A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan: An Australian Family in the Land of the Thunder Dragon

by Bunty Avieson

  Soon after the coronation, which revealed Bhutan to the world, the first paying tourists arrived. Until then, the handful of people that had been allowed into the country were personal guests of the royal family. The pioneer tourists were a group of trekkers led by Lars Eric Lindblad, founder of Lindblad Travel in the USA and known as the great grand-daddy of group tours. His group was given limited permits to visit designated parts of eastern Bhutan. They discovered unspoiled wilderness, pristine air and centuries-old monasteries clinging precariously to near-vertical hills. Its beauty and character was unlike anywhere else in the Himalayas.

  In 1991 tourism was privatised by the Royal Government and these days there are over ninety tour operators. Tourists need permits to travel through different parts of the country, and some areas are out of bounds altogether – in the east of Bhutan, close to the borders of China and India.

  Where other countries embrace the tourist dollar, this is the last thing to interest the Bhutanese. They have had a good look over their borders at the devastating and irreversible impact tourism can have on the local environment, culture and identity of the people. The King knew Bhutan couldn’t remain an isolated medieval country forever and it was time to let the world in – but ever mindful of how to manage the influence from outside, he wanted to ensure it was done slowly and gently.

  In keeping with his policy of Gross National Happiness, he decreed that tourism must be environmentally and ecologically sensitive, socially acceptable as well as economically viable. One way to achieve this would be to make it low volume and high value, charging a limited number of people US$250 per person per night.

  It seems to be working – attracting the sort of tourists who won’t upset the status quo. The people who come tend to be older, travelling in organised groups and they stay just a week or so. There are some newly opened clubs and bars in Thimphu but they aren’t filled with backpacking westerners, rather the growing Bhutanese middle-class. The dance floors are full of young Bhutanese swivelling their hips, some dressed in the latest western-style clothes, others trying to groove to the music in a slim-fitting kira.

  Also to commemorate the Dragon King’s coronation, Bhutan created its own currency, the ngultrim, which is tied to the Indian rupee in value.

  Twenty-five years later, at the King’s Silver Jubilee in 1999, he further opened the doors to outside with the announcement of the arrival of TV and the internet. In the space of just one generation, the country has moved from a feudal society to one that is beginning to embrace the twenty-first century.

  My newly adopted family at Taba perfectly encompasses the old and the new that is Bhutan. The sisters grew up in a village but live a thoroughly modern life in the country’s capital.

  Elder sister Karma Yangki and husband Mani Dorji were born in the ’60s, just as education became available. They were teenagers in the ’70s when outsiders first entered the country and cars started to appear on the newly built roads. And now they are parents and businesspeople, as the country cautiously takes its place in the world.

  Second sister Phuntsho Wangmo, in her early thirties, spent a few years working in hotel management in Austria. She has seen the world and keeps in contact with the European friends she made. But, like most of the Bhutanese who work or study overseas, she came home. Though the career opportunities are far more limited and she was overqualified for the hospitality jobs she was offered back in Thimphu, there was never any question of her making her life elsewhere. What the rest of the world has to offer just doesn’t compare with what she has in Bhutan.

  When the family decided to expand the printing company and buy a franchise for the popular Indian card shop Archies, her management experience made her the obvious choice to run the business.

  For some reason Archies, the old American comic strip, is enormously popular in India and though completely unrelated, so is the card shop. The Indians love to send sentimental cards at every opportunity. Opening an Archies shop in Thimphu, selling cards along with photographs of Buddhist icons and assorted stationery items, was an inspired business decision and overnight the shop was a huge success. Everyone in Thimphu knew Archies and it became a landmark in the town. The bus stop opposite was labelled ‘The bus stop near Archies’. Thimphu had never seen anything like it.

  Unfortunately for Phuntsho, while she was launching Archies, her new husband Tenzin was best qualified to run the day-to-day operations of the family printing press in Phuntsoling, eight hours away. It meant spending the start of their marriage either apart or commuting between the two cities as they pursued their different careers.

