Travel: A visit to Bhutan is a soul-stirring adventure
Far far away, in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, red-robed monks and rapt villagers intensely focused on fearsome dancers who wore skull-trimmed bug-eyed wood masks and slowly performed a purifying rite outside the 17th-century Buddhist Gangtey Monastery. Off to the side, a chanting monk blessed me and suggested I’d have a positive “karmic imprint” from this profoundly spiritual festival.
Actually, I was already tremendously blessed to be in the tiny mystery-cloaked people in the Himalayan country of Bhutan, where the government goal is Gross National Happiness, its reigning Dragon King is much beloved, and omnipresent phallic symbols ward off evil. As for the latter, a solemn monk at the hallowed Temple of the Divine Madman tapped my head with two male genitalia-shaped relics for good fortune.
Ancient traditions and culture are amazingly intact in this serene, deep-rooted Buddhist nation; deliberately isolated, Bhutan did not allow tourists in until 1974 and banned TV and the internet until 1999. Bhutan seems like a magical bubble even more because traditional attire is mandatory in most cases, so men and boys usually and proudly wear various dress-like knee-length ghos and girls and women don long woven kira skirts with different patterned short jackets.
Colorful prayer flags flutter everywhere in clean air — eco-focused Bhutan is admirably the first carbon-negative country on the planet and for years it has decreed 60% of its terrain forever remain forested (it’s achieved 70%). Fishing and hunting are illegal, slaughterhouses don’t exist, and unlike neighbors Nepal and Tibet, climbing the high mountains is forbidden because they’re sacred. (Bhutan also imposes a daily $100 tax on tourists that goes toward protecting the environment.)
Arriving at this South Asian enclave is exhilarating — I sure perked up in my window seat during the rapid descent into Bhutan’s Paro International Airport, dubbed the “most dangerous in the world.” Only a few dozen specially trained pilots from two local airlines are certified to fly in and out of the airport, which lacks radar and is perilously wedged in a valley between 18,000-foot peaks. Pilots can’t even see the short slender runway until right before touchdown. I could almost grab the thickets of conifers and mountaintop homes while my Bhutan Airlines plane zig-zagged and did a dramatic 45-degree turn to nail a perfect landing. Knuckles pink again, I entered the tranquil temple-motif terminal with my visa and blissfully stared at a wall-to-wall mural of a gray-bearded smiling monk sitting under a fruit tree with three darling deer at his feet. “Welcome to the Kingdom of Bhutan,” it read.
“You’ll find life very slow here,” said my gho-attired guide Tashi Dendup, upon meeting solo traveler me at the airport. He draped my neck with the customary greeting — a lengthy, silky white khata scarf that denotes caring and respect. Tashi is soft-spoken, perennially calm, and promotes Buddhist virtues of kindness and compassion, the same as other Bhutanese people I encountered. Imagine my culture shock.
Tourists are required to have guides and drivers to travel through Bhutan, so off I went on a weeklong spellbinding journey with Tashi and our Toyota SUV helmsman Bradeb Rai, who miraculously navigated for hours around cows and dogs lounging on Bhutan’s ultra-curvy, stomach-flipping two-lane main road. (Bring Bonine.) A miniature gold Buddha perched on the dashboard and a string of prayer beads dangled from the rear view mirror.
My entire trip, guide and all, was tailor-made by top-drawer tour company andBeyond (andbeyond.com, 7 nights from $6,544); the extraordinary itinerary encompassed four areas of Bhutan, two Buddhist festivals, a Buddhist nun lamp-lighting ceremony, jaw-dropping landscapes, numerous temples and dzong fortresses, myths, history, and finally the ultimate Bhutan experience — hiking to the iconic cliff-clinging Tiger’s Nest Monastery. Among several accommodations, I stayed at andBeyond’s new luxury Punakha River Lodge in a lovely wilderness-enveloped tented suite, serenaded by rippling currents and trilling birds. (AndBeyond is also known for its upscale safari camps in Africa.)
Like other establishments, the Punakha River Lodge keeps a yellow chair (the regal color) on hand should Bhutan’s current and fifth hereditary king, 44-year-old Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, drop by. His Majesty is so admired by his subjects for being a humanitarian that they daily pin photo buttons of him near their upper left chest. “It’s to keep him close to our heart,” affirmed Tashi, fingering his picture button. (A Bhutanese woman told me the royal married father of three is considered a hunk by swooning female fans.) His lauded father, former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, initially moved Bhutan toward democracy, resulting in the first parliamentary elections in 2008 and transforming the country into a constitutional monarchy. Also, in the early 1970s, Jigme Singye iintroduced the unique policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) for his citizens’ mental and physical well-being over the economy-fixated Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“As Buddhists we firstly believe we must be happy with what we have,” Tashi added.
Early one morning, not far from my 50-acre Punakha River Lodge, Tashi and I started an ascending trek when he suddenly stopped to delicately pick up a red beetle on the trail and safely put it aside.
“We believe all living beings — animals, birds, insects — are our parents in our past life or the next life. We pray for all of them,” he said. (That goes for Bhutan’s official national animal, the takin. You’d swear a goat, cow, and antelope somehow mated to produce the lumbering beast.)
