With the Thunder Dragon I

a regular sight in bhutan

Bhutan has been described as many things, from the scenic to the authoritarian. It has been made out to be the last “Shangri-La” in different representations by a cross-section of writers, commentators and film-makers. Those who are too taken by its natural beauty and splendour find it an “unspoiled kingdom” while others lament its lack of openness and freedoms given the overarching presence of Buddhist religious life. But this bind, we find, is a rather troubling one. Bhutan for us, replete in its beauty is also a land with its own complexities which cannot be simply wished away or be fossilised in a romantic antique frame. Let’s take one example of the diversity and difference that gets hidden in the romanticised narratives of Bhutan - Its languages and dialects are aplenty although the average version you’ll get is that all Bhutanese people speak Dzongkha. Languages like Lakha, Brokkat, Bumthangkha, Olekha, Chalikha, Tshangla and Brokpakhe and many others often get overlooked as Dzongkha is promoted as the national language.

The example of language is just one way in which we absorbed the overwhelming experience that is Bhutan. Our travels through Bhutan, from the Valley of Ha in the west all the way to its South Eastern borders, brought us face to face with many of the different realities in Bhutan. The valley of Ha is mostly a flat terrain irrigated by the Ha Chu River and it is here that one first realises that the broad assortment of deities in Bhutanese rural life stretches much beyond the formal and more visible Buddhist ones. One of the most famous deities in western Bhutan is the Jichu Drake, the resident deity of the massive mountain with the same name. A hike to Chele La will give anyone a spectacular view of the Jhomolhari and the Jichu Drake. Like most other great natural formations like rivers, aged trees and overgrown medicinal plants, mountains are often treated as local deities. In some cases, these deities and their singular mythical tales have been woven into the narrative of the rise in Buddhism in Tibet but in most others, they remain distinct in their presence within the stories of local village communities and sometimes even the whole valley.

prayer flags on the roadside

The rise of Buddhism in Bhutan in the last millennium is also a story of the gradual overpowering of local deities. Almost every other mythic tale that we encountered around Guru Rinpoche, the young monk said to have schooled at Nalanda and learnt his scriptures in Tibet and then brought Buddhism to Bhutan, is a tale of vanquishing undesirable local deities. Over time, Padmasambahava, as Rinpoche is ritually known, acquired a status that is second only to the Buddha in Bhutanese formal religion. Myths of different monks subduing diverse local deities who were always either too frivolous or unpredictable or unreliable lasted much beyond the Rinpoche stories themselves, as we carefully discovered, and are now part of the official narratives of Bhutan’s history. What was most heartening was that these stories of vanquished local deities did not entirely erase their presence. In terms of how fondly they are held in local cultures, we found many to be quite alive and present just like the formal Buddhist deities, although they are not as popular.

It is in Ha that we witnessed our first local archery tournament. The sport that most men play in Bhutan is also a catalyst for great social interaction. Two teams of thirteen players each battle over a strip of four hundred and sixty feet with each archer getting two shots per round. The teams had their own families and friends and other locals supporting them. The groups of supporters and fans often tried to sledge the other team and pass hilarious comments on missed shots and faulty postures of the members of the opposing team. Intermittent shows of local dances and the regular call of hawkers selling different snacks to the spectators entertained us thoroughly, a lovely distraction from the noise that accompanies cricket matches back home. Some of the dances are also ritualistic ones which are performed on other occasions for different spirits and deities.

an archery match in progress

To help you get a hang of the broad nomenclature, here is our small reference list – ‘Lu’ are mostly aquatic deities residing in the abundant water bodies in Bhutan, ‘Nyen’ are the deities of trees, ‘Tsen’ are the spirits of rocks and mountains and ‘Za’, the deities of different stars and planets. Together, they form a cosmology of faith that is quite complex. One small example of this complexity is the free flowing sexual humour associated with these archery tournaments. The wild and contagious laughter from both men and women that followed someone yelling at their favourite archer in the tournament - “Get that shot right or you will have many lonely nights in bed” – told us that all the religious symbolism around us didn’t quite create an atmosphere of formal tight-lipped reverence. The spirit of the ‘popular’ was well and alive in this case.

We hiked from there to the Taksang Dzong, otherwise called the Tiger’s nest, redone completely after it was burnt, most recently, in a fire in 1997. The hike up the hill slowly unfolds along the way, the spectacular beauty of this dzong, its dusty yellow and white facade shimmering atop a 3000 feet high cliff. Dzongs are like fortresses which also perform important religious functions. Each valley has its own dzong which is the central seat of most annual events. Festivals in Bhutan are placed around a yearly calendar, which depends on the date which the highest authority of monks in the Kagyu order, patronised by the state, decide to announce as the first date of the year. The other dominant order is the Nyingma order, which allows laypersons to perform rituals and is not as strongly hierarchical as the Kagyu Buddhists.

A jeep ride to the famous Punakha Dzong, standing atop the confluence of the scenic rivers Po Chu and Mo Chu, was our next plan. The oldest dzong in the country, this trip brought us face to face with the seat of Buddhist tradition in Bhutan for the last five centuries. The six storey tower dominates the skyline and within it holds massive golden statues of the Buddha, the Guru Rinpoche and the Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the ruler who built the Punakha dzong and assigned it as the winter capital of Bhutan. Its original sixteenth century structure has been modified over the years, the most notable one being the two cantilever bridges across the rivers leading to the Dzong. From the doors of the dzong, we walked barefoot to the edge of the waters and sat there for what seemed like hours. Time didn’t seem to catch up with the tide of the rivers at Punakha.

We left Punakha for the Trongsa dzong, another extremely intricate structure, knowing that we had just made half our way from the west of Bhutan towards its eastern borders. And as the green and blue became a speeding haze of colour against our car windows, Bhutan seemed much more familiar than when we had first set foot in Ha.