Downtown Thimphu and The Weekend Market

In an effort to find wifi and let family know we are safe in Bhutan, we begin the day by descending to a very American-style coffee house, Karma Coffee, in downtown Thimphu (the thought of a real cup of coffee naturally has nothing to do with this decision…). Without a map, it is difficult to figure out exactly where we are. A young schoolgirl on her way home overtakes us on the road and, practicing her English, greets us, “Hi.” “Hi,” we respond. “Where are you from?” she asks. When we tell her the USA, she remarks offhandedly, “America is my dream.” She guides us to the coffee house and leaves us. The coffee house is upstairs, clearly decorated with expats in mind. It’s empty but for two people in a corner and a very young girl behind the counter who tells us that the “coffee-maker” is “on leave.” When I ask her if he/she has gone for lunch, she simply repeats, “He’s on leave.” Apparently, he’s the only one who knows how to make coffee, so we content ourselves with a fresh mango smoothie. What a tragedy. Afterwards, we wend our way through the tangled, winding streets to the Weekend Market. Along the way we pass women crouched by the side of the street selling bunches of fresh asparagus. I am sorely tempted to buy some, but we decide to check out the market first before loading ourselves up.

The market is spread over two floors in a huge open-air concrete structure not unlike a giant parking lot. Vender after vender displays everything from numerous varieties of fresh mushrooms to curling fiddlehead ferns. An entire section is dedicated to fruits, another to incense, another to dried goods such as tsampa, puffed rice, and (my favorite) cupse—cookies made of fried, sweet dough. We load our bags and stagger around trying to find the asparagus ladies, but apparently we have missed our chance and the asparagus is gone for another week. A brisk wind is blowing up the valley. It proves most helpful with the sweat pouring off us as we trudge back up the side of the mountain to our new home, but less helpful when carrying our no-doubt rather pungent scent to the pack of dogs that barks wildly with bared fangs. We have to pretend to stoops down to pick up rocks before they are finally discouraged enough to leave us alone. It strikes me that there is no surer sign of being an alien than having a pack of local dogs barking madly at you and completely ignoring other passersby. 

But after cooking our first meal at home of sauteed fresh mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns in butter, I am feeling more and more at home!

The Land of the Thunder Dragon

The inflight magazine for Druk Airlines informs me that we are flying on “the wings of the dragon.” Indeed, as the plane dives down through a gap in the thick white mounds of monsoon clouds into the Paro valley, its wingtips nearly brushing the sides of the green slopes, I can well imagine we are riding the back of large silver dragon. But Captain Jigme Dorje, our fearless pilot, has adequately prepared us and the half-full flight of mostly Bhutanese and the few scattered foreigners on board takes the precarious landing in stride. We have arrived in Bhutan! Surprisingly, given that this is supposed to be the monsoon season, the sun is breaking through the clouds, scattering gold light over the towering green mountains and the churning Paro Chu (Paro River). Outside the back entry of the airport, Bhutan’s five monarchs, each wearing the famed Raven Crown, gaze benevolently down at us from an enormous billboard as we enter the gates.

As promised, we are met at the airport by a driver who carries us along the twists and turns of the one serpentine road that follows the river 31 kilometers to Thimphu, Bhutan’s lively capital city. When we stop for the driver to tighten the screws holding the gearshift together, I step out of the truck to stand above the rushing river. Across the street a spring gushes from the steep rock of the hillside. It is festooned with prayer flags and a small shrine is built around it. “It comes from Tibet,” our driver informs me. As I watch, a busload of Bhutanese travelers pulls up on the opposite side of the road and people pour out the door, dipping their hands and feet in the gurgling water and filling plastic water bottles. Many of them sprinkle the water over their heads in the characteristic Buddhist gesture of blessing. The wind streams up the valley into my face and the sun is hot on my shoulders and head.

Our apartment is nestled in a clump of trees high up on the western slopes of the valley in which Thimphu is located. Somehow, reading The Lonely Planet’s Guide to Bhutan, I had imagined that Thimphu was mostly flat, lining the riverbed alongside the Wang Chu (Power Water). It’s not. Instead, the city rises up either side of the river and the roads are steep and winding. As we enter the apartment, it is immediately clear that we have somehow struck the jackpot. Two bedrooms, two baths, a living room and kitchen, complete with hot water (when the geysers—pronounced “geezer”--are turned on), a refrigerator, rice cooker, and microwave! Better not get too used to this level of luxury, a fact that is reinforced by our landlady when I mention that we will be moving to the center of Bhutan at the end of August. “Oh yes,” she says wryly, “the middle of nowhere.”

The rest of our first evening is spent talking animatedly with Chris’s new boss and a colleague, who arrive shortly after we do to greet us. (Remembering that in Asia, guests should always be offered some sort of refreshment, we scramble to brew a pot of jasmine tea and put some nuts brought with us from Boston in a bowl.) Chris’s boss informs us that we will be moving to Trongsa in central Bhutan the first week in September when at least half of the new campus for ILCS (The Institute of Language and Culture Studies), should be completed. Housing there is uncertain. Buying a car is a good idea. Meanwhile, since we are in Thimphu for now, we should do our best to “get settled in.” He, himself, is leaving for the next ten days. Happily, he then kindly offers to drive us down the mountain to a grocery store to buy something to eat. We find fresh yogurt, eggs, biscuits, milk, tea, native Bhutanese red rice, and a few bags of Indian snacks, all extracted from the packed, towering walls of the tiny grocery store that sells only dried goods. For fresh produce, we will need to visit the famous Weekend Market the next day. We are set for the night. By 9pm, jet lag and trying to adjust to the 7000ft. altitude of Thimphu have taken their toll and we collapse in bed. But by 3am I am wide-awake, staring into the dark silence, slightly overwhelmed by the fact that I am not going “home” tomorrow, or next week, or even next month. In fact, I am home.

