Lunana Part 1: Mud and Snow

Kuzuzampola! is the first word I learned in Dzongka, the Bhutanese language, and it took me about two weeks to fully learn. For some reason, it seemed so simple to me when I first heard the greeting, hello, but the more I tried to say it to locals, the more my vowels got all mixed up and a word that was definitely not pronounced, ku-zu-zampo-la, came out of my mouth. It reminds me of Sudoku for some reason...every time I say that word, I have to focus on what I'm saying or it will come out sodaku or sadako or some other variation of the word. I think that without sharing any more of the language with you, you will understand that Dzongka is unlike any language I have ever experienced before. It is actually extremely related to the Tibetan language with hints of similarities with Japanese. By the end of my stay in Bhutan I had mastered about ten words...which I am incredibly proud of. 

We began our hike in Jakar in the Bumthang province of Bhutan. I tried to find a good map to link, but I couldn't find one that was what I wanted, so you'll have to just search for the places if you are interested. As a side note: Jakar, actually, had a massive fire just a few days ago and much of the town burnt to the ground. Two people died and many more are now homeless. The plan for our trek was to go north from Jakar, then west over the high mountain peaks of Lunana, and then south through the province and town of Gaza back to the road in Punakha...but read on to find out what actually happened!

To begin describing the trekking in Bhutan, you must first develop an understanding for the word mud, which of course, happened to be one of the ten words I know how to say. It is pronounced, "horse". The photos below are my attempt to show you all how much mud there really was on our trail, but pictures hardly do it justice. Let's just say, it was a mud bath! I'm so glad that I brought my gaters!!!! At one point I sunk down to my knees in the mud and needed on of the tall and strong Germans to literally pull me out of it. But it wasn't all horror stories. It was also really fun, (well for me in any case) grabbing on to the strong bamboo along the sides of the trail above the mud and swinging from one to the other to avoid the massive pit of mud below. At times it seemed like the "hot lava" games that I used to play as a kid, trying to avoid the hot lava below and save myself from total destruction. :)

 

 Take especial note of how high the mud comes on the horse. Its belly is covered in it, as well as the bags that it is carrying. Its face is also pretty much covered...oh my!

Ok, so here are my categories of different types of mud that we encountered...

Ice Rink Mud- firm but slippery

Twist your Ankle Mud- hidden rocks are below

Quicksand mud- fall to your knees in it

Slofph mud- the really vocal kind

Wet mud- mud with a layer or two of water above it

Dirty mud- cakes of soft rolling hills of mud

Rocky mud- you have to jump like a frog to get out of this mud

 

Ok, so you get the point. There was mud. There was about three days of an uphill/upmountain climb through the mud before we reached about 4,000 meters. At this point the mossy trees and forest landscape, which for me was strangely reminiscent to hiking in the Olympic Peninsula, turned to rhododendrons and there became forests upon forests of rhododendrons!! All of the green along the far mountains is rhododendron. It would be a true wonder to see in the spring when they are in bloom, if one would be brave enough to make it through the mud in monsoon season.

 

Then, as we climbed and got higher and higher, our pack horses would not continue into the snow. So, we then switched to yaks as our pack animal.Yaks are very stubborn and not very easily controlled or trained. They are much harder to herd and they also go slower.They yak herders had a beautiful Tibetan Mastiff dog that supposedly was supposed to help herd the animals, but it spent all of its time playing with us instead. I also discovered how much larger Yaks are in real life than in the pictures. Although they are scared of people, I was much more scared of them. One night, I left my tent to have a bit of "tea out" time as we called it on our trek and became a little disorientated (the British way of saying disoriented). With my headlamp on, I was trying to get back to my tent when I heard an extremely loud snort behind me. As I turned, I jumped about three feet in the air, completely frightened by the glowing eyes of the now awake yak staring back at me with concentration. Whew, well, I have a very healthy respect for yaks and I continued to try my best to stay out of their way throughout the trip.

