17

The Dragon Kingdom

I thought I’d seen some stark transformations on this trip. Any journey will throw up variety, and travelling on foot through the Himalayas had already surprised me in just how different one day could be from the next. Within a matter of hours, I’d moved from lush tropical rainforest to barren empty plateaus. Crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan, I’d changed from a landscape of windswept valleys populated by nomads who lived in yurts, to a settled, peaceful and warm paradise within the space of just a few miles. The borders had often astounded me with their power of separation; not just the landscapes, but also the diversity of people and culture. But none of this could have prepared me for the difference I encountered walking into Bhutan.

The Indian town of Jaigaon which sits on the Torsha river is representative of the other municipalities in West Bengal whose names I forget. It was crowded, filthy and noisy. Lepers sat in doorways missing fingers and noses; conmen and mystics plagued the streets and cows vied for supremacy of the roads with battered rickshaws, overladen lorries and minibuses packed with so many people it always surprised me that they could move. Nobody bothered to clean the streets because the monkeys and the cows would do it for them, and pigs waded around in the open sewers, delighted at the general lack of hygiene. Everyone, it seemed, thought it perfectly acceptable to spit vile globules of phlegm onto the pavement, or on someone else’s feet, or to piss in the gutters in broad daylight. The whole town stank of shit.

‘I’ve always wanted to go to Bhutan,’ Binod said excitedly, as we walked through a small gateway manned by a smiling immigration official who didn’t even ask to see our passports. Near by, cars and lorries were directed to pass through a large archway that was coloured with pictures of dragons and tigers, ornately illuminated with fairy lights. It was like entering a theme park.

On the far side we emerged into Phuentsholing and it was another world. There were no beggars or lepers. No car horns–everything was eerily quiet. Signs everywhere indicated that smoking cigarettes was illegal. So was ‘spitting on the walls’–clearly a polite nod to the Indian truck drivers. Almost all the men and women sported the traditional national dress and all the buildings looked identical–large fortress-like houses with painted beams and decorative wooden frontages.

‘It’s so clean,’ said Binod, looking around in awe at the perfectly manicured hedgerows that surrounded little parks and temples. Women wandered about in long silk dresses and there were fancy restaurants and coffee shops and not a shanty in sight. All the cars were new too; it seemed we’d left the subcontinent behind.

But there was no time to linger. According to the strict schedule we’d been given by the Bhutanese government, we had less than a month to get to Gangkhar Puensum–our final objective on the Tibetan border–the highest mountain in Bhutan, and arguably the eastern anchor of the Himalayas.

We left the town behind and climbed up into the hot, steamy forest that had, until recently, been an impenetrable barrier to invasion from the south. In fact, the first road hadn’t been built until 1964, leaving Bhutan in perfect isolation from the rest of the world. Progress had been slow–the first Western tourists didn’t come until 1974–and even then there had been just twenty of them at the personal invitation of the King. Since the opening up, the monarchy had tried to keep Bhutan’s traditional culture alive. Measures included the regulation on buildings, which had to be constructed in a traditional style, limitations on tourists to only let rich visitors into the country, and a restriction on TV and internet that was only lifted in the new millennium.

‘You mean to say they didn’t have any TV until 2003?’ said Binod, bewildered.

‘That’s right,’ said Jamyang, who had appeared in the entranceway to the hotel.

‘He looks like a government agent,’ Binod murmured, nudging me at the sight of the man.

An enormous, hulking figure, Jamyang Darji was to be our Bhutanese guide and fixer while we were here. He looked perpetually angry and had the face of someone generally displeased with life. I’d been warned that we wouldn’t have freedom of movement in our last country; part of the deal on being allowed to walk through Bhutan was that we’d have a minder who would look after our itinerary.

Jamyang was in his late thirties, of large muscular stature and wearing a black and red gho–traditional robes hitched up by a hidden belt. His legs were bare except for long socks and faintly ridiculous black, pointy shoes. He looked like a cross-dressing gangster.

