On top of the world
Museums, markets, monks and monasteries are just some of the highlights for Annie Groer on a Himalayan odyssey.
Tibet. Nepal. Bhutan. The names rolled off my tongue like a timeless Himalayan mantra. I was itching to go, but I was done with handling tricky logistics. Let someone else arrange flights, guides, hotels, baggage and, most important, assorted visas and travel permits.
Globe-trotting friends suggested Road Scholar, a do-it-all company targeting travellers of babyboomer age and older, which is how I spent 16 days in the capital cities of Lhasa, Kathmandu and Thimphu. There were 11 of us, in our mid-50s to late-70s, with fitness and congeniality levels that ranged from impressive to dubious.
Led by two guides per city, we padded though Buddhist and Hindu holy sites, trying to keep straight each faith’s main precepts and deities. We watched students practice, and thus preserve, the heritage arts of painting, carving, weaving, bootmaking and sculpture.
We traversed museums and markets, and compared the dancing skills of monks, archers, folkloric troupes and ordinary folk. We marvelled at the fluttering prayer flags and spinning prayer wheels everywhere we turned. And we consumed a lot of yak.
Shortly after we landed in Lhasa, elevation 3505 metres, my head began to pound and my heart started to race. Altitude sickness aside, (I stupidly opted not to take the prescription meds in my bag), I was eager to explore the capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.
We’d been warned not to discuss politics during our four days in Lhasa, especially the current Dalai Lama who fled to India in 1959 amid Beijing’s bloody crackdown on Tibet.
Our focus was strictly Buddhism and culture. Before entering Tibet’s holiest site, the 7th-century Jokhang Temple, the devout prayed. Inside, the scent of butter lamps and incense drifted over the crush of pilgrims who inched past dazzling relics, murals and the most sacred Jowo Shakyamuni, a gilded, bejewelled Buddha reportedly made when he was 12.
Up hundreds of switchback stairs was Potala Palace, the soaring cliffside architectural icon that dominates Lhasa’s skyline. Built in 1645 by the fifth Dali Lama, Potala was used by all nine of his successors as a winter palace, citadel and spiritual centre of Tibetan Buddhism.
Today, 20 of the 1000 rooms are open as a museum. Displays include exquisite religious art and raiment, as well as the narrow bed of the absent last occupant. Norbulingka, the richly embellished summer palace, is across town nestled within Tibet’s largest garden.
Yet nothing matched the set-piece drama at the Sera Monastery, where, in a shaded, whitegravelled courtyard, countless pairs of red-robed monks were locked in heated debate.
With voices raised and arms flailing, each standing senior monk argued moral doctrine to the disciple seated at his feet. The protege could only reply after the mentor clapped his hands. We understood not a word, of course, but the emphatic speech and balletic movements were riveting.
Far calmer was Tse Wang Tan Pa, a physician at the Tibetan Traditional Hospital, who explained centuries-old anatomic and botanic thangka paintings depicting ailing patients and natural remedies before he checked our pulses and inspected a few tongues. Get more exercise, he counselled one; eat less sugar, he told another before leaving to see patients.
Our major field trip was a 120-kilometre bus ride from Lhasa to a settlement of semi-nomads, where yak butter tea (an acquired taste), dried cheese (a nice salt jolt) and sweet cakes (tasty) were served in a modest family compound. Handmade tapestries covered doors and windows, and posters hailing Chinese Communist Party leaders leaned against a wall.
Back in Lhasa, a young, costumed troupe intent on keeping its culture alive performed Tibetan opera and traditional dance, including the best two-man cavorting yak we would see.
Two events a half-century apart comprised what little I’d heard about Kathmandu: the late 1960s counterculture invasion fuelled by then-legal hashish and cannabis; and the 2015 earthquake and aftershocks that killed nearly 9000 people, left about 500,000 homeless and destroyed or damaged many important Hindu and Buddhist temples, palaces and pagodas.
‘‘Hippies put Kathmandu on the map in the 60s and 70s,’’ said Sanjay Nepal, our smart, irreverent chief guide and fixer. ‘‘After the earthquake, they sent in their photos of how things used to look, to help with restoration.’’
Today, post-disaster construction is everywhere in the dusty, dirty, traffic-choked city of 1 million (closer to 5 million when counting the surrounding Kathmandu Valley) jammed with endless streams of diesel-belching vehicles).
In the town of Bhaktapur, once a major medieval city-state, and at central Kathmandu’s Durbar Square 12km away, and other heritage sites, great piles of rescued bricks, stone and timbers were being used to rebuild the distinctive, red clay Newari-era structures that were built from the 12th to 15th centuries.
We joined a group of Nepalis inside the largely intact Kumari Ghar near Durbar Square, hoping to see Kathmandu’s Living Goddess. Chosen last year at age 3 by her local clan as the embodiment of divine female energy, she’ll be cloistered in the palace, save for rare outings, until reaching puberty, when another girl-child replaces her. Finally, briefly, she appeared in an upstairs window, her scarlet dress matching her painted lips, her eyes outlined in black kohl.
