Weekly Travel Feature

The Great Escape Bhutan

Prepared by Harold Stephens

Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International

Last week I introduced readers to “The Great Escape,” an enticing travel opportunity sponsored by Royal Orchid Holidays. Aware that there are travellers who want to go to those places that spell romance, many also want to go there in comfort and even luxury. The Great Escape was created to offer both, exotic places and luxury, But to succeed, the Great Escape had to offer variety, and that Thai Airways did, having 72 destinations around the world to choose from. Last week I outlined more than a dozen escapes; this week I want to focus on one, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan
Why Bhutan? It would be impossible to be more exotic than Bhutan. Until not so long ago, Bhutan was closed to the world. The government decided it needed a second gateway and turned to Bangkok for help. Thai Airways was called upon to send a team to Bhutan to investigate the possibility of opening the doors to tourism—aviation experts, an experienced hotelier and a couple of journalists to report on what they had found. At the time, there were less than 2000 visitors a year entering the country. Travel writer Robin Dannhorn and I were the two journalists invited to go.
Here is the report that I filed on that trip. I realize, after ten years, much has changed; nevertheless, these were my impressions:
The pilot of the 16-seat Dornier 228 that flies from Calcutta to Bhutan has to search the high Himalayan valleys for an opening in the clouds to land at Paro, the only airfield in Bhutan. Sometime, if he can't find an opening, he has to return to Calcutta.
The pilot dips the starboard wing to the right and then to the left, searching for that opening. He can't seem to find it.
   Everyone is tense. As a last attempt, he climbs to 16,000 feet, where the air is thin and there, below, a break in the clouds appears and a valley beneath it. The plane drops through the clouds and lands at Paro.
   A minibus, with driver and guide awaits passengers at the terminal. It's a two-hour drive from the landing field at Paro to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. If you are one of these passengers, you are certain to be mystified by the whole experience. You may find it hard to believe you are in Bhutan, the most remote kingdom in the world.
Everything, of course, will be strange, and for good reason, Bhutan is an isolated mountain kingdom that has been independent for all its recorded history, more than two thousand years. And only in 1974 did the monarchy open its doors to the outside world. Less than a hundred tourists arrived that year.
The excitement begins the moment you step from the plane at Paro. You will feel a vast emptiness. High surrounding mountains seem to seal you in. A monastery with white walls is perched on a cliff. James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon is likely to come to mind. When he wrote about his mythical Shangri-La, the name he created, did he have Bhutan in mind?
Two things will stand out, aside from the mountains, as you drive from Paro to Thimpu, the capital. They are the local dress and the architecture.
Everyone, even the mechanics who work on refuelling the plane, wears the national dress. The men's costumes, called khos, are full-sleeved, long robes which reach below the knees, and are worn with a belt. Men don't wear trousers, only high stockings—Scottish plaid when they want to be stylish—and shoes. Women wear kiras, full length dresses, tied with a belt at the waist and held up by a pair of broaches at the shoulder. It's possible to tell from which area of the country the women come by the design of their skirts.
The national dress is appealing to foreign eyes. You don't see local people in shabby, unsightly Western garments that have turned to rags. Even farmers in the field look neat.

The architecture is unlike any you have seen before. Houses are large, square buildings, made of tamped mud, stone, wood and clay. The outer walls are white-washed with raised roofs above the main structure. The roofs are shingled and are held in place by large stones evenly spaced apart. The stones prevent the shingles from being carried off by the strong winds that may sweep through the valleys.

The valley widens and Thimpu appears ahead. It reminds one of Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, a one-street town built on the slope of a hill (there is little flat land in Bhutan), except this place has more drama than Cameron. Cameron doesn't have a royal palace built in the style of a vast monastery where a young king and his family reside.

There are several hotels in the capital but the favourite for visitors is the Motithan Hotel which overlooks Thimpu.

The hotel *sprawls with wings and corridors and has spacious bedrooms. Everything is neat and clean. The style of decor, characteristically Bhutanese, includes splashes of colour with hand-painted ceilings, eaves and beams all decorated with minuscule designs. There is an abundance of hanging banners and drapes of all sorts, fashioned from brightly coloured cloth. Framed black-and-white photographs from a past era hang on the walls.

The real thrill of any visit to Bhutan is a motor trip into the countryside, so let’s head to the northeast across the backbone of Bhutan, to places like Punakha, Tongsa and Bumthang.

The road is one curve after another, and at times it's treacherous, with sheer drops of hundreds of metres into deep canyons below. Or could it be thousands? It appears that way when you look out the window, especially when another vehicle approaches and your driver has to give way, for the road is only one-way without guard rails. You will find it best not to look.

An army of Indian labourers work endlessly to keep the potholes filled and the landslides cleared. They do a remarkable job.

You cross a high pass where great Mongol hordes once marched through this east-west passage on the very first Silk Road. The pass is marked with hundreds of tall poles with white prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. These flags, seen on many distant hills, give the countryside an eerie animation.

Sheep, cows and even yaks feed along the roads. Their herders make no effort to shoo them away. At times you drive through the clouds. Villages are scattered, where old folk gaze and kids wave as you pass. The mountain sides are gardens of flowers; some trees in blossom look like exploding fireworks. Magnolias and rhododendrons predominate.

