flew to Calcutta, where we are now

…and boy, are my arms tired!

So, Goa first. We know it’s rainy season, but we go anyway.

Goa, in case you don’t know, is a former Portuguese territory that used to be famous as a hippy Mecca back in the day. It has grown by leaps and bounds into an all-round sun destination for everyone, including Russian drug dealers and their baggage of violence and mayhem.

There is none of that here during the monsoon season. In Palolem, far in the south of Goa, there is the air of a closed-down fairground. 90% of places are closed for the season, covered with vinyl tarps. The sea is dangerously rough. It rains a lot.

It’s a peaceful change from urban India. We’re happy to sit on our veranda and watch the rain come down in blessed silence. We get to do some exercise.

One day, we hire our driver, Dominic – he picked us up from the airport – for an excursion to the town of Old Goa.

In here lies the body of Saint Francis Xavier. You can see his remains in the windows at the top.

The state of Goa grows a lot of rice, which thrives at this time of year.

We see several billboards similar to this in Margao. Because ‘Anybody born before 19th December 1961 in Goa, and up to the third generation, are eligible to become a Portuguese citizen.‘ This is a change from most cities that advertise – falsely, in most cases – easy access to citizenship of the UK, Canada, and Australia for one billion, three hundred and twenty-four million, one hundred and seventy-one thousand, three hundred and fifty-four Indians.

There are still a few well-preserved Portuguese-style buildings in Goa.

…and lots of churches, of course.

We depart on an overnight train from Margao (known as ‘Madgaon’ locally) to Kochi in Kerala State. We hire Dominic one last time to drive us into town.

We find ourselves way behind on the blog once again. No matter, we’ll try to do a few short entries in succession to catch up.

We take a deluxe bus from Udaipur to Ahmadabad. (Deluxe as in ‘air-conditioned’, ‘clean-ish’, ‘costs more than five dollars’ and ‘doesn’t look like it’s been rolled down a mountainside’.)

We treat ourselves to a stay in the House of MG Hotel.

Formerly the home of a Gujurati textile magnate, it’s very comfy. We especially like the Lotus Pool.

The hotel is at the edge of the old city. The old city is a rabbit warren of streets with many examples of interesting local architecture, including buildings with intricately-carved wooden balconies and decorations. Sadly, most are crumbling into rubble.

500 years ago, Ahmadabad was founded with city walls and gates. The walls are mostly gone, but the gates remain.

We are persuaded to visit the Jama Masjid mosque. I point out that I’m wearing shorts (unsuitable for visiting places of worship of any kind – friendly reminder to a million Western tourists.) The gatekeeper kindly provides a loaner pair of trousers.

My shorts are a problem again when we visit the Hutheesing Jain Temple.

Fortunately, the gatekeeper has pairs of pyjama-like pants for the use of immodestly-dressed visitors.

Among Ahmadabad’s claims to fame: Ghandi spent years here at the Sabarmati Ashram. This was his base for toppling the Raj.

2019 is the 150th anniversary of Ghandi’s birth. There are signs and billboards throughout the country.

On the grounds of the ashram is this interesting wood sculpture carved out of a post.

One of Ahmedabad’s biggest attractions is the Calico Museum of Textiles. We try to go, but the process of actually trying to visit this museum is so complex and Byzantine, we eventually give up. Maybe next time.

Sight or Insight of the Day

One day, we take a tour with a car and driver, arranged from the hotel. We drive to this place, the Adalaj Stepwell.

We’ve visited these – stepwells – elsewhere in India, but this is the largest and most ornate we’ve seen.

It’s five storeys deep.

Looks like an opera house.

Typical for India, lots of amazing stone carving.

We take a local bus from Jaipur to Bundi.

This gentleman is dressed in typical Rajastani fashion.

Bundi is a delightful little place. (By Indian standards, of course.) We stay at the Haveli Dev Niwas.

Because this is not the tourist season – it’s fiery as the pits of Hell out there – we are the only guests.

There is usually a breeze in the rooftop restaurant. Nice view, too.

An interesting detail in our room is the leftover pulley from what was once probably a punkah setup.

The punkahwallah sits outside and pulls the cord to keep the punkah moving in the room.

The lanes of Bundi have ‘character’ without the nightmarish aspect of bigger Indian cities.

We purchase tickets at the gates of Bundi Palace.