‘Does he know we are on a walking expedition?’ whispered Binod in my ear, clearly upset at having his role as guide usurped by the stranger.

‘I hope so,’ I replied, genuinely concerned that this man was out to hinder our journey. But I also knew we didn’t have a choice in the matter.

‘Look, you’re still my guide but we have to have this guy by law. Plus he can translate,’ I said to Binod as Jamyang ushered us away.

Jamyang drove as we climbed the hundred miles to Thimpu, which took about four days. It was a relentless and beastly walk. I was glad to leave the jungle behind, although I have to say it was impressive. Endless muggy undulations of green with no break in the canopy. Unlike in India, I didn’t see a single monkey. That was a good sign–there was no need for symbiosis here–they lived undisturbed in the jungle, along with tigers, leopards and probably a whole host of unknown species. The human population of Bhutan was altogether less than 800,000 people, meaning that for the most part, the country, though small, was largely unexplored wilderness and man’s impact seemed restrained.

The road wound up in a countless number of uphill switchbacks that doubled, trebled and quadrupled the distance we thought it would be. Only occasionally we’d wander past tiny villages where families happily picnicked in the gardens amid a sea of prayer flags that fluttered in the wind. Like the people in their ghos, the houses were uniform in their identity and architecture. I was amazed by the solid, impregnable-looking structures that looked like modern survivors from the Middle Ages. They were beautiful in their own way and yet at the same time their uniformity felt oppressive, almost communist.

‘It’s the law,’ reminded Jamyang when he stopped and waited. ‘Nobody can build in any other style in Bhutan. In the villages, three storeys maximum, in Thimpu, six. We don’t have skyscrapers, huts or flats. Even the factories must look like this. Everybody lives in these houses, and we like it.’

With no emotion he got back in the car. ‘I’ll see you in Thimpu.’ With that he drove off ahead.

Binod shook his head. ‘I thought the Bhutanese were happy people? He doesn’t seem too happy.’

As we climbed above two thousand metres, the landscape started to change. The trees morphed from a blanket jungle of tropical green to a more subdued stumpy covering of pines and reddening shrubs that gave the scene a more highland, autumnal feel. There were scraggy cliffs and brown patchwork meadows. As we trailed alongside the roaring Wang Chu river, I was struggling to put my finger on what the transformed scenery reminded me of.

‘It looks like pictures I’ve seen of Scotland,’ said Binod.

He was right, although more accurately it was as if the Scottish Highlands had been projected onto the features of the Grand Canyon, perhaps with a Mediterranean sky thrown in for good measure. It was majestic, tough and terrifying all at once. The gorges and gullies were some of the most magnificent I’d ever seen and the pine forests seemed to cling on against the laws of gravity to mile-high cliffs. The amorphous panorama looked anything but Asian. Until of course we’d stumble across a clutter of multicoloured prayer flags strung between the deodars and firs, and then the sight of a Buddhist stupa, glistening gold in the bright Himalayan air would bring us crashing back to reality.

I walked ahead in peaceful solitude, enjoying the calm, relaxed feel of such an unknown, mysterious country. I imagined I was one of the first explorers to come this way, even though I wasn’t. It was easy to imagine in a landscape like this. Binod, however, seemed to trail further and further behind. Every few miles I’d have to stop and wait for him.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, ‘just my feet are painful.’

But the way he’d crick his neck I knew it was more than that. I thought perhaps he was still suffering with his back after the crash. Either way he was getting slower by the day and I knew we had to get to the end soon, otherwise I didn’t think he’d be able to finish or, more serious, he’d make his injuries worse. I tried to walk slowly from then on in but I was ever conscious of our deadline. There was no choice–we simply had to get to the northern border within the timeframe.

It was with relief that we reached Thimpu. It was a place I’d imagined and dreamed of since starting this journey, and it signified the last real stop before our final push. Thimpu is a bizarre town. Despite being a capital city, it’s barely worthy of the title of city; with a population of fewer than 80,000, you can fit more people in Wembley football stadium. It must be one of the smallest cities in the world and it doesn’t have a single traffic light. There’s only one road in and out, and I counted the number of cars that drove past on one hand. It was peculiarly quiet, except for the howling of a few street dogs. It felt sterile–almost like a sanitised version of a Swiss Alpine resort. People moved about shiftily, looking around as if they knew that their happiness lay elsewhere–in the mountains and villages, and that life in the miniature metropolis was an unnatural sin.

