Andrew Singer Talks About China

Vol. 3, Issue 14

The Land of the Thunder Dragon (Part 2)

Hiking was on the itinerary in Bhutan. I enjoy hiking because it makes the world slow down. The Owl Trek in central Bhutan, our longest, was a soul-stirring journey into self, people, and place. It was also a two-night, three-day, high-altitude, limit-pushing Inner Himalayan Mountain slog.

Day Three, Dawn, Elevation 13,055 ft. The air is thin, crisp, and intoxicating. An undulating mountain ridge running across the horizon greets me at eye level as I unzip my tent and crawl out into the frosty morning. It had been a cool night cocooned inside my sleeping bag wrapped in almost everything I brought (knit hat, gloves, base layers, sweatshirt, puffer vest, socks). It is reverently quiet. A time to absorb without thinking.

We are above the lower bank of clouds hiding these distant mountains from the rolling Chumey Valley. We are nestled on the rising slopes of the Kitiphu Ridge, not far below the peak and its remote, riotously-colorful shrine to Kyebu Lungsten, the deity of the Bumthang Valley on the other side. We have been moving steadily south away from Tibet. Our small expedition is part of this landscape in a place less traveled. I smile inwardly at sharing a secret moment beyond the world.

Our first day took us up through an ancient, mystical forest whose lush greenery and wild, earthy scent enveloped us. Towering trees soaring toward dappled sunlight mixed with the remains of thick half trunks covered in brilliant green moss. Drapes of sinewy lichen hung from tree branches in a sign that the air is clean and unpolluted. Our lead guide used his patang to hack away branches, prickers, and other obstructions on the trail.

Hiking in Bhutan is intense. The land makes you work. The country is 97% mountains, and we are only in the baby Himalayas. When you have mountains, you have streams, brooks, and rivulets flowing, seeping, and angling every which way. This turned out to be significant because the recently-ended monsoon season had lasted longer than anticipated. Day one also tested us with (in the words of my journal):

“…rising, falling, and rising, rising, rising on a steep, windy, rocky, rooty, streamy, slippery, and almost continually muddy path….Natural mud mixed with biological mud without distinction. We slipped, sank, and slurped. We squished, glipped, and glooped. We were climbing sludgy rivers of mud….It was a messy, messy climb.”

I was a wreck after several panting hours and started to make mistakes. This led to a familiar, particularly unnerving sensation of knowing I had no choice but to press on. After uneventfully crossing a slick board plank above a coursing stream just before our final push to our campsite, I bobbled and dropped my phone. Panic and a flash of anger gripped me as I retrieved it from the wet, sticky ground. The moist mud clung along the edges and in between my phone and case, yet miraculously the camera lenses were spared.

The land of Bhutan is alive with spirits, deities, Buddhist imagery. When we pass sacred cairns, our guide Rinzin places a stone on the stack and yells, “hagelo,” seeking protection from the local deity. At over 12,800 feet one afternoon, we took a break from an ankle-turning climb at one such stack of rocks. I sat (collapsed?) on a stone slab catching my breath and gazed out over the Chumey Valley.

The weather changes in an instant at these elevations. As we sat, waves of low clouds rolled up the side of the mountain. The wind increased. The temperature dropped. We had been shedding clothes several minutes ago and now pulled them back on.

Lungdher prayer flags blew in the wind around us. The five colors—blue, white, red, green, and yellow, represent the five elements—space, air, fire, water, and earth. These flags, which must always be walked under and not stepped over, help clear away obstacles. They are ubiquitous, appearing everywhere and in the middle of nowhere.

I marvel at spending time on this spot that so few other than the yak herders seasonally moving their herds and local worshippers ever tread. It is one of the rare times when I can come close to accomplishing what my past Qigong teacher instructed, to empty my mind. It is an experience that offers the opportunity to put myself and the world into perspective. The challenge, however, is recalling these moments and this peacefulness and letting them back in once you have reintegrated into the noisy world of bills, responsibilities, and politics.

Exploring is a privilege. While some such adventures are closer to home and easier to arrange, Bhutan most certainly is not. It takes money, effort, and the ability to travel for an extended period to come here. It justifies sleeping in a cow pasture on a sloping patch of hillside strewn with sharp stalks of chopped crops, surrounded by dozens of cows, calves, and horses and many random mounds of camouflaged dung, of slipping deeper into your sleeping bag as a boar terrorizes the pasture and its inhabitants in the deep, dark of night. Because we are in the Land of the Thunder Dragon.

We hike along a wide, grassy ridge, the land stretching out in all directions. We are heading towards an unseen monastery and the end of the hike. We are not all in tip-top physical shape, but that is ok. The ridge and then the trail narrow, steep hillside pressing in on us.

More Lundgher flags lead us to digress up an escarpment where we can just see a glass box at a high point on a giant stone throne overlooking the monastery and valley far below. This is a sacred statue of the Great Omniscent Kunkhen Lonchen Rabjam. This human form of the Buddha Samantabadra arrived in 1357 to teach his mind treasure teachings to disciples. This pilgrimage site has since been known as Tharpaling, Tibetan for "Land of Liberation."

While circling the rocky base of the statue, it begins to rain and then, shockingly, hail. We duck into a lean-to also sheltering two practitioners, one an American, and a guide. I do not practice any organized religion, though the one that most intrigues me (at least culturally and historically) is Buddhism. I can understand why this woman from California has returned to Bhutan three times to meditate and worship.

Once the weather passed, we saw a red ribbon of young monks hiking up from the monastery. They gathered first on a far circular cliff to pray, then came closer and took a group photo. Finally, they came right towards us on the same path on their way to the stone throne. Some called out to us with questions in English. We bantered back and forth.

As we wondered at the propriety of photographing them, a dozen of them pulled out their cellphones and started photographing us! They suddenly broke formation, ran over to us, and we took selfies all around. They were making a pilgrimage today from their home monastery. As Rinzin is fond of saying, it was karma that we met and shared this additional time together.

The Inner Himalayas were not done with us. The monks returned to the monastery and we began preparing to descend as well. Just then, a steady, cold, soaking rain returned. The gullied, switchback path quickly became one, last harrowing slip and slide. When we had gingerly arrived, I looked up the mountain toward the now speck of the Great Omniscent Kunkhen Lonchen Rabjam. We were drenched. Our boots, pants, and poles were once again coated in a gooey mixture of natural and biological mud. We were fatigued. We were sated. Buoyant in spirit and heart.

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