  In many ways the Bhutanese are thoroughly modern, and sexism doesn’t work quite the same way as it does elsewhere. Though women may be in charge of the domestic duties and are not yet filling the inner sanctum of Cabinet, they are, quite literally, everywhere else – working as doctors, engineers, teachers, running farms, owning businesses and holding senior positions throughout the government. They are well represented in district-level decision-making and treated equally in education and wages. In 2000, more than forty-six per cent of the primary school enrolments were girls.

  When it comes to owning real estate, surely Bhutanese women lead the world. In rural areas sixty per cent of land is registered to women. It’s known as ‘customary right of inheritance by daughters’, a system that has arisen because it is believed that women need economic security to be able to take care of their parents and children.

  Sexism does exist. The royal family is patriarchal, passing the title from father to son, and the monastic culture is male-oriented. While there are more monks than soldiers, the nuns are a bit thin on the ground.

  The story of Bhutan’s first woman soldier is a delightful example of how the women just go about things. In 1962, twenty-three-year-old Tshering Bidha was one of thousands who volunteered for military service. Her husband was joining up and she thought, why not? She had a baby daughter so brought her mother along to babysit. During breaks in guerrilla-warfare training, her mother would bring the baby to her for breastfeeding. Tshering not only passed her training, she topped the school, beating her husband.

  She gleefully recounted to The Kuensel newspaper how, as a senior officer, she would punish him for teasing other women soldiers by making him carry a thirty-kilo sand bag for an hour. She is now sixty-three, retired and a sweet, wrinkly grandmother, whose reminiscences also include anecdotes from her years as a crack soldier.

  The amazing success that Phuntsho Wangmo achieved with the Archies card shop was duly noted by other companies and soon rival shops started to spring up, including the international stationery giant Hallmark. It was time for the family to get out. Phuntsho Wangmo went to Delhi and dissolved the partnership with Archies head office and then joined her husband in Phuntsoling. They bought two new apartments and knocked out a wall to create one large, comfortable home with all the modern conveniences.

  Phuntsoling is far more cosmopolitan than Thimphu and yet toned down compared to the complete chaos of Indian cities. Its climate is more hot Indian plains than the cool of the Himalayan valleys. It is humid, dusty, noisy and pretty funky.

  Phuntsho Wangmo prefers the grace and ease of life in Thimphu but was happy at last to be under the same roof with her husband and baby daughter Renee. Unfortunately it didn’t last long.

  The family re-thought what to do with its shops and created a new blended business. Cards and stationery sell in the shop that used to be Archies, while next door is a new hardware and electrical store, which also sells art supplies. The two shops take up nearly a whole block.

  Again Phuntsho Wangmo was the obvious choice to start the hardware business but Tenzin was still needed in Phuntsoling to run the production side of the printing. So the commuting began again.

  As Phuntsho Wangmo was still breastfeeding, the family converted two storerooms above the shop for her to be able to bring Renee to work. When they aren’t living at Taba, or their real home in Phuntsoling, this is where t
hey live – at the top of steep steps that are little more than a ladder, in two simply furnished rooms. Every morning Phuntsho Wangmo emerges down those steps looking elegant in a beautiful kira, her hair immaculate in its short, bouncy bob, and on her feet wedge shoes that I swear must be six inches high. I don’t know how she can walk in them, much less make it up and down those steps. ‘All Bhutanese women want to be taller,’ she says with a smile and a shrug.

  There is a warren of rooms behind the two shopfronts and somewhere in there Mani Dorji has his office, overseeing all the various businesses. Phuntsho Wangmo has two rooms, which double as her office for the hardware shop and the headquarters for Prayer Flag Pictures (which she also runs). She is a relaxed, efficient dynamo, juggling motherhood and the demands of her career with complete ease. She is lucky to have the support of her extended family, maids and her husband. Not all middle-class Bhutanese husbands are so accommodating, preferring to see themselves as the sole breadwinners. A wife leading a life of leisure is a new phenomenon that is emerging along with the growing affluence.