I’d only planned on having one day of rest in the town but it turned out that our visit came at an opportune time.

‘It’s the King’s birthday tomorrow,’ Jamyang announced, smiling for the first time since we’d met. I had noticed the image of the revered monarch everywhere we’d been in Bhutan. Literally every single house and shop in the town had a Bhutanese flag draped from the wooden frontage, and the majority had a photograph of the King or his father adorning a balcony.

‘Which is the King?’ asked Binod.

‘They’re both the King,’ Jamyang replied, shrugging away the seeming ridiculousness of the question.

‘You can’t have two kings,’ I said.

‘This is Bhutan, we do things differently here.’

Jamyang tried to explain.

‘That’s K5.’ He pointed to the image of a younger man with long sideburns and a film star’s good looks. He too was wearing a gho, but a yellow one, reserved for a king. ‘He’s the current King, the fifth in the Royal Line. And that–’ he pointed to the older man, ‘that is K4, the father of the King. Who is also the King.’

‘This is complicated,’ said Binod.

‘He retired in 2006. He got to the age of fifty-one and decided that he’d had enough so he gave the Kingship to his son.’

Jamyang was warming to his theme.

‘Now we have a constitutional monarchy, like yours,’ he said, nodding at me. ‘The King, K5, is a progressive man and believes in development. That’s why we have TV and internet now, and roads too. He thinks it will make us more in line with the rest of the world. It will add to our Gross National Happiness.’

‘Your what?’ asked Binod, even more perplexed.

Jamyang smiled sympathetically.

‘Gross National Happiness. We have a ministry of Happiness here in Bhutan. We measure happiness as more important than Gross National Product and wealth. What’s the point in money or development if it makes people miserable?’

Jamyang was beginning to grow on me. Despite his constant state of apparent misery he was actually a thoughtful, amusing and, he assured me, happy man. And it transpired he was neither a gangster nor a government agent, just a guide eager to get into the mountains and away from the town.

‘Most tourists who come to Bhutan are French and sixty. They’re the only ones who can afford it, and they just want to go and take photographs of the dzongs and monasteries. Not that many foreigners come here to go trekking, and almost none to where you want to go.’

I found out that in fact high-altitude mountaineering was illegal in Bhutan.

‘It’s because we don’t have any rescue infrastructure here.’ explained Jamyang. ‘We only have one helicopter, and nobody has any experience digging white folks out of snow. It would be embarrassing to have a foreigner die in our mountains, so we ban it.

‘But it’s easier to blame the gods,’ he continued. ‘We tell everyone that it’s bad luck and against Buddhist religion to scale peaks, and that shuts people up. Look what’s happened in poor Binod’s country.’ He patted Binod gently on the shoulder.

‘All those foreigners dying all the time on Everest, and the poor Sherpas dying with them. It’s enough to make everyone sick, but the foreigners keep coming. You Westerners, we have no idea why you want to climb mountains. It’s just stupid, don’t you think? You just want to conquer things, plant flags and all that. We don’t have that tradition. Except prayer flags, we stick those everywhere.’ He grimaced.

‘Well, we don’t want to climb any mountains,’ I said. ‘We just want to walk to the bottom of Gangkhar Puensum.’ I’d chosen the barely known peak as the end of my journey because it seemed an appropriate finish.

‘We consider it the holiest mountain in Bhutan,’ Jamyang said. ‘It’s the highest unclimbed peak in the world, and the highest in the Eastern Himalayas. Beyond it the mountains diminish into the Tibetan plateau. It’s all downhill from there. In any case winter will be coming soon and you can’t go any further.’

