Falling Off the Map

by Pico Iyer

  A little later, the driver jerked to a halt, and one of the passengers emerged from the back, eager to conquer the precipitous curves. Muttering an impromptu prayer above the steering wheel, he turned the key, pressed the clutch, and then, eyes wild, mouth bloodied by betel nut, lurched towards the chasm. Gears jammed, the jeep swerved madly between mountain face and precipice, and I recalled that the Bhutan Motor Vehicles Act Parts I and Il was one volume that had never—I had checked—been taken out of the Thimphu Public Library. With a terrible convulsion, the jeep screeched to a halt, and the acolyte driver, muttering some term of hatred for the jeep in particular and the automotive industry in general, returned to the darkness in back. A man handed out some paan to calm all our nerves, and then we were off again, wheezing past prayer wheels painted with skulls, hills still radiant with gold and copper and green, wisp-bearded old men who seemed to be walking across the whole country. THANKS, said signs as we left little settlements, and SEE YOU AGAIN warned the mudguards on jeeps.

  And so it was almost every time I moved in Bhutan, where trips are decidedly more a matter of traveling than arriving. If I was lucky, public transportation meant my own size-nine feet, laboring up mountains while shiny acronymed Land Cruisers whooshed past (though sometimes, even in the tourist center of Paro, on the only main road in the country, in the middle of a weekday afternoon, I walked for more than an hour without seeing a single vehicle). If I was unlucky, it meant a jeep, and the stench of gasoline, the suffocating dust, the endless stops and starts, the shriek of horns round every curve, the ritual emptying of noses on the floor. If I was doomed, it meant a local bus—known to foreigners as the “Vomit Express” (though “Express,” of course, was something of an embellishment).

  Simtokha Dzong, when I arrived, was in a state of expectant calm. Like most Bhutanese dzongs, and like the medieval monasteries they so strongly resemble, it had a school attached, and now, in December, exams were drawing near. Everywhere I looked—perched in trees, scattered across the hillside, wandering up and down the bending road—students in tartan tunics were huddled over books or memorizing some ancient scripture. It was a noble sight, the brown-and-red-cloaked boys on the rich golden hills, in the shadow of a whitewashed citadel and a sky of guiltless blue. The students seemed a serious lot, and theirs, I learned, was a singularly tough regimen. Every day they had nine periods—in thirteen different subjects—as well as one and a half hours of prayer at dawn, one and a half more at night. Like all male Bhutanese, they were not allowed to cover their knees—even in winter—until the head of the monk body had done so. True to their country’s highly traditional ways, they were also being taught classical dance, ancient methods of carving wooden blocks, and, especially, Bhutan’s native Dzongkha language. As soon as the exams were over, they would do two weeks of “social”—cleaning the monastery and helping out around town—and then they would take two- or three-day bus trips back to their distant homes for the only vacation of the year. “Bhutan people say, ‘Keep your cows at home, send your children to school,’ ” explained one of the students. “If the cows go far away, they will forget you. But if the children go, they will understand.”

  There was only one thirty-minute period for sports every day, he went on, and these consisted not of “football, volleyball, these kinds of modern sports, but old pastimes—like how to throw a dart.” Just as he was saying this, I noticed some boys careening up and down the hillside in pursuit of dogs. A few mischievous characters were sheltering puppies in their cloaks, others were carrying them along by their ears. The whole mad chase was attended by much hilarity and yelping. I suspected that this might be one of the traditional sports. “Oh, no,” cried my new friend. “These people”—he pointed to a Royal Government of Bhutan truck drawn up outside the monastery gates—“these people are coming to collect the dogs. You see, these dogs do many dirties here.” “How many live in the dzong?” “One hundred.” “One hundred?!” “Just now, they will be taken to the Indian border and let out there.” “The Indian border! That’s seven hours away!” “Oh, yes, very far.”

  Thus Bhutan could claim another export, and the most over-populated country in the world would find itself with one hundred more mouths to feed.

