The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan is a place where Buddhist traditions mix with modernity, and reverence is shown to tigers and the flaming thunderbolt of wisdom.
The edge of a forest cloaked in clouds, thick with the scent of pine and garlanded with peach blossoms, a sign reads ‘Please do not tease the animals’. Here live the takins of Thimpu.
A local legend tells how the Bhutanese
national animal was created from the remains of a lunch eaten by Lama Drukpa
Kunley, a 15th-century Buddhist saint also known as ‘the Divine Madman’. He
demonstrated the outlandish power of his magic by taking the skeleton of a cow
and the skull of a goat, theatrically combining the two before bringing them
back to life with a loud belch.
And so one of nature’s more awkward
creatures was born. Today, a herd of takins lives within a refuge at the edge
of Thimpu, the sleepy capital of a country the size of Switzerland with a total
population of just 700,000. In the 1990s, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, then king of
Bhutan, granted the takins freedom from the captivity of a zoo. This gesture
represented an early ripple before a wave of modernity was allowed to sweep
through his secretive mountain kingdom, a world all of its own between China
and the northeastern tip of India. The first tourists were only permitted to
come here in 1974, democracy wasn’t introduced until 2008, and there is now a
TV channel (just the one), showing a mixture of Hollywood, Bollywood and
spectacularly melodramatic local movies.
The takins were poorly equipped to make
the most of their release, swaggering through town, lazily searching for food
and generally troubling the populace. There seemed little choice but to corral
them into Thimpu’s Motithang Takin Preserve, which offered a little more of the
space that their wild relatives enjoy at the opposite end of the country, in
the remote east.
The job of guarding these hapless beasts
now falls to Kuenzang Gyeltshen, who lives with his young family in a hut
inside the boundaries of the preserve, weaving shawls and tending his garden of
herbs, garlic and chilli peppers. ‘I rise early to feed the takins, around
6am’, he says. Kuenzang does all he can to prevent visitors from offering the
national animal a taste of the national dish, ema datshi – a heart-quaking mix of
potent chillies and melted cheese that can wreak equal havoc on the digestive
systems of takins as those of unacclimatised foreigners. ‘People would be best
to stick to giving them the occasional apple,’ he suggests.
A menagerie of even more peculiar animals
is to be found in Thimpu’s National Institute for Zorig Chusum, also known as
The Painting School. Here the traditional crafts of Bhutan are taught to a
fresh generation. In the wood-carving classroom, the heads of a tiger, leopard,
boar, owl, snake, deer, dog, ox, rabbit, dragon and a mythical bird called a
garuda all snarl down at onlookers. Each has a fearsome set of fangs exposed –
even the owl and rabbit. The students are creating masks that will be gaudily
painted in the style of those worn by performers at the tsechus – religious
festivals – held across the country as the grip of the long Himalayan winter
releases each spring.
In the classroom next door, 21-year-old
Dechen Dema gulps hard as her tutor, Dawa Tshering, presents the artwork she
must attempt to replicate. This is a fiendishly complex sculpture of
Avalokites´vara, a Buddhist god of compassion with multiple heads and spindly
limbs that today need to be worked from soft clay. Dechen’s shyness belies her
great dexterity as she sets about her task. ‘My family are very proud of my
progress,’ she says. ‘None of them would know how to make something like this.’
Dechen considers herself fortunate to be a pupil; prior to 1998, tradition
prevented girls from being admitted to the school.
The end of the day’s studies are
signalled by the echoing clang of a brass bell being struck outside. A portrait
of Bhutan’s youthful current king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, looks down
handsomely and sternly as pupils file past a locker with ‘I feel better when
I’m drunk’ scratched in graffiti on its door.
Glorious frescoes adorn most homes and
religious buildings throughout Bhutan, with creatures, flowers and intricate,
abstract patterns sprawling over broad wooden beams and mud walls. One symbol
that frequently looms up on the walls of houses here, with an alarming level of
anatomical accuracy, is the ‘flaming thunderbolt of wisdom’ – a sturdy male
member believed to protect the occupants of a building from harm.