To quote the Lonely Planet guide:

‘ This extraordinary, partly decaying edifice – described by Rudyard Kipling as ‘the work of goblins rather than of men’ – almost seems to grow out of the rock of the hillside it stands on. Though large sections are still closed up and left to the bats, the rooms that are open hold a series of fabulous, fading turquoise-and-gold murals that are the palace’s chief treasure.’ 

Like most of these palaces, this one has massive gates.

I model my new block-printed shirt from Jaipur.

The builders of these palaces surely knew about the cool breezes you enjoy at this height.

The Chitrasala Palace, part of the larger complex, has painted murals and a garden in the front.

This is the Chogan Gate – the main gate into the old town.

As usual, we visit the market.

We make our way back to our lodgings against the current of traffic.

After cooling off, it’s time to enjoy the sunset over Nawal Sagar Lake.

Next stop is Udaipur. Time for another character-building bus trip.

This is a common sight in the bus stations of India.

We arrive in Udaipur after dark. We stay in another haveli, the Jaiwana.

They have a nice dog, a beagle named Milo.

Next morning, the first destination is the City Palace.

There’s usually a great view from the heights.

There is a surprisingly orderly system for visiting the palace.

Everyone follows a clearly-marked tour path.

Except for a few minor logjams, it works quite well. We emerge out the other end of the palace.

We leave the City Palace and take a boat tour on Lake Pichola.

Maria models her block-printed top from Jaipur.

We pass through the market. Here are some enormous cauldrons stored in a nook. We think they’re for making chai.

The combination of lakes and mountains makes Udaipur a visual treat.

You get a different perspective from the boat.

A woman does her laundry down by the water.

One of the islands on the lake contains a fancy hotel.

We stroll around the gardens while waiting for our return boat ride.

This lizard leaps across our path from a nearby bush before clinging to this stem.

Sight or Insight of the Day

While in Bundi, we see these lovely murals painted on the walls of the Chitrasala Palace.

Depictions of Krishna seem to be a popular theme in Rajastan.

It’s a shame that India has thousands of monuments in need of maintenance or restoration. We suggest (Indian) universities with faculties of archaeology/antiquities begin a program in which classes ‘adopt’ a particular site to maintain or restore.

For a start, these sites could use more personnel to simply be present to prevent vandalism and provide more oversight: many of these places are full of dark corners where the stench of urine would fell a full-grown rhinoceros in its tracks.

India can obviously afford it. Any nation that has tens of billions of dollars to spend on nuclear weapons can easily spare a few crumbs for the preservation of its heritage, right?

(By the way, about those nuclear reactors we provided? You’re welcome.)

It’s July 24 – Amelia Earhart Day.

Amelia Earhart’s disappearance is one of my favourite historical enigmas. Here’s a small femmage to her, courtesy of J. Mitchell. ‘Then your life becomes a travelogue of picture-postcard charms…’ Indeed.

See you in another life, Amelia.

Anyway, back to Delhi. After a few enervating days in Delhi taking care of business, we go south. First stop is Agra.

The Taj Mahal is one of those tourist sights that is genuinely pretty impressive in real life. Like Ayer’s Rock.

There is controversy about the meaning of Taj Mahal (although ‘mahal‘ certainly means ‘palace.’)

We think this mother-daughter duo are worth a picture.

We stay at a cheap place nearby. Great views of the Taj as we sip an evening beer.

A slow bus takes us to Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned capital of the remarkable Moghul emperor Akbar.

A local goat finds a good place to rest in the heat…

…as does a local older gentleman.

Fine stone-carving is everywhere.

This place hasn’t changed that much since I was last here countless decades ago. Just a lot more people around.

Akbar listened to philosophical debates in this hall. (So they say.)

• 

When I was young, I read the Story of Civilization series. Twice. Still have it. It’s what sparked a lifelong interest in world history.

This is the Jama Mosque.

Of course, the women have to pray outside.

Back to Agra. On another day, we visit Akbar’s Tomb.

It’s in nearby Sikandra. Getting here is quite an experience – like doing just about anything in India.

The beautiful gardens are a respite from the chaos outside the walls.

There are quotations in Persian and Arabic on many surfaces.

The roof in the entrance preserves its glorious paint job.