  As soon as the commotion had subsided, and the truck pulled away with its yapping captives, I decided to make my first attempt on the dzong. When I approached, the young boys huddled over their books near the entrance assured me solemnly that I would need a permit. But a permit was nothing more than a nod of acquiescence from a rheumy-eyed caretaker who was sitting nearby in dirty robes. Within seconds, I was following him and a young monk through the entrance, our bare feet cold on the sunless stone. The old monk opened a huge dungeon door, and we found ourselves inside an enormous prayer hall. The place was dark, very dark, and empty. A golden Buddha sat before us, scarcely visible in the gloom. We walked in farther, and the darkness began to envelop us. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear—only the dark voices of the monks outside.

  Coming out once more into the prayer hall, the caretaker led us through the chamber to another unlit antechamber, shiny elephant tusks placed like giant cashews at the feet of Avalokitesvara, Buddha, and Tara. Old scriptures were stacked in bundles on the floor. On every wall, black gods in necklaces of skulls were copulating with milk-white, red-tongued demons. The old monk began to chant, and suddenly we were in a different place; the silences were charged.

  Then we came out again, past a locked door guarded by a skull-wreathed deity, and up to a dragon-headed shrine. The young monk slapped down a one-ngultrum note. The sage handed him three dice. Closing his eyes tightly, the young monk pressed the dice to his forehead, then shook and shook them in his hand. Then he deposited them on the altar. Once more, and again once more. The old monk considered the throws, said something brief, and then we were back out in the sun.

  In the days that followed, I traveled to all the famous dzongs in Bhutan: to Paro Dzong, entered by crossing a medieval bridge and slipping in through a side gate; to ruined Drukgyel Dzong, the very picture of some aged European castle, all its windows gutted, and cluttered now with crows; to Punakha Dzong, the winter home of the principal monk body, a gay festival of bird song, of trees flowering as red as the monks’ robes laid out along the riverbank outside—an Oxbridge college surprised in midsummer, so it seemed, a mild and light-filled place of tidy gardens and neat bridges, its green-and-golden-and-yellow-fringed prayer wheel shining in the sun; and to Ta Dzong, the whitewashed, spiral-staircased watchtower that is home now to the National Museum, and so to a piece of moon rock donated by Richard Nixon, and to mounted heads of a blue sheep, a golden cat, a black panther, and a golden takin, all leading to its crowning glory: an entire floor given over to a chapel and the country’s stamps (though it must be said that Bhutan’s famous stampmakers may be running out of subjects worthy of their art—the once-lofty celebrations of the United Nations, the Apollo space missions, and the paintings of da Vinci and van Gogh have now been replaced by commemorations of Princess Diana’s babies, the two hundredth anniversary of manned balloon flights, and Donald Duck).

  The central dzong in Bhutan, however—and the last word in Bhutanese vigilance—is the massive fortification at Tongsa, set in the very heart of the country, bestraddling the path that was once the country’s only road and looking out over valley after valley after receding valley, all the way to the distant snowcaps. Tongsa Dzong is less a building than a whole town unto itself, courtyard leading to quadrangle, quadrangle to passageway, passageway to courtyard, stretching on and on and on, incorporating every last detail of daily life. Burgundy robes were laid out on the sun-baked stone to dry. Monks polished incense holders on the whitened terraces. Gaylongs, or young novices, went back and forth, hoisting cumbersome buckets of water.

  Having penetrated the inner courtyard of this formidable place, I sat down to collect my thoughts. As soon as I took out my notebook, however, I noticed a little monk edging closer to take a l
ook. And then another. Then two more. Then a gaggle of others, and then still more, until I was all but buried in a circle of red, scarcely able to go on writing because of the twenty-four tiny monks crowded around me. Feeling obliged somehow to provide a little entertainment, I set about drawing a raccoon. “Mouse.” “Pussycat.” “Bear,” the monks cried out, rather undiplomatically, I thought. Somewhat piqued, I changed the game and began writing out the letters of the alphabet. A chorus rose up around me: “… B, C, D, E …” At this point, controversy broke out as to the correct order of the letters to come: “V, Q, W, E, G …”

  The linguistic issue was still unresolved when someone spotted my Instamatic, presumably the only camera in central Bhutan. Asking if he could borrow it, the little monk set to clicking away at all his friends. They clicked away at him. Everyone clicked away at me. “Address, address,” cried someone, and a tiny gaylong began copying out in my pad: “Gangchuk Monk Body, Tongsa, Bhutan.” “Address, address,” came the cry again, followed by more requests for my address, my name, for more raccoons. Never had my drawings been so popular! Then there came a high-pitched cry from an upper window: “Mr. Pico, Mr. Pico.” I looked up, to see five impish faces peering down at me from the archways above. Two full pans of water came crashing down beside us.

