A visit to Bhutan

Last week my son came for a short visit. We spent 4 wonderful days together and he was off to rendezvous with friends in neighboring Sikkim for a trek. His visit certainly shed some light on what it means and what it takes to visit Bhutan. All visitors need a visa, for most this means a tourist visa which is arranged through a travel agency/guide service. The cost is currently $250/day for travelers from the US. The price does include basic room, board, and transportation costs as well as a substantial tariff paid to the government. Many tourists pay for upgraded accommodations and travel as well. Tourism is good business for the country. The government makes money directly and the tour and travel industry brings money into the economy as well. The job of tourist guide is very sought after and the process of becoming a guide is challenging for sure.

Bhutanese citizens can have visitors and arrange for their visa as their guest. These visitors are personal friends, family, etc and do not pay the tariff. We had to submit a fairly extensive application well in advance of Bridger's visit but all worked out and he was issued a visa for his stay. He was delayed on the east coast of the US due to a late winter snowstorm and finally arrived in Paro 48 hrs later than his original plans. After I picked him up we were looking at his travel document. Tourists, foreign visitors, can travel between Paro (airport) and Thimphu (capitol). In order to go beyond Thimphu they must have a travel permit. All this had been applied for and we had the permit, however the passport number on the document matched my son’s but the name was Hassam somebody from South Africa with a more extensive itinerary.  So we spent an hour on Monday morning at immigration. They recognized the error and explained that the software cross references passport numbers. Amazing that a resident of South Africa had a passport number which was the same as my son’s and was traveling in Bhutan at the same time. After getting all that straightened out we were able to travel to Punakha and Gaselo.

            One point of all this is to enlighten folks as to what is involved in a visit to Bhutan. Another point might be to look at what an amazing opportunity it is to spend a year here. We all have work permits which are identity cards which function in lieu of a citizenship cards. I no longer need to show my passport while traveling in Bhutan, my work permit is sufficient. However, we also need travel permits if we are going to travel out of our district and to districts other than Thimphu and Paro. The opportunities opened when one is able to travel alone without a group, a tour, or a guide are amazing and certainly one of the reasons to pursue something as crazy as volunteering to teach for a year in Bhutan.

Annual Cleansing

Every house, every institution, every everything is supposed to have an annual cleansing ceremony to chase away the bad spirits, make the place pure, and safeguard the people, residents, employees, students, whomever for the year. These ceremonies are called Puja if they are for a house, somewhere along the way to a school they become Rimdro. Returning to the theme of homemade in Bhutan I will relate the events of Rimdro for our school. Thursday afternoon some classes are called off as the students are involved in preparing for Rimdro. All day Friday the whole student body and faculty are involved in preparation. Rimdro is Saturday from dawn ‘til dusk.

            Preparation involves making thousands of deep fried pieces of dough shaped like crowns, stars, braids, whatever the maker had in mind. This is 50 kids rolling out dough and shaping it and another 30 kids involved in taking the raw dough shapes and deep frying them over open fires behind the school kitchen. Everything is created from scratch just for this event. In the picture the large pile in front of the stage is composed primarily of these pastries. They will be distributed and eaten by the whole school over the next few days.

            Dawn Saturday finds a group of students with a couple of faculty for guidance working on the large prayer flag poles. These were taken down the week before, a large event in itself. The poles are single trees, about 50 feet tall, set in a hole about 3 feet deep with a rock/mud pedestal built around the base. New prayer flags and caps are put on the poles. The smaller poles have tops conprised of a disc and a decorative spear point up through the middle. All these are fashioned from logs the day before. The process of raising these takes 20-30 people and a fair amount of physical labor to get the pole established for the following year. All of this is accompanied by fires lit to burn all morning. The fires are fed with green branches, cedar in the stupas, which create a purifying smoke that will cleanse the whole area.

The monks have been assembled and are beginning a day of chanting which is often accompanied by instruments, drums, cymbals, a sort of clarinet, and giant trumpets reminiscent of Alp Horns. All this is blasted outside on overloaded speakers and is almost terrifying in the sounds produced.

            Part of the ceremony involves clay sculptures which are destroyed at the end as the evil of all the people is driven away. The clay for these is dug from a hillside that morning and beat with large sticks so that it will be a fine powder. Water is added and the clay sculptures are fashioned by hand.

            The day is spent in two long prayer sessions with the entire population of the school along with some guests. Breakfast, launch and dinner are served and we end the day with a faculty meeting to cover the upcoming week. It is amazing to see a whole day of ceremony with very little premade. Almost everything is created on site just for this day. The altar does have quite a pile of commercial whitebread and plastic bags of snacks, chips etc which all seems quite ironic to me.

A visit to the next village.