Back in town, we visit the Agra Fort. Akbar also had a hand in the way it looks today. He was a big cheese in this part of the world.

We’re not sure why these girls are dressed alike.

More wonderful stone-carving. Similar buildings in modern times use concrete. Not very impressive, especially when it begins to crumble within a few years.

You can see the Taj through these arches, further down the Yamuna (or Jumna or Jamna – take your pick) River.

These audience halls are a common feature.

Our next stop is Jaipur. We stay in the Pearl Palace Hotel, the nicest place we’ve stayed so far in India.

Behind our hotel is Hathroi Fort – old and abandoned, but people still live in it.

The market in the Old City is worth a look, especially the narrow interior lanes.

Rajastan is well known for its textiles. In these market stalls, groups of ladies sit as the shopkeeper – or his assistants – pull down bolt after bolt of colourful cloth.

Looking for bargains.

The hawa mahal is one of Jaipur’s iconic buildings.

Close by is the City Palace.

Another part of the palace. Everyone wants to stay out of the sun.

In the area is the famous Jantar Mantar. This is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments built in the early 1700s.

According to Wikipedia:

The name is derived from jantar (yantra, Sanskrit: यन्त्र, “instrument, machine”), and mantar (from mantrana, Sanskrit: मन्त्रण, “consult, calculate”). Therefore, Jantar Mantar literally means ‘calculating instrument’.

It looks like a Le Corbusier sculpture park.

One day we go out to the Amber Fort (known nowadays as the ‘Amer Fort’).

There are many of these forts in Rajastan. Most have a lengthy wall climbing the surrounding hills. Looks like a ‘Great Wall of India’.

Some parts of the palace are neglected, others are in a good state of preservation.

Interior of the first courtyard.

This is the first courtyard. (There are at least three.)

The fort was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013.

The day is hot – we make a point of moving slowly.

The Mirror Palace is pretty snazzy.

The day before we leave Jaipur, we drop in on the Albert Hall Museum.

Inside is a good collection, a little bit in need of some curatorial care.

Sight or Insight of the Day

There are many interesting and wonderful things to see and do in India, but holy smokes, it’s exhausting traveling in this country. We’ve been on a few humble buses and trains in the last few weeks. (It’s not a case of looking for an ‘authentic’ experience of getting down with the locals, like some people carry to a slight extreme – it just turns out to be the only way to get to where we’re going.)

Unless you’re willing to wear blinders, every day brings constant exposure to people spitting, gobbing jets of scarlet betel juice, blowing out snot, lots of public urination (and worse). Wherever you turn, someone is vigorously reaming out a nostril or an earhole. Men are constantly pawing their genitals. 95% of people (read: men) who approach you want something from you. A dead giveaway: the first thing they say is ‘I don’t want anything from you’. (A negative side-effect of this is the guilt you feel when you are rude and snap at the 5% of people who are trying to be genuinely helpful.)

It’s not a place for sensitive souls. (I would say ‘No Country for Old Men’, if I wasn’t so close to being one myself.) And that’s not even getting into the physical environment. Maybe in a later entry.

From eastern Bhutan, we make our way west again.

We stop for a few days in the beautiful Phobjikha Valley.

Besides being famous (in Bhutan) for its potatoes, it is also known for a yearly migration of black-necked cranes from late October to mid February.

This is Karma. He was attacked by a feral dog and suffered permanent wing damage. He is now a permanent resident of the Black-Necked Crane Visitor Centre.

The valley itself is very scenic.

We go for a hike one day. The weather is perfect.

Sunny. Not too hot.

A squad of people are building a rammed-earth house. It’s very rhythmic as the ladies pound the earth down.

This is what a rammed-earth house looks like when it’s done.

We meet a young couple from Canton, NY on our walk. Practically neighbours. They’re making a tourism video.

We stop for a rest.

We reach the goal of our hike – the Gangteng Monastery.

The next day, we hike the Lungchu Tsey pilgrimage trail. This takes several hours. When we finally get to the top, the place is locked and there are no monks in sight. Just a couple of dogs.

We enjoy the view and set off back down the mountain.

The next day, we drive over the Chelela Pass to Haa.

Haa is a sleepy kind of place.

There is an Indian Army camp in town. This is to discourage incursions from the imperialist Chinese, who – surprise, surprise – lay claim to large tracts of the Himalayas that were once ruled by Tibet. Their logic: any former Tibetan territory must naturally default to China after that country’s forcible overthrow liberation of Tibet.