  Then, as if in atonement, or at least in repayment for the raccoons, the little monks led me into a central prayer hall, plopped themselves down above their texts, and began bawling out their chants, beaming at me as they did so and waving.

  As soon as this traditional sport concluded, an eleven-year-old urchin who had learned English from a man called Cyrus presented himself as my companion for the day. Up and down the hills he led me, pointing out the cry of a deer, showing me a picture of Padmasambhava, the Indian mystic who had brought Buddhism to Bhutan in the eighth century, explaining the town’s greatest attraction. “Nineteen eighty-seven Japanese lights! Last year, water was only up in there. Just now Japanese bring light there.” “So now light no problem?” “No. One month now, no light.” The gist of this confusing exchange became clear only when I returned to the huge and empty hilltop guesthouse that was my home in Tongsa. By five-thirty, it was pitch black. For the next fourteen hours, I was alone in the unlit and un-heated old building, able at last to see why my Survey of Bhutan had matter-of-factly announced, “Black magic is a part of Bhutanese life.”

  The greatest of all Bhutanese monuments however—its Potala Palace or Mont-Saint-Michel—is Taktsang, the temple perched improbably on the side of a three-thousand-foot sheer cliff, wedged into the side of the mountain like some bird of prey’s high aerie (and known as the “Tiger’s Nest” because it is believed that Padmasambhava flew to this impossible site on the back of a tiger). Taktsang is, without doubt, one of the most remarkable places in the world, extraordinary enough to make Machu Picchu seem workaday. And its sense of miracle is intensified by the steep and arduous climb that every pilgrim must make to get there. I made the trip alone, one cloudy winter morning, accompanied only, now and then, by a toothless old man, almost as slow as I was, and his two ponies. The tinkle of their bells led me through woods, over streams, across creaking wooden bridges, through packs of snuffling wild boars. The climb seemed endless. Then at last, after ninety minutes, we reached an open space, a hilltop crisscrossed with dove-white prayer flags. There, ahead of us, was Taktsang. But as I climbed, it disappeared again, and then came back, and vanished once more, round every turn, until at last, an hour later, the “Temple of Heaven” announced itself with a clear-singing prayer wheel and the steady hiss of a waterfall. Arriving, near breathless, at the top, I felt like a conquering hero—until I recalled that some devout Bhutanese make the whole ascent on their stomachs, one full-length prostration following another for three weeks or more.

  At the entrance, a few young monks looked out at me with the incredulity I felt I deserved. Then they led me into a compact prayer hall, its window open to the valley below. Rainbowed streamers fluttered from the ceiling. The sunlight flooded onto scalding thankas of wild-eyed demons and tongue-joined copulants. Orange flowers sat below pictures of orange-robed Buddhas. The waterfall sang, the cliffs plunged down, a few dirty-chinned little monks scampered up the dented logs that served as stairs. And as I left, I heard them singing from an upstairs window.

  And so, in time, I came to settle into the rhythms of this silent country, to come to know its patterns so well that the days began to pick up speed and blur. At dawn, in Thimphu, the mist swaddling the western mountains. In the mornings, the quiet tennis-ball sound of wood being chopped outside my window. At lunch, in the hotel, a team of Japanese “salarymen” lined up in dark suits around a large table and muttering gloomily, “Muzukashii desu, ne?” (“It’s difficult, isn’t it?”), as they bravely did battle with their curries. At four o’clock, the officials streaming out of the cottagelike buildings in Tashichhodzong, the central government complex, like schoolboys just released from class, healthy young men, most of them, sturdy and solemn, bearing thick black briefcases, white scarves worn like sashes over tartan kilts. As darkness fell, the bright young things of Thimphu—all six of them—assembling in the Benez café to gossip about boyfriends, in the “convent English” of wealthy girls from private Indian schools. And then, after dark, lights shining like candles in the many-windowed houses, and the streets all chill and silent. All night, the yelping of the mangy dogs, and then, at dawn, the light returning with the sound of jeeps, a reveille of horns, the clatter of boxes loaded onto trucks.