We eventually made it to a camp at about 14,000ft and no one had altitude sickness at all! We all felt great, the sun had just peaked out behind the clouds for a few minutes, (at this point, about 4 days in, we have had only a few minutes of cumulative sunshine) and we had just made a fire in a nearby hut to warm ourselves and tell stories as we waited for the yaks to make it to our camp. We ended up staying by the fire for three hours...the yaks as well as our cook were coming much later than expected. We were later to find out why...

 

We wake up in the morning to the scene you see above. Beautiful but cold snow covers our campsite. We go for breakfast in the morning and Ugen, our guide, announces to us that the reason why the yaks were late the day before was because two yaks are missing. And these yaks are carrying food supplies and all of the pots used to cook with, which explains the dinner the night before. This is a big problem and the yak herders have been searching all night long for the yaks, but because of the conditions and the fact that yaks look exactly like rocks when sitting down or not moving, we would have to take a rest day to wait for them. 

The next day, the yaks were found! One of them was injured and that is why they had fallen behind. However, in the time we had been waiting, more and more snow had fallen...a decision was made by our leaders, after calling for a weather update on their satellite phone, that continuing up and over the next pass would put us in extreme danger of not being able to get out on the other side. Apparently, there had been bad weather, maybe even a typhoon in the Philippines that had carried the rain/snow to the Himalayas. In either case, we couldn't continue on our planned trek and needed to turn back and go back down the way we had come. Everyone was disappointed. Everyone was sad. Everyone was dreading the mud. 

Lunana Trek in Bhutan

The picture to the right is from the plane!!
 The mountains here are amazing! I've only seen a few so far, but they are very different than the mountains I am used to seeing. I look at the horizon for The Cascades and Olympics, but I have to raise my head significantly more...almost up to the stars to see these mountains. They are above the clouds they are soooo high. Almost hurts my neck looking up at them. :)



There are 12 of us in total, with one British guide and one Bhutanese guide. We have so far flown into Paro Airport, driven to Thimpu and eaten a lot!!!  I like the other people in the group. 6 are German, 3 are British, and 2 are Canadian. And me. I am also the youngest one, by far. In fact, I think I might be the youngest tourist in Bhutan!!!  Bhutan is VERY quiet, especially when compared to Kathmandu. The houses are all ornately designed and there are hills everywhere. The bridges are my personal favorites so far!!  Haven't seen much animal life, but honestly, even though we've been in the biggest cities, there haven't been that many people either. Only 100,000 people live in Thimpu!  Because I only have 5 minutes, I will try to put photos on instead of blabbering.... love to you all!!

Bhutan is an interesting country filled with things that seem to many westerners like contradictions. The monks walk around talking on their cell phones and driving huge SUVs. The cities are quiet and the pace of life seems slow, but there are many modern conveniences, like pizza delivery, for example. In Thimpu there are large freeways and a great trash removal system, but there are no traffic lights.  In the rural areas there is often no electricity, but because most people have cell phones, they all have solar panels to charge their batteries. 

 The traditional dress of the Bhutanese is seen below. This is a picture of our Bhutanese guide, Ugen, pronounced "Oogan". In may places in Bhutan the Bhutanese are still required to wear the "gho". In the larger cities you will see many more people wearing western dress, and it is not uncommon to mix them both. I saw many converse wearing university students wearing ghos. The women wear skirts called kiras. On the top they wear a silk jacket. I'm sorry, but I didn't take a picture of this, so if you are interested you will have to search for it.

  

The picture below is of the Punaka Dzong. It is a beautiful and very important dzong because it was an ancient fortress that was converted into a monastery. It is where in the winter the monks come to live, signifying to the people of Bhutan that it is now ok for them to wear stockings instead of just socks to add warmth to their outfits. It is not allowed to wear them before the monks move to their winter home in Punaka. They live in Thimpu in the summer.   

Ramechaap Continued...

From left to right: Sita, Gita, Alex, Depak, Cabita, Kesar.