Two Days in Delhi

How do you know its the off-season in an Indian hotel? You discover that not only are you the only white tourists, but you are the only guests in the entire hotel! The rest of which appears to be under renovation including jack-hammers, paint fumes, gasoline smells, and vast tracks of empty gardens. It is, however, VERY quiet at night and the room is clean.

I must admit I began to wonder just how much of a "good deal" I had discovered on the internet when not only the pre-paid taxi dispatcher, but also the gate guard and the taxi driver himself had clearly never heard of the hotel name. As a result, we circled around various Delhi highways asking random people walking by the side of the road if they knew where the hotel was. Hmm. The website's colorful pictures of people frolicking in a large swimming pool with a swim-up bar was enticing. The reality, glimpsed through sheets of monsoon rain, of empty leaf-dappled pool water and not a martini in sight, was enough to send me back to our blissfully air-conditioned room to write this blog.

Tomorrow, plane tickets, visas, and weather allowing, we fly into Bhutan. Apparently, its a bit of a crap-shoot during the monsoon since the Paro airport is sight-only landing and if the clouds have filled the valley they cannot land, in which case, we will be flown back to Delhi in search of another hotel to spend the night. Fingers crossed!

Departure Day

In the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, when one completes any kind of elaborate visualization practice, the entire visualization should be dissolved, bit by bit, into emptiness. This dissolution is to prevent one from becoming attached to the beauty and power of the visualization. The process of dissolving simulates the experience of dying for an aware individual who, it is said, can remain attentive as the elements that make up consciousness and form slowly dissolve. It is also said that one's entire life is like an elaborate visualization. In order to both prepare for the inevitability of death and to work with attachment to the forms of this life, from time to time, one should also practice dissolving one's life in its current manifestation.

The apartment is empty but for our four suitcases. My final morning beverage (a rather elaborate affair in and of itself involving coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder, sweetener, and mint extract) has been prepared and is slowly being consumed. Goodbyes have been said with an array of complex emotions. Yesterday, I drifted around Harvard campus, slipping through crowds of ever-present tourists, even sitting for four hours in front of the pdf-maker, like a ghost. A few raindrops sprinkled my white shirt. The pink roses embedded in a hedge of greenery looped over a Cambridge fence shed teardrops. Already my four years as a student here seem like a barely-remembered dream. At 4:45pm, an airplane will lift me up out of Boston, through the gray cloud cover, and I will hang in that odd half-space so peculiar to long airplane flights where time and space both seem to stand still, for fourteen hours. The trappings of this life here have been dissolved.

In my final meeting with my advisor, I told him I would miss him. He smiled and told me that in Sinhala, there is no word for "goodbye." Instead, there is a phrase that means both coming and going simultaneously. Whenever he had to leave his teacher in Sri Lanka, the teacher would say this phrase and whenever my advisor returned, as he did many times, his teacher would look up and simply say, "You've come."

So. I'm not going to say goodbye. In Tibetan, the person who is leaving says to the those who are staying, "Ga ley shu,"ག་ལེ་བཞུགས which roughly means "stay happily." The person who is staying says to the one who is leaving, "Ga ley pey," ག་ལེ་ཕེབས which means "go happily."  So, to all of you, my friends and family, I say "stay happily!"  I love you all.

Six Days and Counting...

The ten-day forecast for Thimphu now includes our arrival day (should we actually be allowed to land, that is), 74 degrees and 60% chance of rain. The floor includes my gum boots (the one item a long-term Bhutan living resident suggested I bring), raincoat, an insulated mug, and pile after pile of "possibly necessary" articles of clothing, vitamins (sigh), chocolate (since I've been informed repeatedly that Bhutanese culture does not subscribe much to sweets, not to mention the fact that I really am addicted to dark chocolate), sunscreen (hmm), and various antidotes for disturbed digestion (given the local cuisine of chillies--as the PRIMARY ingredient--and melted cheese over red rice. The chili/cheese mixture is known as ema datse). Left in the cabinets are a stack of paper plates, some plastic camping utensils, one mixing bowl (in which I ate my salad last night), and one stove pot (in which Chris ate his salad last night). I like camping in my own domicile. Everything seems far simpler without so many things. "Stuff" is generally overrated and remembering that it is more than possible to get by perfectly well without so much "stuff" is a welcome reminder. One of the things I am most looking forward to about living in Bhutan is less stuff! Anyone who lives in an urban environment knows that the most popular pastime seems to be shopping. Malls are always jammed both on weekends and after 5pm on weekdays. Its astounding. And I'm both bored and somewhat disgusted by how pervasive that energy can be. (Not that, as you can see below, we have managed to actually overcome such a tendency!

Forecast today in Somerville, MA: heat and humidity index of over 100 degrees. I'm trying to believe that I can still enjoy the sunlight even if I'm sweltering.

Departure Week

Nothing but a frenzy of boxes, packing materials, decisions, and piles of absolutely "necessary" items that must be brought to Bhutan for which there is no room whatsoever. Underneath it all, a vague sense of unease, anticipation, nervousness, and occasionally downright fear. Hmm. When I was 20, picking up everything and moving across the world involved one backpack, a couple changes of clothing, and an attitude of "who cares." Is it just the difference in age that gives rise to this anxiety? Attachment to hot water, my own bed, food I know I like--in a word--comfort? In any event, its an interesting emotional experience to observe. Nine days now until we board the airplane...