  And gradually, as the days went on, I began to make a life inside this Sleepy Hollow world. I took over a small room in the Druk Hotel. I signed on as a member of the Thimphu Public Library. I bought balcony tickets to Stallone movies at the local cinema (where the crowd seemed especially taken with Terry Funk, in the part of Frankie the Thumper). And I took my clothes to the town’s dry cleaner—less deterred than I should have been, perhaps, by its enigmatic motto, “Cleanliness before Loveliness”—and bargained the proprietress down to an express seven-day service.

  Sometimes I moved to Paro and adjusted myself to its bucolic, mild-breezed rhythms. In the mornings, when I awoke, girls singing as they worked. Afternoons in Paro Dzong, all red-and-gold serenity. Later, in the failing light, a gradual chill sharpening the air. Monks making their slow way back to temples. Children singing folk songs in the dusk. The valley suspended in a virgin silence. “Idyll” was a word from which I was accustomed to recoil, yet truly I felt that there could be nothing lovelier than this peaceful windless valley, so innocent it did not know the meaning of the word. Even in December, it was spring in Paro. And sometimes, walking home through avenues of willows, golden under cobalt skies, I felt as if I had stumbled upon the hidden Arcadia of Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet. A sequel, perhaps: Several Weeks in Bhutan.

  The weeks, too, began to take shape as I grew accustomed to Bhutan. On Saturday afternoons, copper-faced men would gather in front of the avenue of willows behind the hotel and there, in the brilliant sunshine, the mountains behind them, send straight arrows shooting through the quiet air. Farther along, beyond the Sportsgrounds, was the peaceable bustle of the weekend market. Boxes of “Power-Packed” Surf, piles of fruit protected from the sun by rusty umbrellas, cows’ heads lying on the ground. Photos of orange-robed monks, cartons of “Ready to Eat Cheese Crispies,” men banging cymbals in an afternoon sweetened by the scent of tangerines. The heads alone caught all the scene’s variety: bowler hats, woolen caps, Yankees baseball hats; cowboy hats, turbans, turquoise-twined plaits; green scarves, pink bows, and bobbled woolen berets.

  Weekends were also the time when news came to Thimphu, in the form of Kuensel, the two-year-old weekly English-language bulletin. This was a paper rich in surprises. “Yak semen is being imported from Mongolia for the first time,” cried the front page. The first page of the World News section was given over to a long article on the thirtieth anniversary of Paddington Bear. The letters column featured a ge
neralized exhortation to “Make a habit of keeping your bowels moving regularly.” And one whole page of the twelve-page paper was taken up by an advertisement for Thai Air.

  The bowel injunction was not, it seemed, untypical. One week, five different articles on pages 2 and 3 of Kuensel addressed the issue of health. A review commended the Chode Junior High School for its fine “health drama.” The Dzongda of Paro opined that “Animal health is human wealth.” The weekly quiz was devoted to AIDS. And the Leisure Page was, rather surprisingly, dominated by a comic strip with the title “Why Is Tobacco Bad?”

  Health was a natural enough concern, of course, in a land where the average life expectancy is only forty-four and where two hundred schoolchildren must sometimes share a single cold-water tap. But the thrust of Kuensel’s campaigns was more specific—and, in its way, more generalized. “SMOKING,” announced the sign at Thimphu bus station. “Buddhist Dharma says smoking is a great sin. Modern science has proved smoking is dangerous to health. Medical science says—Smoking is very bad to your health.” In much the same spirit, the Ministry for Social Services presented itself as a “smoke-free zone” and went on to proclaim: “Blessed are those who stopped smoking. More blessed are those who never started it.” Even at the turn of the century, I later discovered, official Bhutanese law was fulminating against “a most filthy and noxious herb, tobacco, sure to steep the sacred images and books in pollution and filth” and likely, it was felt, to cause “wars and big epidemics.” That it was still harping on the theme almost a hundred years later seemed testimony not only to the constancy but also to the inefficacy of the appeal. Besides, in a country whose king’s most famous passion (after basketball) was Havana cigars, the antismoking campaign did not, I thought, have a promising future.