You arrive at Punakha, the old capital, and visit the monastery, and that afternoon you reach Tongsa. The Tongsa Monastery, dating back to 1543, is impressive, built on the bank of the Mangde River. The monasteries, or dzong as they are called, are generally closed to visitors, but they have been opening their doors to foreign tourists. The head monk at Tongsa will give permission for brief visits.

Here at the Tongsa Monastery, cloistered behind thick walls, 700 monks live out their lives. Unlike in Thailand, Bhutanese monks are in the monkhood for life. Their robes are thick hand-woven cloth, and dark-red. Monks do not shave their heads as they do in Burma and Thailand; they wear their hair clipped short. The monks will be as baffled by you as you are by them.

The Tongsa Monastery is as impressive inside as it is from the outside. You can feel its great age as you walk across worn stone courtyards and step upon wide plank floors. Trankar-like paintings, some quite ancient, adorn the inner walls. Embroidered drapes hang from lofty ceilings and altars with heavy silver trays and bowls are flanked by enormous ivory tusks, cracked and yellow with age. Pillars are square timbers and painted red. Huge wooden doors swing not on hinges but on pins. Chambers are dark and ladders that connect the levels are steep and menacing to climb. Everywhere are large brass bells and gongs. In small hidden side rooms, monks chant, doing their pujas, and in the stone courtyards blackbirds and crows disrupt the silence with the heavy flapping of their wings and their mocking cries.

You can spend the night in an inn overlooking the valley.

The road to Bumthang is even more thrilling and nerve shattering. Bumthang is about as far as you can travel, back and forth, in a week’s time. That night in Bumthang, as you sit around a log fire at the bar in your inn, you may consider having a drink from one of the bottles behind the bar, all locally made, until you examine the names closer—Pure Malt Whiskey, Bhutan Mist, Magpie Apple Brandy Khambu Spirits, Dragon XXX Rhum; Jachung Brandy. Maybe you won’t have that drink after all.

Eventually, after a week and a dozen monasteries and an estimated 12,000 curves, you arrive back in Thimpu. The town that first appeared so comically small when you arrived now looms as big as Paris does to the farm boy seeing it for the first time. It's a welcoming sight.

This time you check into the Druk Hotel in the centre of town. This is your chance to visit the market, watch the Bhutanese at their national sport of archery, and have coffee and pastry at the Swiss Bakery.

Your guide will tell you about a cliff-side monastery, the one seen in all the photos, a few hours up the Paro Valley. It’s called Taktsang, meaning Tiger's Nest, and you must travel by horseback, Mongolian pony, to reach it. It is built around a cave and clings dizzily to a sheer precipice. You realize you can’t see all of Bhutan in a week.

Back at the airport at Paro, the weather is clear, and you hear the plane before you can see it. It lands and you bid good-byes to the friends you have made. You climb aboard, roar down the runway, swerve to the left to miss a mountain ridge and turn south.

It's been quick, a short seven days, and as you look below you watch the sharp peaks of Bhutan turn into rolling hills and then into the flat plains of India. You look back and the snow-capped peaks of Bhutan vanish into the horizon. You wonder if it happened at all. Had you really discovered James Hilton's Shangri-La?

TRAVEL NOTE:
Bhutan is not a large country, less that 47,000 sq. km with fewer than 1.3 million inhabitants. The government is a constitutional monarchy and the religion is Mahayana Buddhism. Due to weather conditions, tourist travel is restricted to certain months. The peak periods are March, April and May and October and November. During the other months it's either wet or the country is snowbound.

Bhutan’s scenery is overpowering, not only the towering lofty mountain ranges but the wide valleys that open up like a Cinerama screen as you cross over from one pass to another. Each valley differs from the other.

The fortress-like monasteries, of course, are a main attraction. However, many are closed for fear visitors may disturb the monks. Special permission is needed to enter some. To visit one is truly an unforgettable experience.

There's good shopping for local crafts, and for the adventurer the choices are river rafting, camping and canoeing, trout fishing and trekking to the borders of Tibet.
But perhaps, above everything else, the real appeal of Bhutan is that here is a land seen by so few outsiders. It is still, mainly, a closed land, access to it limited to only a few.

The Bhutanese government is deeply concerned about effects of tourism. They are worried that it might bring the ills of the outside world with it. They want selected tourists under a carefully regulated programme. To preserve their lifestyle, they insist upon no tipping, and there are signs everywhere warning about the hazards of smoking, a foreign influence. To preserve their tranquillity, other signs remind motorists not to blow their horns.
Next week we visit another Great Escape, and that is Bali. What makes Bali so intriguing?
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens, I feel in love with Thailand during a five-day R&R from Vietnam 30 years ago. I understand Thailand has greatly changed since then. I’d like to bring my wife and introduce her to some Thai culture and Thai ways. Is that still possible in our modern world? Roger Loomis, Vermont, USA,
A. In deed, it is possible. Royal Orchid Holidays has just the thing for you called Experience Thai Life (ROHE2O). You travel by boat and van to your destination and spend a night in a Thai home, an actual wooden houses built on stilts. You live the way the Thais do. Your meals are typical Thai, prepared by your Thai hosts. In the early morning hours you watch or participate with the villagers as they offer food to the monks, who arrive there by rowing boats. You couldn’t get closer to Thai ways and culture. –HS