Day Eleven in Bhutan

Khamsum Yulley Namgyel Chorten temple.

Nailed the shower settings this morning and had a nice shower. As the hot water is so hot here getting the mix with cold water is very sensitive and a bit tricky. Packed up this morning as I am done with my two days at the home stay. Had my usual breakfast of vegetable fried rice with some fried egg on it and chili sauce. Had some masala tea to wash it down. Before we left Tsering showed me the temple room in the house. It was quite large and very ornate. It truly did look like a small temple within the house in a room that was about 15ft square and ornately decorated.

Our first stop for the day was for a hike up to a temple that is int he shape of a Chorten and has three levels we climbed up in. It was about half an hour drive up the other branch of rivers that meet in Punakha. We crosse the river on a suspension bridge and began the short hike up the hill to the temple. I was able to get a good rhythm going for the climb although it was a bit warm and I was sweating. The temple was interesting in the all the figures were in the terrifying and consort form. I am starting to understand some of the Buddhist symbolism after more than a week here. The terrifying form is sort of self-explanatory and symbolizes our weaknesses while the consort form is is where a female figure it’s mounted on front and that symbolizes complete knowledge. We climbed up the steep stairways to all three levels and even up onto a balcony level outside on the top. It was an amazing view down the valley from the top.

I decided that I did want to do the hike down the valley and not just return to the car afterwards. Tsering seemed happy as we set off through the rice fields and down the river. Along the way we stopped to play darts with some kids. The darts are similar to our lawn darts but are a bit heavier and thrown overhand. The distance they are thrown is about 100 ft. and was hard for me to throw the full distance. All my throws ended short. Further down we stopped to watch an archery match in another field. While we were there one of the archers hit the target and his team broke out into a song that can only be described as being something I would hear at a soccer match in Europe. We hiked on down the trail towards the bridge we could see off in the distance. At one point we joined a small road that had very ornate lights along it and a nice picnic BBQ stop next to the river. Tsering mentioned it belonged to a luxury resort nearby and that they ferried guests along this road in little golf carts after the guests walk across the bridge. We soon got back to the car and headed to lunch at our hotel. As we were a bit early I checked in and got settled in the room before lunch.

Lunch today had a bit of a Thai flavor to it as there was a Thai family booked in for lunch. We started with a green papaya salad and then several other dishes with a Thai bent to them. It was good. After lunch we had no plans so I asked if we could drive back to the craft/painting store we had visited by the Divine Madman temple. We drove the 20 minutes to that shop and I ended up buying a painting that I had fancied when I first stopped in. It is a Buddhas face made up of a checkerboard of auspicious symbols. It is an original creation of the artist at that store and they had two of them; a black one and an green one. I was quite torn as to which one to get and then I noticed that the eyes on the green one seemed to pop just a bit more and decided to get that one. I was able to bargain the price down a bit but didn’t feel like being too aggressive on that. The wife of the artist who sold it to me and runs the shop rolled and packed it up in a piece of PVC tubing she cut to the right size. She also gave me a couple postcards and a fridge magnet as well. Of course, with any piece of art framing it becomes another endeavor. I will have to find a good frame for it and put it up somewhere. I will also have to see if I can remember and identify all the auspicious signs that are encoded in the painting. Not sure I will be able to do that once I leave here although Tsering has been trying hard to get me to remember it all.

We got back to the hotel and our driver went off to stay with his parents who live nearby. I spent the afternoon reading and enjoying the view from the balcony of my room. I fiddled with the lights and some of the mystery switches to figure out where to plug chargers in. I also got the radiator to warm up to after some more fiddling with mystery switches. Turns out on that one that there was a small nondescript power switch on the side. As the sun went down the Dzong in the valley below was lit up and glowing. I got a couple pictures of it as it was quite spectacular. At 7pm I went down for dinner which was similar to what I have been eating all along - hearty and filling. Tsering went over the plans for the last couple days and we explained my breakfasts order to the wait staff. There was one other group in the dining hall and apparently some other people are staying in the hotel but not taking dinner or having room service so that rather large dining hall was mostly empty. When I cam back to my room I read for a bit before getting ready for bed. I woke in the middle of the night and had to turn down the radiator as the room as a bit warm. Otherwise I slept well. Now I am waiting for the sun to peak over the ridge to the East as the valley below me wakes up.