Binod smiled at this. I knew he’d be glad to finish. He’d missed Diwali with his family and I could tell he was ready for home. He wasn’t the only one. The chill and frosty mornings reminded me that it was almost December. I’d been on this journey since June–that was almost six months, and to make matters worse I’d just received a message from Ash inviting me to a Christmas party in London.

But first there were celebrations afoot in Thimpu to attend to.

‘Well, since we are here, let’s go and see the King’s birthday.’ If I was expecting a regal palace event I was sorely mistaken. Jamyang led the way through the deserted streets to the National Stadium where a crowd of gho-wearing locals jostled to try and get in through the doors. Jamyang pushed us to the front and presented our passes to a security guard who let us in.

We entered the stadium and it seemed the entire population of the city had beaten us to it. It was packed full of people, all in national dress, all smiling, all happy, all watching as traditional dancers lolloped around the field for the entertainment of the Royal Family. The royals were mingling with the people, wandering between the rows upon rows of orange-robed monks and bowing servants. It was like being at a medieval joust, except rather less fun.

‘Do you think they’re really all that happy?’ asked Binod. ‘It’s quite, well, you know, boring, isn’t it.’ He said it quietly so that Jamyang didn’t hear.

‘I suppose that they are happy,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s all they know.’

I’d been thinking a lot about why this place laid claim to being home to the happiest people in the world. Bhutan had been virtually isolated from the outside world for so long that the people’s happiness seemed to lie in their isolation and cultural identity. My own theory on the happiness of the Bhutanese was to do with building regulations. As odd as it sounds, I reckon that is what keeps Bhutan the way it is, and therefore unique. Since the government legislates that all buildings must conform to traditional style and structure there simply are no shanties–and therefore no way for people to leave home to live somewhere cheaper. They are forced by necessity to stay at home (unless they can afford to build a new traditional style home themselves, in which case they are probably married and wealthy). It’s this forced community spirit that ensures social cohesion and guarantees nobody really deviates from the norm. That–I think, as controlling and limiting as it sounds–is what makes the Bhutanese happy. Like the Dalai Lama said, it’s having too many choices that makes you unhappy.

‘The first tenet of happiness,’ pronounced Jamyang, with total conviction, ‘is good governance.’ People want to be told what to do, he said. ‘Nobody in Bhutan is interested in democracy. We love our King–we want him to be in control. Why do you in the West assume that people want choice? Why do you place such high value in freedom, when more often than not, it results in unhappiness?’

I looked at Binod, thinking that he’d disagree, given that he was so against the caste system in Nepal that had subjugated him so much and left him and his family in eternal poverty. It was only through change, and freedom of thought, that he’d been able to better himself and earn a decent crust. But he nodded his head in agreement.

‘So is everyone in Bhutan happy?’ I asked. It seemed an absurd proposition.

‘No of course not, but we are happier in general. I think it’s a combination of our cultural identity, family ties and Buddhist traditions of letting go. We have no hatred or jealousy here.’

I’d heard that in Bhutan women often had more than one husband. In fact sometimes a woman would marry two brothers to increase her family’s productivity.

‘It’s true, but men aren’t jealous. It’s that simple. What’s the point? Life is too short. Take the King–I mean K5. He is married to a beautiful woman.’

‘Yes I’ve seen her photo everywhere–she’s stunning,’ I agreed.

‘Not as stunning as his ex-girlfriend,’ Jamyang sighed. ‘He wanted to marry his wife’s friend. She was even more beautiful.’

‘What happened? Why didn’t he marry her then?’

‘Their star signs didn’t match.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. We take astrology very seriously in Bhutan. He went to see a Lama and the Lama said no, you can’t marry this one, it won’t work, find another. So the King found another. Luckily she was hot as well.’

‘And is he happy?’

‘Yes, of course he’s happy. He told the girlfriend to marry his brother so that he could see her, and now everybody is happy. It’s all about living in the moment and accepting what you have. Dealing with it and not stressing too much. No point in worrying about the past or future. The past is gone and can’t be changed. The future isn’t here yet and will only change as a result of the present, so we must live in the present.’ Suddenly the cross-dressing gangster had become a wise old preacher.