Now that I have been in Bhutan, living and working, I am beginning to have a few things to relate besides travel commentary. Last Sunday I walked from here to the next village via the old “road”. This is a route, probably hundreds of years old, which was the main access through Gaselo to the next Village. It is well laid out, an efficient traverse along one side of the gorge and out along the opposite slope. Only a few miles but beautiful. In many places there are old stones placed as uneven stairs or stepping stones, easy to use and better than slip sliding in the mud and dirt. The tiny villages are scattered about everywhere there is a bit of arable land. Often quite steep but terraced with some gentle spots for building. The houses of the villages do not appear to have any pattern. There is enough open space between to walk, sometimes areas that look almost lawn like. A bit like a nice campground with tents scattered about. It a little disconcerting for us who live in the realm of private property who can be worried about walking where we should not. Seems as though everywhere here one is welcome to pass wherever it looks good.

This fits with the incredible communal sociability of the Bhutanese. They are in and out of each other’s places all the time. Very few secrets of any kind. Salary is handed out and discussed openly. Students standings and exam results from last year are posted. Offenses at school can be punished by the students doing prostrations in front of the whole school during morning assembly. Everyone is open and accepting of all that goes on around them. The Bhutanese hold in very high regard a respect for the earth and all its inhabitants but this does not include in the least the American idea of respect for privacy. Although Bhutanese put a padlock on everything and tell you to be careful because not everyone is to be trusted the doors are generally not very secure and in general people are very trusting. Apparently people will take things if they are available, sort of like finders keepers, but a simple lock is a reminder to let things be. In general it is a very honest and open society that wants to get along and do well. I very much like this aspect of the culture as it does lead me to understand that people in larger groups can live so openly. Of course a small, cohesive, homogenous society like the Bhutanese is much more conducive to this way of life than a huge, incredibly varied and diverse society like we have in the US.

The Pragmatic Buddhist

           One of the most frequent questions I hear from Bhutanese is a query regarding my thoughts on their culture. The culture here is considered by the Bhutanese to be their identity and rightly so. The culture is omnipresent, consistent, and in many ways unchanged in the past century. Vajrayāna Buddhism was introduced from Tibet about 1400 years ago. It is still the religion of a large majority of Bhutanese and is the official religion as well. Everything in Bhutan is based on Buddhist values and Buddhism is intertwined into all aspects of life.

The first king of the current Wangchuck line, Ugyen Wangchuck, was unanimously chosen as the hereditary king of the country by an assembly of leading Buddhist monks in 1907. These five kings have led Bhutan into the 21^st century. Their interest in preserving the intrinsically human values which are central to Bhutanese culture while at the same time attempting to provide a path for the Bhutanese to assimilate their lives into the 21^st century is an amazing example of how an enlightened monarch can do tremendously positive things for his people. The relationship between the population and their king is, even though the term is overused, unique to Bhutan. When the Fourth king decided to move the country in the direction of democracy and established a constitutional monarchy, which included a parliamentary system, there was quite an outcry from the people many of whom loved the traditional monarchy and wanted the king to continue to rule.

The shift toward the modern world is a challenge for all cultures let alone a culture which is consciously striving to maintain many of its traditional values. This is where the pragmatic approach comes into play. The policy of GNH, Gross National Happiness, is essentially and updated form of Buddhism which takes into account people’s natural desires to take advantage of the modern world. A modern world which includes things like commerce, communication, entertainment, and a growing sense of what might be going on in places away from this little country snuggled up against the Himalaya. Somehow I can’t imagine the Pope taking such a pragmatic view on how to lead his flock into the future.

Bhutanese pragmatism leads to many interesting results. Many Bhutanese eat meat. This is not a Buddhist practice yet many people here feel comfortable enjoying the pleasures of being a carnivore and feel quite comfortable being a Bhutanese Buddhist at the same time.

Last week we had an in-service day at school. The students were given a reading day during which they were to read one book and write a brief book report. The faculty met for a day of Life Skills training. Much of this session covered decision making etc, etc. A portion of the time was spent on other life topics Drugs and sex were high on the list. STD’s, drugs, harassment all were covered briefly. A lot of surprisingly straightforward information. Once again I thought of the Pope as an anchor around the neck of Catholics and here the King, along with the government, was trying to be proactive and current. The government took this proactive stance when it came to litter, It outlawed plastic shopping bags and many sorts of packaging. Unfortunately the current desires of the people are stronger than these lofty goals and plastic bags and junk food packaging are ubiquitous. But back to STDs, HIV and such. One of the recommendations was of course abstinence. However, the Bhutanese seem to recognize this as a fairly unlikely choice in most cases. So they have come up with something that might help a bit. I am not sure of its effectiveness but I gave it a lot of credit for creative, pragmatic, proactive thing in the face of a challenging social problem. They suggest the 3 M’s. Meditation, music, and masturbation. These are at least 3 practical suggestions that might actually help one along the path of abstinence. Of course my first question was, did they mean all at the same time?

As the year passes I will be interested to see if I can get a handle on how well this idea of joining the modern world while preserving traditional values is fairing. It is a noble quest and perhaps an indication of why the current line of Wangchuk royalty has been so popular and effective in Bhutan over the past century plus.