We then transitioned to the newly departed at the Hindu cremation ghats (stone steps) on the banks of the city’s sacred Bagmati River. Sitting on
the opposite bank, we watched families carefully wash and grieve their shrouded loved ones, soon to be lit afire en route to the next life.
We were, in fact, on the grounds of Nepal’s holiest Hindu temple, Pashupatinath, which is closed to non-Hindus. I zoomed in on the sadhus, ascetics who renounce the world to embark on religious quests. Some travel nearly naked, covered in grey dust or ash. Others frequent tourist-thronged holy sites like this one. Dressed in layers of red, orange and yellow with elaborate face painting, they serenely posed for photos in return for alms.
Our five days in greater Kathmandu were not solely Hindu-centric, given the country’s deep Buddhist influence. On separate days, we saw the city’s two major stupas, enormous half-dome holy edifices built on square bases and topped by pointed spires painted with four sets of Buddha’s all-seeing eyes.
The Boudhanath Stupa, which suffered minor earthquake damage, is surrounded by neighbourhoods filled with Tibetan Buddhist exiles. Pilgrims walked clockwise around its upper and lower levels, spinning prayer wheels along the way. The famed stupa at Swayambhunath, built on a steep hill overlooking the city and Kathmandu Valley, was equally impressive – save for its brazen monkeys.
Happily shifting gears from the sacred to the mercantile, we peered into stalls and shops along central Kathmandu’s narrow back streets.
I was entranced by knife-sharpeners sitting opposite each other on the curb; one pulled both ends of a chain back and forth while the other honed a barber’s scissors on the spinning stone. When finished, they picked up their ingeniously simple rig and moved on.
At construction sites large and small, I lost count of the women hauling bricks and sand in large baskets tied around their heads and balanced on their backs. Load and dump, load and dump, hour after hour.
The loveliest moment came mid-trip at the Dhulikhel Mountain Resort 32km outside Kathmandu. As I walked the grounds with chief gardener Prem Raj Giri, he proudly showed off his flowers and handed me a lemon grass bundle he’d just deftly tied.
‘‘It makes very good tea,’’ he promised. ‘‘Very good tea.’’ It did.
It seemed fitting to end the trifecta in Bhutan, the land of ‘‘Gross National Happiness’’. Flying over the highest peaks of the eastern Himalayas, the plane circled, banked hard and landed between heavily forested Paro Valley cliffs. We stepped onto the country’s only runway to see a landscape carpeted with pine trees, and rice paddies reflecting the clouds.
Since 1972, when then-King Jigme Singye Wangchuck coined the term and declared Gross National Happiness more important than Gross National Product, Bhutan’s leaders have tried to ramp up the joy level of its nearly 800,000 citizens.
Visitors have much to admire: crystalline waters, gorgeous scenery, organic farming, craftbeer breweries, great climbing and hiking, rich handicrafts and traditional architecture that somehow evokes Swiss chalets.
Many homes we saw during our five days were white-painted stone or packed mud, with elaborate wooden windows and cornices. And there was no missing the phalluses – painted on house-fronts or carved into amulets dangling from the eaves – used to repel assorted evils.
The phallus practice began with Lama Drukpa Kunley, dubbed the Divine Madman, who spread Buddhism through Bhutan in the 15th and 16th
centuries using sex, song and raunchy humour, as well as scripture and ritual.
There are obstacles to seeing Bhutan: tightly controlled tourist visas and a US$250 daily spending minimum – it includes hotels, local guides, meals and transport – intended to generate revenue and protect the country’s fragile environment from hordes of budget travellers.
Atop a steep hill outside Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, a wealthy Singaporean recently financed a 51m gilded Buddha and a meditation hall filled with 125,000 miniature Buddhas. On its sprawling plaza, we watched an interfaith chanting extravaganza that included monks in spectacular costumes leaping through a pair of classic religious dances.
Archery, Bhutan’s national sport, offered its own spectacle. Arrows must travel at least 140m to hit a melon-sized target painted on a board about one foot wide and three feet high. Opposing teams face each other at both ends of the range. Even halfdrunk – the days-long matches involve much alcohol – the archers often hit their mark and rarely wound each other.
We gladly toasted the victors with K5 Himalayan Whiskey, a brand that is slang for Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the country’s fifth monarch. Giant posters of His Majesty, Bhutan’s lovely commoner queen and their little prince are everywhere.
Our last day in Thimphu was reserved for the arduous climb to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, built onto a sheer cliff at just above 10,000 feet in elevation. Only four from our group reached the highest lookout point; the rest dropped out along the way. Thanks to a wonky knee, I skipped the hike altogether in favour of a massage at the hotel spa. How better to practice Gross National Happiness? – Washington Post