The owner of the original flaming
thunderbolt of wisdom was the Divine Madman himself, Lama Drukpa Kunley. The
saint still holds much influence over fast-evolving Bhutan. He is said to have
shot an arrow from his homeland of Tibet, determined to deliver his unusual
form of wisdom to the lucky girl closest to where it landed. He claimed he
would break down all social conventions in order to encourage worshippers to
consider the teachings of Buddha with an open mind. Bawdy language, reeling
drunkenness and outrageous sexual exploits were among his techniques, inspiring
certain traditions that continue right to this day.
In the east of Bhutan, a practice known
as ‘night hunting’ is only now being widely called into question. Young men
will make a girl’s acquaintance during the day to seek her consent for a
one-night stand, then break into her parents’ house to fulfil that promise as
night closes in. If they leave soon afterwards then often nothing more will be
said, but if they doze off and are caught by the girl’s parents after daybreak,
they will be duty-held to marry her. Tales abound of queues of impatient
suitors forming outside the houses of popular girls, of overweight boys
becoming stuck in window frames, and of mothers being accidently approached in
the confusion of darkness.
If machismo, a love of Buddhism and a
certain urge to handle a weapon are long-respected traits in Bhutan, it may not
seem so bizarre to learn that leathery Hollywood action hero Steven Seagal –
star of Under Seige and countless similar movies – is one of the country’s
favourite celebrities. In recent years, he made a widely publicised visit to
Bhutan and has been proclaimed the reincarnation of a holy 13th-century
Buddhist treasure hunter.
Inspired by the example of the Divine
Madman, Bhutanese men still enjoy firing arrows over great distances. Just as
the takin is the national animal and ema datshi the national foodstuff, so
archery is the national sport. At one end of a field in the mist-shrouded
countryside near Thimpu, Karma Dhendup is lining up a distant target, 140 metres
away. He is a teacher turned tour guide for guests of the capital’s plush Taj
Tashi hotel, and like many upwardly mobile Bhutanese men, he has foregone a
traditional bamboo bow for the status symbol of a high-tech carbon-fibre
compound bow. ‘Some invest half a year’s salary in one of these,’ he says.
Bhutanese archery is a highly sociable,
often alcohol-fuelled affair with a hint of amiable danger thrown in. Women
assume the dual roles of cheerleaders and hecklers, noisily calling into
question any inaccurate archer’s prowess. Today there’s no pause in the
shooting as a cow and a couple of farmhands casually amble across the middle of
the field.
Karma’s work involves offering visitors
cultural insights and guiding them around a baffling assortment of dzongs, the
monumental fortified monasteries to be discovered at every turn in Bhutan.
Close to Thimpu and accessed by a steep climb on foot – equally breathtaking
for its panoramic views over valleys dense with the blooms of rhododendrons and
the fight for oxygen in the thin mountain air – is the Tango Goemba. Here, a
privileged glimpse can be had of the gilded statues of Buddha within its inner
sanctum, and boy monks learn English grammar, Buddhist philosophy and soccer
skills. Also near the capital is the Pangri Zampa, a monastic temple used as a
school of astrology, where a ceremony is under way to bless the country for the
year ahead. Pungent clouds of incense fill the air as groups of monks chant,
blow slender trumpets and perform whirling acrobatic dances while dressed as
mythical heroes. Local people spin prayer wheels and present offerings of
imported snacks to the monks, building a vast mound of crisps, biscuits and
popcorn.
The tour hurtles on over sinuous
mountain roads to the imposing Paro Dzong, a combined magistrate’s court and
place of worship, then to the ruined Drukgyel Dzong, where defensive
passageways burrow off into the hillsides, and onwards to Kyichu Lhakhang, one
of the oldest structures in Bhutan, claimed to have been built in 659 AD to pin
down the left foot of an ogress who had inflicted chaos across the region.
