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After experiencing terrible food in the hotels
I had my guide take me
to a restaurant frequented by locals to compare.
On the left is chicken chilli and the
right is pork chilli |
Well there is something that the government
of Bhutan hasn’t yet cottoned on to…..trips for fatties. As the man next to me
said when looking at this morning’s buffet “I feed my animals better.” A
culinary trip Bhutan certainly isn’t. Breakfast consists of scrambled eggs with
chilli, sliced processed sausage, roasted banana and toast……every day. Lunch
consists of thinly sliced beef and potatoes, sliced mixed vegetables, chillis
with cheese, red rice and broccoli……every day. Dinner consists of one inch
chopped chicken with bones swimming in a thin clear soup, chillis with cheese,
red rice, chunks of some meat in a thin soup or deep fried, potatoes and
broccoli in chilli….every day.
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| This is the restaurants beef chilli and cheese |
With most of us on 8 to 10 day tours, its quite
common to find the buffet overlooked by tourists more content to talk and catch
up on their notes than eat the food.
So….thats 1kg off due to eating less and a
further 1kg off as everything has chillies in it to rev up your metabolism. I convinced my guide to
take me to a restaurant where Bhutanese eat …you can decide for yourself from the photos!!
And then there’s the nightly noises which
will keep the fatties pacing the floor most of the night and then help them
leap out of bed in the morning. Most of these hotels are newly built and sound
proofing isn’t something that has arrived in Bhutan, nor double glazing it
appears. Add that the positioning of the hotels is splat in the middle of town
or along the airstrip and the timing of going to bed and getting up becomes a
carefully worked out objective for the day.
Nothing like knowing the flight timetables so that you can be up to
witness the thundering of glass in your room and the roar of an Airbus 319 landing
a few hundred metres away, or having that extra glass of red wine because the
local dancers in the hotel over the road wont finish until 9pm, or knowing that
the kitchen shift arrives at 6am so you can forgo a wake up call for the sounds
of frying pans being banged together. Put another kilo loss down for all of that.
And then there’s Tigers Nest Monastery. A
perfect half day exercise for the fatties, already bleary eyed from the night’s
revelry over the road and the kitchen crew wake up call, hallucinating from a
lack of food in their system they square up at the bottom of the mountain to
listen to their guide explain that it is a minimum of 2 hours to visit…but overlooks
to mention that that is the one way, “best time” done by a horse, or the fact
that its 900m (that’s 2000 feet) pretty much straight up a mountain…at just a
smidge over 3 kilometres (that’s 10,240 feet), above sea level. 5 kilos about
to melt away.
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In the mountain top hump right in the middle of the photo, one third down from the top of the hump you can faintly see a white patch about 3mm by 1mm....thats the monastery
|
Making my way through the few hawkers, I
gazed at the horses with their pretty saddlecloths and the knowledge that for a
meager $10 it could take me up the mountain (sadly they don’t carry passengers
down due to the slope) but my guide said that it was better to go by foot.
Thinking that was because of some special sites to see on the way, or
optimistically thinking that the horses went on a different track so I didn’t
have to negotiate horse shit while I clambered ever upwards over the rocks and
mud, I set off.
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| Prayer wheels dot the path |
Half an hour later, after setting a good
clip I thought, I was overtaken by a horse. With a 20 stone fattie on board.
Given that the horses here are more polo pony size and, like us tourists,
probably exist on a diet of chilli cheese and broccoli, you couldn’t help but
feel sorry for the horse. Consequently I decided to keep the nag company and
one hour later both horse, two tour guides, one fattie, and I arrived at the
cafeteria marking the half way point.
Half way point that is for fit fuckers like me, and end of the line for
unfit fatties like her.
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| Almost half way point |
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| You can just spy the monastery in the distance |
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| Paro Valley |
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| prayer wheel at the cafeteria |
She was destined to join the rest of the
members from Weight Watchers Bhutan (I joke!), the pensioners with hip
replacements, and the faded footballers with their buggered knees, to gaze over
their tea cups at the monastery a tantalizing 400 or metres up the cliff but a
further one hour vertical hike.
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| View from the cafeteria |
And it was here that my guide told me that
the reason why walking was better was that it was meant to be a spiritual journey
of penance. If you went up by horse then you’d lose the spiritual element, and
if you then walked down you’d gain the spiritual element but the sum total
would be neutral. Goody. Double penance points for me I thought even if I felt
like throwing up from exhaustion.
Saying goodbye to Mary from Tennessee and
“Horse” we hit the path again, renewed by our sweet milky tea, only to find
that our legs had filled with lactic acid with the short stop so it was agony
for the first 15 minutes as we tried to get back into our stride. My guide
seemed to be flagging at the pace I was setting, but lured by the sights and
smells of fresh horse shit in front of me, I upped the pace to catch up with
what I knew must be shortly around the next bend…….Horse 2. Sadly, it was about
five punishing bends later at full pace that I came across Horse 2 and Horse 3
and a couple from London astride their bony brown backs.
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The cruel deception...so close..and now starts the Thigh Master
Work out |
Ever a fount of useful facts my guide then
told me that walking behind the horses is very good for altitude sickness as
the smell of the horse shit reduces the symptoms. What the….??!! I then had to explain the term “the horse
owner was pulling your leg” to my guide. Finally we hit what must be the end of
the line because the horsies slowed down. Ahh sweet deception to those fatties
that had managed up this far as it was merely the end of where the horses could
go. Seems that everyone must do some form of penance and there it was in front
of me. I could reach out my hand and it was parallel to the entrance of the
monastery but, in between me and it was a gorge and a waterfall to master and,
as a result of the building of a tiny bridge where the gorge met, rather than a
massive bridge higher up, I still had a punishing 400 vertical steps straight
down followed by 300 vertical steps straight up. Sweet Buddha!!
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| The little bridge crossing |
I was almost prostrate by the time I
dragged my legs up the last step. Suitable I guess given that this was one of
the most religious sites in Bhutan. Guru Rinpoche introduced Buddhism to
Bhutan, transformed his favourite consort into a tigress and rode her around the
Indian subcontinent landing at thirteen caves, of which this monastery was
built around one. After meditating for 3 years he popped out in eight
reincarnated forms, all of which I was going to see shortly at the Thimphu
Tsechu festival.
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| Prayer flags criss cross across the ravine |
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| 60m waterfall |
Aside from its benefits to fatties, the
monastery was rather spiritual. The roar of the 60 metre high waterfall, the
whisper from the pine trees, the flutter of the prayer flags on the surrounding
hills, the bells from the prayer wheels, all contributed to a scene of serenity
and contemplation. Discretely positioned above the monastery were houses of
meditation for the monks, some of whom stay up for three years at a time,
following Guru Rinpoche’s lead.
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| Dont fiddle the religious objects! |
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Clay and ashes....
memories of the dead made into little painted cakes |
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| The meditation huts for the monks |
As for me, it was time to amble back down
the slope and have a Tiger beer in celebration.
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| Up close.....worth it! |
