Our weekend trip over the pass to Punakha and Wangdi Phodrang means an hour of winding mountain road up out of Thimphu, including passing through a police checkpoint, to the Dochu La Pass. This is the only route over the north/south range of moutains that cuts Bhutan from its border with India up to its border with Tibet. At 3140 m (around 10,000) Dochu La is clouded in much of the time, including today, and is festooned with prayer flags. There used to be a single large chorten there, but in honor of the king's victory over the terrorists in Southern Bhutan, the queens have commissioned and built 108 chortens on a rounded hill around which all the traffic must flow. We walk around them a number of times and meet the friendly stray dogs padding around at the pass. Then we begin a 2-hour decent on very twisty, narrow & wet roads. Thompson is prone to carsickness (but, oddly, only in Bhutan) and we tell him not to read in the car, but he ignores us and so (natural consequences) even on the ride up to the pass begins to feel ill. On the way down he turns a faint shade of spring green and sits grimly by the van window, making small adjustments in how open the window is. We have to stop a couple of times to let him walk around. Eventually the Dramamine takes effect and we figure out that he doesn't get sick sitting in the front (less bouncing around). Meanwhile the road is dropping fast through semi-tropical rain forest, with primordial ferns and some banana palms, with considerable moisture and some roadside waterfalls. While walking around outside the car, Passang cautions us against leeches.
We reach a cluster of small towns. Don has told Passang we might like to follow the footpath to Chimi Lakhang, an imposing lakhang way out in the open surrounded by green rice fields and small villages. It doesn't look that far away from the road, but it has been raining a lot and once we get out of the car and literally slide off the path because of the 2-inch deep mud, the walk doesn't look like such a simple matter. As we slowly pick our way across the small paths that separate rice paddies, our feet making smucking sounds, the rain picks up a little, and the lakhang, by some illusion of space, seems to be getting farther and farther away. When we finally reach one tiny village downhill, drenched and with muddy cuffs and shoes, we don't seem to be one whit closer to Chimi. We stand for a while under someone's large eaves, watching villagers walk by with large jugs to fill them with water from the one tap in the center of the town. It rains harder. We abandon the plan of going all the way up to the lakhang, and focus all our energies on getting back up to the van through the mud and rice fields... slow, messy, wet progress through the bright green and the rain. Chimi is known for being a pilgrimage site for women whoh are having trouble getting pregnant. I guess this is an unmistakable sign that we are done having children if we can't even get close to the temple at all.
Passang drives us to our hotel, the Zangtho Pelri near Punakha. "Zangtho Pelri" means the heavenly abode of Guru Rinpoche, and it is set high on a hill overlooking the Punakha Chu, very quiet with only birdsong in the lush green trees and the faraway sound of the river... none of the ambient sounds of our home in Thimphu (dogs, construction noise, trucks, Hindi music). We have two rooms in a cottage set on the cliff with nothing below but cowpaths and rice paddies. After we clean up and change into national dress, we go down into the town for some lunch (momos, red rice, dal, some kind of curry, chowmein + sodas = what is becoming a very typical lunch here for us) in a diner with deep piles of dead flies in the corners of the windowscreens. Then we spend the afternoon at Punakha Dzong - I have already written about that - and then head back to hotel. The kids have heard that there is a swimming pool. If so, it would be one of the few in the entire country. There is supposedly an indoor pool in Thimphu, but I have not seen it yet, and swimming is not a common pastime here - the rivers are too swift and the lakes too few, and the ground not level enough hardly anywhere for such a thing to be built. But Zangtho Pelri has one, and the staff even tells us it is open, but I'm glad we didn't change into swimsuits before looking at it - murky and olive green, with insects roiling up from the depths. Only Jacob is disappointed we can't swim in the pool, and cries about it, but Don tells him he'd have to have antibiotics if he went in.
That night, we went to bed in clean sheets thinking how nice it will be to sleep where it's quiet. But you know, it only takes one large noisy fly and two mosquitoes hovering near one's ear but just out of swatting reach to prevent a good night's sleep, and Halle was in bed with us and kept kneeing me in the kidneys from behind - so maybe Guru Rinpoche rests in peace in Zangtho Pelri, but unfortunately not us.
The only other guest at the hotel was a Dasho, the equivalent of a knight in the government, a very trim and gracious man, with his entourage of drivers and guards. We told the children that Dashos are permitted to carry swords and use them with impunity (which is true), and amazingly this worked to keep the noise level down in the kids room; they feared being beheaded without further discussion if the Dasho's sleep were disturbed. We met him in the morning and he seemed rather mild, but we assured the kids that you never know about these things and it's best to be considerate.
