Our plane swoops down through valleys burned brown by the winter sun, sprinkled with dark green clusters of pine trees. Above the silver wings of the plane, white snow peaks pierce the dark blue of Bhutan’s sky. From this altitude it is easy to see that Bhutan is a country entirely dominated by mountains, from the highest glacial peaks to the foothills stretching down into the Indian plains, there is not a single flat surface to speak of. This is my second time flying into Bhutan, but there is a dramatic difference arriving in February from my first arrival in July. No monsoon clouds obscure the incredible views of the Himalayas, nor do they cushion the dangerous and dramatic landing Bhutanese pilots must make on a daily basis. While home for the holidays, I read in a magazine that the airport in Paro, Bhutan is the most dangerous airport in the world for planes to land. I kind of wish I’d never read it. But our pilot, Captain Senge Wangchuk, maneuvers our plane flawlessly through the steep valleys, finally touching down gently onto the runway, a strip of blacktop known to be the only straight stretch of road in the entire country. I am first off the plane at the back entrance. The sun is warm and a gentle cool breeze stirs the grasses by the side of the runway. Out the front entrance of the plane, a procession of monks in red robes is proceeding down the moveable stairway. A guard motions me to wait as a red carpet is unrolled from the base of the stairway all the way across the tarmac to the open door of the airport building. A host of official looking Bhutanese in full formal dress hurry across the pavement and line up on either side of the carpet with their hands held in front of them palm to palm and their heads bent as the lead monk passes between them. Another group of monks stands near the end of the carpet and the eerie sounds of Tibetan monastic music—the long jaoling trumpet and shorter horn—echo across the airport. I join the line of bent over Bhutanese officials and quickly learn that we have shared our flight with a famous relic of the Buddha—one of his teeth—enshrined in a small golden stupa about two feet in height. One of the senior lamas in the group carries the stupa in his arms down the stairs. As he walks along the red carpet, everyone bends his or her head down to the level of the base of the stupa. I do likewise and quickly feel a sharp bonk on the head as the lama and his procession pass by me.
After the procession has disappeared into the recesses of the airport reserved for very important persons, I hear from a friend who was sitting in business class that the relic had its own seat. It was tucked in carefully with a bunch of airplane pillows and bucked with two seatbelts. It is the personal possession of the fourth King of Bhutan and had been taken on tour to sites in Thailand so that Thai Buddhists could receive its blessing. I reflect that there was obviously no way that our plane was going to go down, no matter how dangerous the landing! Welcome back to Bhutan, I think, delighted to arrive in such auspicious and, indeed, humorous circumstances. In fact, the whole situation—the warm weather, the sunlight, the snowy peaks, the relic—all make me feel so much better about coming back. I’ve been dreading our return. Not because I don’t like Bhutan, but because I now feel tremendous pressure to get my act together here and get some real work done. It’s been impossible to progress very far with my dissertation so far and that is clearly the result to two factors: the first is that Bhutan is a country that functions through relationships. One cannot arrange anything from outside the country if one is unknown inside the country. Getting to know people, forging relationships, making friends, colleagues and business relationships is the only way to have doors open. This has been my first challenge here and the past six months have mostly been spent engaging in exactly this activity. The second factor was the infrastructure, or lack thereof, in Taktse at ILCS. Not having electricity, water, or a reasonable work environment, not to mention internet connectivity or even phone service much of the time, did not lend itself toward productivity. But things have changed now. The relationships are in place and that alone will hopefully serve to advance my work situation dramatically. As we wind along the twisting road to Thimphu with a friend—one of the young lecturers from ILCS who has come to pick up Matt, our friend who was in business class—I reflect on how different it feels to return to a place, even a foreign place, that one has come to know. There is great comfort in knowing where to shop, where to sleep, how to get around, and how to find the things one is looking for. There is even more comfort in meeting up with new/old friends and being reminded of how much I appreciate Bhutanese people—whose warmth and spontaneous generosity are simply part of their basic make-up.
Since the semester at ILCS is slated to begin on March 5th, Chris and I have arranged to stay in Thimphu in a guesthouse so that we can prepare for our teaching and I can get back to work comfortably. Since I too will be teaching for the first half of the semester (a poetry course, no less!), it is imperative that we find some quiet time to get back into work mode. The other main objective is to buy a car. The ethnographic element of my research will require me to travel to remote areas in Bhutan that will be unreachable by bus. In addition, living in Taktse, a good hour or more from the nearest town, has been very isolating. Having our own vehicle will give us the run of the country and tremendous freedom to come and go as we wish, as well as to visit parts of Bhutan we’ve been wanting to see.
Our guesthouse has a couple of rooms with attached kitchenettes and we happily install ourselves on the top floor beneath the eaves in a small “apartment.” Outside on the roof, flocks of doves coo and murmur and wind sings in the branches of a group of large pine trees outside the window. We are both feeling the altitude. After nearly a month at sea level, I’ve lost all the conditioning I worked so hard to achieve while living here. Even walking up the stairs to the apartment (five floors) feel grueling. Jet lag too finally takes its toll after being held at bay for three days while we played in Bangkok. By 5pm, we collapse into bed, sleeping through until about 6am the next morning!
