I wake up with the certainty that I cannot stay for 3 nights in this hotel. My sheet is splotched with the blood of several hefty mosquitoes, and also the town behind the hotel is not a place you would want to walk around in, looking mostly like a modern tenement. I call Mr. Karma of the Bhutan Tourist Agency and plead with him to let me go to Thimpu now. He is very calm and nice and we agree that before leaving I will go see the Bhutan Production Training Center, which trains 20 disadvantaged girls in a one-year course, and leave a present of school material, which I brought from Brazil. In addition I will visit shrine to the irreverent madman, who in the 15th century used outrageous and funny methods to make people pay attention to what he said. He was, what you may call today a ‘cocksman’ and the flying phalluses painted on many house, are there to ask for his protection.
When I see Ugen reach into his ‘gho’ and get out yet another thick green betel leaf, smear with a lime-stone paste, wrap it around part of a betel nut, and pop it into his mouth, I decide to learn a little more about this habit. ‘How many times you do this every day?’ I ask. ‘150 times,’ he says without hesitation. I ask – now miming a bit - whether it makes him feel high or hyper. ‘Yes,’ he says, and smiles with the red liquid brimming around his teeth. I know the routine: after the chewing comes the wet clearing of his throat, and then the sonorous spit, which stains the Bhutan pavements with red marks. Later I ask my Tshering for a better clarification the effect and he says the betel nut warms the body. There is a way of chewing without getting the red teeth, he explains, particularly indicative of lower-class men and women. Apparently you chew only the nut. When I later see Tshering – who has beautiful white teeth - dressed in his cotton ‘gho’ with only a shirt under it in the chilly Thimpu morning, I wonder whether a betel nut is making the big bulge in his cheek.
I meet a Finnish woman at the school where several young women are engaged in designing and producing quality souvenirs, which will be sold in the government outlets throughout the country. Although the supervisors are wearing their own ‘kiras’, the apprentices are in uniforms. The production manager shows me around and explains about their work, I buy a religious banner and leave the girls chewing on Brazilian fruit caramels and holding Bic pens, ‘Thank You!’ Then we are off the to the madman’s shrine, which stands on top of a hill. With several stops in the thin air I manage to get up there – it feels so weird to be standing heaving for breath every now and again, but the peace and the view makes it all worthwhile. It reminds me of visiting a monastery in Elmira, N.Y. many years ago. In the temple I find several wooden penises and outside two ‘chortens’ are topped by ancient stone penises. When we go back down again, we see first one then another bull carefully tethered with easy access to food. This is interesting, because I have noticed that the cows – almost all of them black - seem to have a very good life here. They spend the day out somewhere foraging for food, and when it is dinnertime they make their own way back to their covered enclosures. I even see a black cow resting in the midday sun, lying under a tree and looking at the view.
I am running short of Bhutan money, ngultrum or‘nu’, and suggest we stop in Punakha, which we have to pass through on our way out, to change money at the bank. I am shown into a dark cluttered office with many bunched receipts on the shelves and stacks of ledgers. The clerk seems unsure about the exchange rate, but once he has settled that, he grabs a ledger and writes all my information down, including passport number. Then he gets a second ledger. All of this takes time, and although I am not feeling that well, with my fever and cold, I make a little chit-chat with the other people in the room, mentioning Brazilian soccer players, always a hit. When the clerk grabs the 3rd ledger, I ask incredulously, ‘You really need to fill in another one?’ ‘No,’ he retorts sternly, ‘you are finished; now you go wait there for some time.’ ‘There’ turns out to be a hot waiting room with about 30 locals, who have obviously already waited for some time. This is very overwhelming for me, and I return to say, ‘I can’t do that. I’m sick. I can’t sit and wait with all those people.’ He says, ‘You must! Go!’ I begin to cry (and realize that I really am not that well) and sob, ‘Give me back my money!’ He looks astonished and just hands me my $100 and I am out of there.
It’s a beautiful sunny day and our trip across the pass – where I sometimes wonder how well Ugen is doing with all that betel, as we clear yet another hair-pin curve with centimeters to spare – is graced with the view of the whole snow-capped mountain range, glimmering in the sun. Three and a half hours later I am entering Thimpu, curious about my new abode, and finally checking into a hotel that has wireless internet. I have the usual buffet dinner with many vegetable options and amuse myself by listening to a neighboring table of several Danes on their Easter holiday.
Here are the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/LeavingPunakhaForThimphu#
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