Mountains, eagles, rainbows, wild rivers, mountainsickness
….and butterflies
Dear all
We are back in Thimphu,
5 days ago we, Tandin, Sherub, Tho
and me rented a car and a driver to join Dr Saamdu and Pema in Bumthang. central Bhutan, future place of the GNH Center.
It is not a good travelling season as it is monsoon and there are many landslides, and roadblocks, but we managed
alright, travelling over 3 passes over 3000M altitude on winding breathtakingly beautiful roads….(those of you who plan to come to Bhutan be sure to bring some Dramamine, against travelling sickness….these roads are sooooo winding and they just
never stop winding, never a straight road anywhere!)
Arriving in Bumthang valley I thought I was in Austria…what a lovely, charming soft valley…so green, so tender…charming Bhutanese houses painted and decorated
in the most delightful style (many huge penises painted on house walls…I am looking forward to hear my grandsons comments on this…!) surrounded by the most majestic mountain ranges,
We met Dr Saamduu and his assistant Pema
in Jakar and from there we rode on the most adventurous road into the most remote valley, actually the last inhabited valley, Chokor valley.
I thought we would not make it! The road was partly totally covered under muddy landslides. It
took us over one hour for 20km! Luckily we had 4 wheel drive cars and good drivers!
And in this valley we stayed in the LAST house…the road stops there! A little bit further there is only an army camp as we are near the chinese
boarder…from there on only mountains, mountains, mountains, eagles, bears, tigers, lepards….
We stayed in a “homestay” at 2900m with a most charming Bhutanese family, I’ll write about them later as they
made quite an impression on me!
A wild river separated our home stay from the land of the GNH site. There is no bridge yet to cross this river, so Dr Saamduu with the help of local people built a sort of box on thick ropes in which you
could pull yourself over the river…hard to explain, I’ll put a photo on my blog
The river was wild and beautiful, and I was really impressed and a bit scared when we crossed one by one on this very adventurous transportation
over the roaring waters…
The GNH sit is quite magnificent…but we also realised that there is still a lot to be done before any activity can really start there,
Nature is still all powerful there, the
trees, plants, rivers, stones still live there quite undisturbed and untouched!
Some landscaping has started but no building yet,
Dr Saamdu and Pema showed us around, explained the future site, we meditated there together
and walked the already built “labyrinth” and stone garden,
When going back in the adventurous transportation over the river, I had to pull really hard to get to the other shore…once on the other side…I lost consciousness
for about 15 minutes…I started to speak a bit funny and confused and only once back in my bed did I “come back”…I guess it was the effort, the strong emotions and the altitude (3000m) that brought about this short mountain sickness…I
have never felt such a state before…but luckily I did not last long and the next days even higher up I was totally fine…
Yes, we saw many eagles, I stopped counting after my 7th eagle, many rainbows, two rainbows
in a circle around the sun…wonderful orange, gold red, brown buckwheat fields, sunflowers up at 2800m…It is a magic and blessed country indeed
More in my next blog