Eastwards over the high Dochu La pass,
sitting at the convergence of two rivers fed by meltwater from glaciers, is the
beautiful Punakha Dzong, ‘the palace of great happiness’ where wild bees make
their nests in the rafters and kings have their coronations. A short way
further on is the Chimi Lhakhang, the temple of the Divine Madman and a focal
point for his most ardent followers. Women who’ve been struggling to conceive
often spend the night here, having heard of the miraculous results the saint
can deliver through a blessing known as a ‘wang’. Visitors are greeted by a boy
monk offering cups of holy water, accompanied by a ceremonial tap on the head
with a bow and arrow and a 12-inch mahogany phallus. Photography, though
tempting, is discouraged.
The magic thunderbolt of wisdom is much
in evidence on the thick-set walls of farmhouses in the surrounding rice
fields. Karma says: ‘We have a saying, “Protect your house with a phallus, protect
your phallus with a condom!”. This is modern Bhutan.’ For him, contemporary
life means wearing the national costume of a gho – a cloak worn over
knee-length socks – during the day and a tracksuit in the evening. It means a
life shared on Facebook, choosing Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Three Little
Birds as the hold music on his smartphone, and recalling Stephen Hawking’s
teachings about space and time with the same reverence as the Buddhist
philosophy his country has so long been enveloped in.
Most of Karma’s clients are eager to
visit the Taktshang Goemba, or Tiger’s Nest. This monastery was built at the
place where Guru Rinpoche – another of the country’s favourite religious
figures – is said to have arrived on the back of a consort he’d transformed into
a flying tigress. Legend tells that he went on to subdue a local demon before
spending three months here meditating in a cave.
We plan to approach the Tiger’s Nest the
long way round, across the craggy spines of the surrounding mountains rather
than up the well-made path from the car park a couple of hours below. The
two-day route follows part of a smuggler’s trail that continues to Tibet, where
Bhutanese men in bleached jeans and knock-off Nike trainers guide pony trains
laden with Chinese medicines, radios and DVD players. The trail passes through
cloud forests draped with tendrils of moss, over ridges where trees have been
contorted sideways by the prevailing winds and eagles drift far above. Beyond
lie the sacred, unclimbed peaks of Bhutan’s tallest mountains, rising more than
7,000 metres and capped with snow throughout the year.
The trail opens onto a high plateau
where yak herders seek shelter in winter and the Uma Paro hotel establishes a
tented camp in the spring and summer. Guests spend the night in these
gale-shaken tents before heading to the Tiger’s Nest at first light.
As dusk settles, the smoke of a warming
bonfire mingles with flakes of snow dropping all around, our lungs aching from
the altitude. Whispers turn to the mythical yetis that have been given their
own national park in the east, and of a population of tigers recently tracked
by government rangers within sight of this camp. For generations, monks living
at the peak’s summit have told of watching a ghostly tigress stalk the surrounding
plateau under the light of a full moon, wondering if they were witnessing the
reappearance of the flying tigress once ridden by the founder of the Tiger’s
Nest monastery.
A black billy goat with horns painted
bright yellow has been dragged up here by two men seeking the karmic benefits
of saving him from being slaughtered for a feast. They deliver the goat into
the freedom of one of Bhutan’s most sacred high places, abandoning him to the
wilderness in the process. He bleats pitifully all night, fearing unseen
predators, desperately latching on to our party as we descend towards the
Tiger’s Nest at dawn. A few hours later, the goat appears to express joy and
relief at being handed over to some monks who tend a collection of similarly
abandoned creatures in their idyllic mountainside farm. He will spend the rest
of his days here, safely cloaked by the comfort of tradition, looking out over
a country where the wild is always close at hand.
Ahead is the Tiger’s Nest, a shimmering
monument with golden pinnacles to its rooftops set over stark, whitewashed
walls that somehow cling to the cliff face. From the path where pilgrims gather
to look on in awe, ropes bearing prayer flags in a rainbow of colours are
strung over a deep gorge towards the monastery. These carry the wishes of
believers off on the breeze, spiralling them across the valley beyond – full of
hope for the present and wonder at a future once unimagined in this kingdom of
the clouds.