Our hike ended at a hilltop … and surprise! AndBeyond’s lodge staff had secretly climbed up to arrange a lavish private breakfast for me straight across from my destination, the Khamsun Yulley Namgyal Chorten shrine. Left alone in silence, I nibbled a fresh-baked cinnamon bun and gazed a stone’s throw away at the gold-spired stupa built by the Queen Mother to expel negativity and bring harmony to the world. If this was my fate, so be it.
Backing up, my week’s education launched in capital city Thimphu, which like all of Bhutan doesn’t have a single traffic light. At the landmark white-washed Memorial Chorten, I spun the first of many chiming, cylindrical prayer wheels throughout Bhutan and strolled around the shrine clockwise three times for peace and prosperity.
Bhutan’s elaborate religious festivals, called tshechus, are a huge part of the culture with masked rituals such as Dance of the Lords of the Cremation Ground intended to help attendees quash “poisons” including hatred and greed. Costumed atsaras, similar to wise Buddhist clowns, pranced about. At the large, crowded Thimphu Tshechu, an atsara comically stuck his freaky crimson masked face into my countenance and gleefully asked, “Are you happy?”
The smaller, remote Gangtey festival, reached after a five-hour winding drive, felt especially enchanting because in the monastery courtyard I mingled with young robed monks who resided in the quarters, as well as multi-generational townsfolk in their fanciest national outfits. (I also wore the traditional dress at both festivals and got lots of grinning nods from locals.)
“The dances represent wisdom, chasing off evil spirits in us and victory over your evil forces,” said 32-year-old monk Tashi Tshering after blessing me. “Watching this is a pure, beautiful karmic imprint.”
My karma really soared — or perhaps that was my temperature — when I later wiggled into a traditional Bhutanese piping hot stone bath at the gorgeous Gangtey Lodge. Scorching river rocks heated the tub water sprinkled with medicinal artemisia leaves.
While checking into the 12-suite inn, its humble, sage chef, Soh Chia Hwa, joined me in the main room overlooking the expansive verdant Gangtey Valley. “We believe whoever comes to Bhutan is a good fit,” she warmly said. Then she pointed to the both of us. “We believe 500 years ago we meet each other on the street and we smile at each other. In this life we meet again.”
After Gangtey I traveled to aforementioned Punakha and began noticing all the graphic phalluses painted on buildings and hung from eaves. Soon, we entered the Temple of the Divine Madman and Tashi explained the15th-century spiritual master “acted abnormal” and insatiably “liked women, drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of meat” but was incredibly enlightened and used his own organ, the “Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom” to tame demonic forces. His shrine is also associated with fertility; I watched a monk strap a fire extinguisher-sized wood-carved phallus to a woman’s back and have her walk clockwise around the temple three times to improve her chances of conceiving. Another monk blessed me on my noggin with two smaller phalluses and the madman’s bow and arrow.
A different afternoon in Punakha, I sat cross-legged in the Sangchhen Dorji Lhuendrup Nunnery as three shaven-head female monks stoically chanted a mantra to bless me with longevity and other benefits. Sangay, a 24-year-old nun, flecked me with holy water from a peacock feather and had me light a butter-filled lamp to illuminate the proverbial darkness.
Outside the temple, serious Sangay became exuberant after I asked about the prayer seeking a long time on Earth for me. “You look sweet 16, don’t worry,” she quipped with a laugh. Sangay animatedly detailed her arduous days as a nun, half-joked that “we want to do it because we women are stronger,” told me about her family, and concluded with a heartfelt message for the universe. “Be kind. All you have to do is be kind and be happy like me-e-e-e,” she winsomely urged.
Speaking of merriment, the next morning I had just said goodbye to gracious employees at andBeyond Punakha River Lodge when they stood in the driveway and sang a song in Bhutan’s native Dzongkha language. “It means, ‘Please don’t leave. We are not happy,’” guide Tashi translated.
Later we visited the awe-inspiring 108 stupas at panoramic Dochula Pass before I slept in rural Paro at the comfy Nemjo Heritage Lodge, a five-bedroom, century-old house nestled among rice paddies and apple orchards. Roosters crowed at dawn as I departed for the grand finale — a pine-forested hike to the legendary Tiger’s Nest Monastery precariously teetering on sheer rock in misty clouds. The majestic complex honors Guru Rinpoche, the 8th-century “Second Buddha” heralded for bringing Buddhism to Bhutan. He supposedly flew from Tibet on the back of a tigress and landed on the towering cliffs.
I wish I had his transportation, With the thin high altitude air, rest breaks, and gratefully Tashi’s firm grip over slippery mud, it took me three hours to climb from Paro’s valley floor to the 17th-century monastery at 10,240 feet. Inside a venerated temple, I hypnotically meditated with a monk and pilgrims above a cave where Guru Rinpoche eliminated harmful spirits tormenting Bhutan. Honestly, oxygen-deprived or not, I experienced a powerful otherworldly energy.
Finally back down near the Tiger’s Nest base, I ambled through a doorway festooned with an orange phallus and settled cross-legged on a pillow in farmer Ngawang Choki’s modest home. She served me a tasty lunch of pumpkin soup, green bean stew, momo dumplings and more, and capped it off with ara, her home-distilled booze. I passed on the rice wine containing a medicinal caterpillar fungus from the Himalayas and instead opted for her rice wine powder infused with sandalwood. Then I gave thanks to wondrous, soul-stirring Bhutan for bestowing me with a lasting karmic imprint.