Ok, so I forgot to mention some things that might be interesting to you folks back home...

Food: they drink "milk tea" (tastes like English breakfast) at about 6 or 7am.

Then at about 9 they have breakfast (rice, cooked squash, and maybe some lentils for the rice). They eat this with their hands. Their breakfast is the same as dinner. For lunch they might have the same thing with mashed corn instead of rice or instant noodles. Sometimes for dinner instead of putting lentils on top of the rice, they would put their fresh milk on top. They sit on the floor to eat, on mats made out of straw. They have one "stove" which is a mud stove, with a hole to put fire wood and a hole on the top to put a pot. They also have an area for a freestanding fire which sometimes they would use. The "kitchen" area (the entire downstairs) was usually very smoky. The ceiling looked as if it was painted black from the smoke.  While the fire was burning it was hard for me to be in the room, because the smoke burned my eyes too much. But by the time it had settled down and it was time to eat and I sat down, the smoke didn't bother me. A lot of the words that I learned in Nepali were food related: I am hungry: boke lagu. Pujyo: I don't want any more. Me-toe-cha: I like it/it is good/it is sweet. Below is a picture of the view from my window. Even though it is hard to see, the mountains are beautiful and large below is some corn on the balcony.

Because of the different seasons, rainy and dry, they did not water any of their crops. Being an amateur gardener in Seattle, where it rains plenty, I still have to water frequently...so this was amazing to me. Everything was doing well and flourishing and they never watered once. It never rained while I was there. For the corn, they let it dry on the stalk and then pick it. When it had dried it was easier to take the kernels off. The cows ate the husks. Everyone ate the kernels.  The left over inside bit was used as a rag for cleaning and to fuel the fire. Nothing was wasted.

Every night I saw more stars that I've ever seen before. The milky way was so obvious.  It was truly amazing!

The only ALL SCHOOL picture of the Shree Sham School

Oh, and for all of you who has ever potty trained a child...in rural Nepal...at least in Cabita's case, she just pees her pants wherever she is, and then her mom changes her pants...I'm assuming this goes on for a very long while.

Ramechaap

I was only in Ramechaap for one week, yet I feel like I've lived there an entire lifetime. I know that may sound strange, even verging on cliche, but it is the best way that I can describe how I feel about my time. But, I'll start from the beginning. After a 12 hour bus ride east of Kathmandu I reached Mantili/Mantelli (sp?). Apparently, Matt found some good google-earth photos of the area. I was in a very rural area just outside of Mantili in the region of Ramechaap.  But don't be confused, Ramechaap is also a city as well as a region. After spending the night in Mantili, I hiked up what they call a hill in Nepal (really a mountain) for about two hours. My home stay family was very kind and loving, consisting of a grandmother, Deepak, a grandfather, Kesar, their daughter, Sita, and her son (about 3 months old), and their daughter-in-law, Gita, and her daughter, Cabita (about 2.5 years old). Both Sita and Gita are about 26 years old, and both of their husbands work in India. Gita was the only one who spoke English because she grew up in India and went to a private school, but she only spoke very very basic English. Although you may think that I learned all of the information I've shared so far from Gita, it was actually Deepak that I became the closest to, who through a variety of charades tactics and my extremely basic Nepali, was able to share with me the basics of the family I was spending my time with. Below is a picture of Gita and Cabita, her daughter.