The palatial size of our hotel rooms is a real treat after the space-challenged rooms of Japan.

The next day, we head back to Paro over the Chelela Pass.

This time, we stop at the pass and hike to the nearby Kila Gompa nunnery.

As is common for mountain passes, there is a riot of prayer flags.

You can see Paro far below.

The crack of a thousand flapping flags is kind of scary.

On the hike, we stop to erect a prayer flag ourselves.

After an hour or so…

Some people come to this nunnery for meditation retreats.

As you can see, some of these structures are, um, precarious, to say the least.

Sight or Insight of the Day

After nearly 2,000 KMs driving around Bhutan, it’s time to part ways with Tula and Mr. Rinsin at Paro Airport.

We’ll miss Mr. Rinsin’s sense of humour and Tula’s solicitous guidance in all things Bhutanese. Thanks, guys.

From Trongsa, we drive to Bumthang and beyond.

The morning we leave Trongsa, the dzong is shrouded in mist.

The beginning of the journey to Bumthang – we are above the clouds.

At a rest stop, the pass is covered in prayer flags.

Our accommodation in Bumthang (pronounced ‘boomTONG’, not ‘BUMthang’, FYI) is in the Tang Valley. Tula, our guide, describes our hostess, Ms. Kunzang Choden, as ‘of a noble family’. She’s also an author, having published ‘Dawa: The Story of a Stray Dog in Bhutan‘. Her husband is Swiss. We have rösti with our dinner.

On the grounds of the property is the Ogyen Choling museum.

This is the Jampa Lhakhang monastery near Bumthang. It’s famous for staging a mysterious ‘naked dance‘ annually.

Bhutan has a lot of festivals. Peak tourist season (which we are NOT in now) usually means foreign visitors want to see these spectacles performed.

It’s not something we like to do: Bhutanese people are very sincere about the importance of these dances. We feel that the more they become a tourist attraction, the less vital they become for Bhutanese identity. But that’s just us.

We visit a ‘heritage house’, which portrays traditional everyday life in Bhutan in the past.

Our hostess is the dignified Ms. Dorji Lhamo.

We are shown tools, textiles, and other artifacts.

This is the balcony at the rear. Actually, Ms. Lhamo’s house next door doesn’t seem that much different from the ‘heritage house’.

Not far from Bumthang is the Pema Choling nunnery.

Among their duties is caring for the nearby Burning Lake – an important place in the national mythology.

On the way, we see a stupa under construction. The low-tech scaffolding and ample manpower bring to mind the Pharaonic construction of the pyramids.

Another day, we make an excursion to Lhuentse.

Along the way, we stop to visit a suspension bridge over the swift-flowing  Kuri Chhu river.

Lhuentse Dzong from below.

As usual, the doors are photo-worthy.

And below flows the Kuri Chhu river.

These dzongs often combine the monastery with the local civil government.

A young monk takes a break from his studies.

We stop for a picnic lunch along the river.

We make a postprandial visit to Khoma, a village where women bring home the bacon by their weaving skills.

This woman spends about four hours a day at the loom.

That’s besides doing other household work.

We visit another monastery on top of a mountain.

In the courtyard, monks and lay people are practicing for an upcoming dance.

Tula tells us about a politically incorrect Bhutanese saying: ‘Beware of women or monks driving.’

Another fancy door.

Some monks relax in the garden.

View of the river far below.

This monk is very generous about explaining the history of the monastery.

We arrive back in Trashigang.

Trashigang looks a bit like an Elizabethan town.

Tula, Mr. Rinsin, and I stock up on water for the road.

Archery is the national sport of Bhutan.

We see a fascinating example of how this works. Rivals shoot from 125 meters (!) away. The opponents do a mocking dance in front of the target, daring the other side to come close to hitting them (while keeping a close eye on the actual trajectory of fired arrows.) When a team does score a bulls-eye, then begins an elaborate dance that looks like a bunch of football players celebrating a touchdown.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We hear that João Gilberto passed away. Descanse em paz, amigo.

This man almost single-handedly brought Bossa Nova to the world. That world is a richer place for containing such classics as ‘Chega de saudade‘ and ‘Corcovado‘.

See you in another life, João.