We left Thimpu and walked east over the black mountains towards Trongsa. Jamyang’s words were ringing in my ears. Despite my thoughts of home I was determined to enjoy the last moments of my journey. Yet it was hard going as the weather closed in and my body ached with fatigue. It’s always the same at the end of a long walk–your subconscious mind knows the end is near and lets your body start to fall apart. Like when an athlete ‘hits the wall’; you just have to keep on going.

Binod was still struggling too; he’d lag half a mile behind and much of the time we’d walk in silence. I just tried to take in the beauty of the place. At Trongsa we passed an enormous dzong or fortress, which reminded me of a massive German castle, yet inside it was full of dancing monks dressed in orange robes. Outside, men in ghos played archery–firing arrows a hundred and twenty metres from a fancy compound bow, while their comrades cheered and jeered and danced and sang all day long. Giant weeping willows filled the valley; the wooden houses were all covered in festive lights and in the surrounding hills an explosion of red and yellow leaves made the scene almost perfect.

But not quite.

I felt that everything was not as it seemed. There was an underlying oddness, an unfamiliarity and strangeness all around. At Chimmi Langkar, On the corners of most of the houses, enormous penises were painted on the walls, many with wings, others with dreadful fangs. Some even had wild, evil-looking eyes, staring out from the head.

‘What is this place?’ asked Binod who was supressing a nervous laugh.

‘We worship dicks,’ answered Jamyang with a straight face. ‘All these phalluses keep away evil spirits.’

He continued, quite seriously.

‘There was an old saint who came and preached in Bhutan in the fifteenth century. He was a real womaniser who drank, smoked and “subdued” a lot of demonesses with his magical thunderbolt.’ He winked. ‘They called him the divine madman.’

I smiled at Binod.

‘Now I know why the Bhutanese are so happy,’ said Binod.

Behind the façade of modernity and development and cleanliness there seemed to be a mystical, almost Shamanist undercurrent to life in Bhutan. In spite of the image of a happy, pure nation there were hints at a darker, more superstitious existence.

‘Myth and history are one here,’ said Jamyang. ‘At the Tiger’s Nest monastery you should never question the fact that Guru Rinpoche arrived on a flying tiger, or that dragons exist.’

We reached Bumthang district on Friday the thirteenth of November. It was an ominous sign.

‘Let’s ask these boys for directions,’ suggested Binod as we wandered through a small village called Hurjeh. Some school children were sitting in a bus shelter at the side of the road, all of them smiling and wearing miniature ghos.

‘Hello, sir!’ they said together in perfect English. ‘Where are you going?’

‘We are going to Chamkar,’ said Binod.

The children were very polite. ‘It’s late, you should hurry, sir.’

They were right, it would be dark soon and we still had a few miles left to go, and when the sun went down it would become unbearably cold and the dogs would be on the prowl. We’d seen plenty of big black mastiffs. In the daytime they were chained up and even though they snarled and barked when you walked past, if you kept a good distance they were harmless enough. But at night they were sometimes let loose so that they could patrol the lanes and guard the village cattle from the wolves that inhabited the forests.

‘There’s bears as well,’ warned the eldest boy, a smiling kid of thirteen.

‘And Mirgula,’ put in another, by the looks of it his brother or cousin. ‘Tell him about the Mirgula.’

‘What’s a Mirgula?’ I asked.

Binod laughed.

‘What?’

‘It’s their name for the Mogoi.’

‘What’s a Mogoi?’

‘A yeti!’

‘Surely they don’t believe in that?’ I asked him.

‘Yeti!’ they screamed in chorus, all nodding enthusiastically.

‘They live in the bamboo forest. My grandfather saw one once.’

One of the boys jumped up and put his hands above his head. ‘They’re this big. Like a man but with more hair.’

The oldest boy pushed his brother. ‘No, they’re like a gorilla, but white.’ He flashed his teeth.

The smallest boy also jumped up and began to walk with his feet outturned.

‘They walk like this; their feet point backwards.’