Life in rural Nepal is HARD. The sun sets at 6pm and rises at 6am. There is no electricity. My family went to bed at about 8pm and woke up at about 3am in order to finish all that they needed to to survive. Most of their daily chores revolved around their animals. They had about 7 goats, 2 cows, 4 oxen, and one chicken. They grew a variety of squash and cucumber, guava, corn, greens (I think alfalfa?) and did I mention lots and lots of corn! The two girls did the harvesting of greens and corn, which is a back-breaking activity and is done in the heat of the day. Keep in mind that Gita is about 6/7 months pregnant and has a 2 year old child to look after while doing this activity. Sita has to go up and down from the fields to the house to breast feed her child throughout the day. Deepak, the grandmother wakes up at 3 and grinds the corn kernels from the day before into a mush that is cooked like rice. Keep in mind that I tried this and could probably only last for 10 minutes max--she does this from about 3am to about 5am. Kesar, the grandfather, has an infected foot that is swollen, yet he travels up and down the "hill" every day to go to the market. Every moment of every day was spent doing something useful. Since the only thing that I had the skills to do was de-kernel the corn, I did this most of the time that I had free. They used the kernels for just about everything, so they needed lots of it. My thumbs are now have calluses from my "work".  Most of the time though, I felt like one more baby added to their family. One more person that needed looking after and that did not understand anything and needed help. I don't often feel this way, so it was a very unique experience for me.

While living with them, I always felt cared for and appreciated. We mostly bonded over the universal humor of toddlers and babies. Most of the Nepali I learned while living there was mostly the language they used with their kids, probably due to the repetition. So, I learned some really useful phrases like, bubu china, which means, I have no milk, which Deepak would say over and over while laughing at the baby when his mom was in the field.

School started at 10am and went until 4pm, although often the children would come to my house starting at about 8am and just sit next to me until we began talking in English. I taught 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade English. I was amazed at the difference between the English skills of 3rd graders (basically none) and the 5th graders that could not only answer questions about their lives, but could also ask some complicated questions of their own. The 4 other teachers there, including the principal, knew very basic English, about the same as the 5th graders. Below is a photo of my last day at the school, which happened to coincide with the first day of a holiday, so the school had a dance party.  Yes, you read that correctly, we started school early to have a school-wide dance party, complete with a drum and singing. Below you will see the prinicpal on the left and one of the teachers on the right taking their turn dancing to the music.

The most difficult think for me to witness was their discipline style. For the first 45 minutes of the day, the students are supposed to be in their classrooms, but without any teacher at all. The teachers sit and talk in the office. Of course, without supervision, there were often disagreements and fights that broke out. And by fights, I mean, full on punching in the face, street fighting.  Now, I've never seen much violence in my life at all, so to see 4th graders giving each other black eyes and pummelling each other to such an extent really rattled my core. The teachers, when they did see the fighting, would separate the children, would hit them, and then would send them on their way. In both the school and at home, I saw a lot of hitting of children. I also saw playful threatening with sticks, and actual threatening with sticks. Now you may be reading this and thinking how horrific this is...I think I would at least. But, it is important to know that the students DO know where the line is between the teasing and the actual threatening, and what is expected of them. Now, I'm not at all advocating for violence, but there were a few times that it did seem to work. Let me explain. Cabita, 2 years old, has access to all of the families animals all the time and sometimes cannot be watched by an adult. As a curious 2 year old, pulling on the tail of an ox, could kill her. The family did the best they could to baby-proof the area, but there was still one section that she could enter from. When she got close to that section and did not respond by their verbal commands, they would hit her. Now, I understand that if it works to hurt her a little to avoid being hurt a lot, that it may be worth it...they live in a very different environment with very different resources, and it seemed that they really were doing the best they could to live. Now, the school was different. I never saw that hitting once had a positive effect, not once. It was horrible to watch. I did what I could to care for the children and show them how not hitting is a better alternative. It was funny how without ever having verbalized my distaste for the violence, that the kids picked it up quickly and soon whenever anyone was fighting they would say, "no fighting" and look at me. Now, I don't think that I made a lasting difference as I was only there for one week, but hopefully I did something to help.

                                                                                               This photo is of my very first day at the school when they welcomed me by having each student come up and give me some flower petals and put some pink on my forehead, which as you can see, did not only end up only on my forehead. Also, found out later that it does not come off with water and was thoroughly pink-skinned for several days after, much to the delight of my homestay family.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bhutan. I may or may not have internet access until the 3rd of November when I come back. I hope everyone who reads this blog is doing really well!