The next morning I meet up with Sonam, who has offered to take me to the Thimphu hospital so that I can try to get a series of tests done. I had tried to do these same tests in Bangkok, but the price for all the tests came out to being somewhere around $600 USD! Since health care is free in Thimphu, I figured I’d try again here. Sonam has a friend who is a nurse at the hospital, and again, knowing someone makes all the difference. Upon our arrival Karma takes me into an examination room, enabling me to bypass the long lines and endless processes of getting this or that form filled out and signed. I explain that I am hoping to get a thyroid test and various other blood tests. I’ve been experiencing a lot of fatigue and a kind of fogginess that doesn’t lend itself to thinking “academically.” Since thyroid disease runs in the family and I’ve already been told that I have the antibodies, I want to test my levels. Sadly, they don’t have the reagent to test thyroid. (I ask when they might get it, but Karma has no idea. He can only tell me that it will arrive at some point. Sigh). But he draws blood for a series of other tests and tells me he’ll get me the results by the end of the day. The entire process has taken about 20 minutes by the time Sonam and I walk back to his car. Clouds, which have hung gray and heavy over the city since dawn, are beginning to lift and the sun slants down in gold and pink columns of light. Sonam realizes that he has locked the keys in the car. He is remarkably unfazed and explains to me that this happens to him a lot. Karma attempts to help us by first producing a sheet of x-ray paper that we attempt to slide down between the window and the door, hoping to trigger the lock mechanism, without success. Next, he provides a ruler. We repeat the process, but the ruler is too short. Finally, Karma brings a key to someone else’s car (as if, miraculously, this might somehow work on Sonam’s car) to no avail. So, we give up and walk back to town.
Since I return from the hosptial so early, I am able to catch Chris before he goes to try to buy a car. Because we arrived back in Bhutan on the weekend before the biggest holiday of the year—Losar and the 5th King’s birthday—there is only one business day in the week, which means that we have only one day in which to get this done. I am skeptical that one can accomplish anything like this in only one day in Bhutan, but we have to try. First we have to get licenses to drive. This requires a letter from ILCS and a couple of different ministries. Thankfully, our friend Yeshe has a friend (!) who works there and Tashi (the friend) is able to fairly quickly issue us temporary permits. It will take a week for the permanent license to be ready. Next, we head to Zimdra Motors, one of two automobile dealers in Thimphu. We already know that we want to buy either a Suzuki Wagonr or a Suzuki Ecco van—a small van with a good amount of interior space. I know Chris wants the van, due to his younger days when he owned a full size van in which he placed a mattress for sleeping out in the forest, etc. I am more inclined to the Wagonr, which is quite compact but has good head room and more interior space than many of the tiny cars on Bhutan’s roads. But the choice will come down to price—we want the cheapest car! That turns out to be the van, surprisingly and we are quickly the owners of a new Maruti Suzuki Ecco van, white in color, with rain guards on the windows, a stereo, and seat covers. The van has to be driven up from Phuentsoling so we cannot even see it or test drive it—an unthinkable situation in the USA if one wanted to buy a car, but we go with it. I even name the van—Khandro—“sky-goer” or one who travels through the sky. Since Bhutan’s one east-west road travels far up across high mountain peaks, it seems like a good name. (Way to personify one’s material possessions, thereby increasing one’s sense of attachment…). And oddly, after all my travails trying to get permission to pay for plane tickets in Bhutan using local currency, the car dealership refuses to take US dollars, insisting that we convert our dollars into ngultrim—go figure. At this point, given that we don’t actually yet have the van in our possession, I can’t quite absorb it. But I do have moments of delight that even though we’ve had to buy a car, we now have so much more freedom. It really makes me feel like we actually live here. Cars here are quite cheap by American standards, and we are told that we might even be eligible for a 30% rebate on the cost if we get a letter stating that Chris pays Bhutanese taxes through his salary, which, in fact, he does. 30% is well worth pursuing. We still have to register the vehicle (one building/department) and have plates issued (another building/department). We also have to get insurance, supposedly simple and can be done through the dealership. There are only two insurance companies in Bhutan—one a government-owned business that used to be the only company, and now a new private company that is giving the government one a run for the money. This is good news for us, since we are told (ahem) that insurance actually works now, i.e. if you get in an accident, you will eventually get money for repairs or medical expenses. “Eventually” is, of course, a bit of an unknown.
When we get back to our apartment later on that evening, Karma is waiting for me with my test results. It turns out that I am anemic. Hmm. He suggests that I eat lots of greens and fruits. When I do some research, I realize that I’m going to have to find ways to get more iron. Supplements aren’t really something that has caught on here yet, but I manage to find an iron supplement in liquid form that tastes something like tangy oranges. I also note that some of the most potent sources of dietary iron are organ meats (out of the question – blech) and seaweed (not readily available in Bhutan, I’m guessing). But to my surprise, when I head into the local “gourmet” (very loosely defined) store, I discover packaged sheets of dried nori imported from Thailand. There appear to be different flavors, but since all the writing on the package is either in Thai or Japanese, even after some moments of scrutinizing it, I cannot decipher the flavor. So, I just buy two different kinds. Later on, when I open the packages for an afternoon snack, I find myself quite enjoying the first flavor even while I have no idea what it is. The second package, however, tastes distinctly like roasted squid, or something like that. Sure enough, when I read the package again, I discover clearly written in English, “roasted squid flavor.” Who, I ask you, wants to eat anything that tastes like roasted squid? And how do I make sense of myself, living in Bhutan far from any ocean, eating packages of seaweed with roasted squid flavoring? Life is often profoundly mystifying.
(Pictures to come shortly)
And a note to my readers--I am sorry for the long delay in postings but assumed that writing about my winter break back in the US was likely to be far less interesting than adventures in Bhutan. Now that I'm back, I plan to continue blogging--after all, there is so much more about to happen!