The middle boy mooed like a cow. ‘This is their language.’

They were all deadly serious.

‘But it’s okay, you’re big.’ The eldest pointed at me. ‘They don’t eat people, they just kidnap boys and make them slaves. They make them cook and clean their holes in the jungle. But it’s okay,’ he repeated, ‘they’re very slow. They can’t run, so if you see one, run very fast and you will be okay.’

The middle boy shook his head. ‘Do you have a weapon?’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Not even a gun?’

‘No,’ I assured him.

‘Take a stick just in case. They’re very dangerous.’

‘We shouldn’t kill them,’ said the eldest slapping the younger one with a disapproving whack. ‘They’re endangered.’

I thanked the boys for their sage advice and promised them I wouldn’t kill the yeti if I saw him, and that I’d run very fast to which they all nodded their approval. We made quickly for Chamkar, the last town on the journey.

Jamyang was waiting for us at the Tamshing monastery, a small but ancient temple where shaven-headed monks sat under the shade of withered beams chanting the Buddhist mantras.

‘Before we leave for the mountain there is something we must do,’ announced our imposing guide.

He paused.

‘Well you have met his Holiness the Dalai Lama, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he give you any blessing?’

‘Not really, just some travel advice,’ I said.

‘Then we must consult with the Lama here. Tshetrin Tharchen is a very wise man. He will tell your fortune and give his advice for the end of your journey.’

We entered the temple and walked upstairs along the creaky wooden floors. The doors were low and we had to bend down to pass through the threshold into a dark little room where an old man in an orange robe waddled around. He wore glasses and had bare arms and looked not unlike the Dalai Lama himself.

‘Sit, sit,’ he said hurriedly.

I looked around. On the walls were terrifying war masks with grotesque faces. Spears, ancient rifles and battle shields dangled from leather thongs. Old books and manuscripts gathered dust in a cabinet and the smoke from an incense stick hung like mist in the stolid shadows of the chamber. It reminded me of a wizard’s den.

Jamyang sat down next to Tshetrin, the old monk, on a cushion, and Binod and I took our places by the window on his left hand. Outside the dirty glass pane was a cat meowing loudly, wanting to be let in. I watched a fat raven, as black as the night, hop among the rafters near by. Someone, somewhere blew on a horn, which rumbled deeply, echoing through the mountains.

‘We are here to receive your blessing,’ said Jamyang with his head bowed. The monk shuffled in his robes.

‘We are on a journey. This man has been walking along the Himalayas and is almost at the end of his walk. We have just a short distance left to go–to the base camp of Gangkhar Puensum and we would like to know how we will fare.’

The monk began to chant and rock his head. His eyes were closed and he repeated the mantra ‘OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM’ over and over. In one hand he twirled a prayer wheel and in the other he rang a bell rhythmically, beautifully. It went on for fifteen minutes and I felt myself drifting into a meditative trance, almost against my will. I could suddenly see the appeal of being a monk, sitting, chanting and listening to the repetitive music of the bell.

The cat meowed again and the spell was disturbed. The monk opened his eyes but ignored the cat, as one of his servants placed a small box in his hands. It contained a set of dice. The monk held them to his forehead, whispering or praying something to himself, before throwing them back into the box. He stared intently at the results. Shaking his head, he withdrew the dice, put them to his forehead, prayed and rolled again. This time he frowned, as did Jamyang. Neither of them looked up. The process was repeated twice more, and two more times the monk shook his head.

The silence was broken by the monk. He muttered a few words to Jamyang.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘What does he predict?’ I remembered visiting the Aghori baba in Haridwar. Not again, I thought.

‘That’s all we get. Four rolls,’ said Jamyang shaking his head.

‘Each time the dice were rolled they came up with the same bad news. ‘He says don’t go up the mountain otherwise something bad will happen to one of you.’

‘Who?’ I said. ‘What will happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jamyang. ‘He just says one of us. He’s done all he can to ward off misfortune, but still the prediction is the same. It we go up then one of us will face misfortune and not all of us will get to the end.’