  Behind the shops and all the offices are various outhouses, including a kitchen. Each day lunch is prepared by the maid, then spread out buffet style for anybody who happens to be there.

  It was from these shops that sisters Phuntsho Wangmo and Karma Yangki did the initial casting for Rinpoche’s film. With just an early draft of the script to work from, they would watch from behind a one-way mirror at the back of the shop, as people browsed through the cards. If someone looked promising they would sidle up for a bit of a chat and an informal interview.

  It is typical of the way this family smoothly integrates everything into their lives. When Rinpoche needed somewhere to hold the auditions, they just added to the house at Taba, extending across the roof to create the formal lounge room. And when one of the producers wanted to bring his partner and child along, they happily volunteered their home. Whatever circumstances arise, they work with them. No angst. No dramas. Perhaps Nike had them in mind with their slogan ‘Just Do It’.

  9

  Yak, Yak, Yak

  In town I find a book of Bhutanese proverbs, written in English.

  ‘The Mithun bull will pass his dung on either side of the road.’ (I’m thinking, men sowing their wild oats?)

  ‘Alcohol goes down, chat comes up.’

  ‘Without wealth you are separated from your fellow beings but without teeth you are separated from food.’ (Some things are much more important than money?)

  But the one that really takes my fancy is: ‘Every game has a nose, every nose smells a fart.’ I ask Karma Chokyi what it means but she has no idea. She says she’ll ask a boy at school who endlessly quotes obscure proverbs to her. I’m pleased and looking forward to dropping it into conversation at home when it’s appropriate. (‘As they say in Bhutan . . . ’)

  While Kathryn and I enjoy life with our new family, Mal comes and goes, bringing unprocessed film to send to Bangkok or picking up rushes to take back to an eager director and crew.

  This week when Mal rings, he sounds so different that at first I don’t recognise the voice. It’s the giggling that throws me. He is by nature a pretty cheery kind of guy, even laughing in his sleep. But not like this. Not giggling down the phone at me.

  He says he will be here after 11 but not after 12. For some reason he finds that enormously amusing, and he’s off again.

  It turns out he has been suffering a toothache for a few days and, after soldiering on, finally succumbed to some hefty painkillers from the American location secretary, Noa Jones. He is completely gaga.

  Tonight he is returning to Thimphu, along with all the crew, who are here for two days of R&R. It is the King’s birthday and Bhutan is throwing a party.

  Juggling the schedule around the needs of the different nationalities is a constant challenge. Indians need a couple of days off for a religious holiday, the Bhutanese need different days for their religious and national celebrations, the Nepalese drivers have their own festivals, while the western crew members require one day off in every seven, though not necessarily for religious pursuit. In between, they try to shoot a movie.

  All the crew are exhausted and in dire need of this weekend off. If the first location camp in Paro Valley had seemed basic, compared to the latest one it was a health spa. If only they had realised how good they’d had it.

  Chendebji camp, their current home away from home, is perched by a river at the bottom of a valley where the Queen Mother grazes her yaks. Accommodation is a bunch of bamboo and plastic huts, inside a barbed-wire fence meant to keep out the animals – not just yaks but wild panthers and the Himalayan black bears that howl through the night. The Hollywood cinematographer has dubbed it ‘Changi’, after the prisoner-ofwar camp in Singapore, and wanders around whistling the theme from the old classic The Bridge on the River Kwai.

  The topography of the area means an icy wind rushes up the river and across the valley, chilling everything in its path. Everyone is hating the cold, westerners and Bhutanese alike. But the lighting designer, Ray Peschke, is suffering the most. He is in agony. Ray spends his life commuting between sunny Los Angeles, for work, and even sunnier Costa Rica, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Chendebji is his idea of a frozen hell. Each day he moves a little more slowly. To thaw him out an electric bar heater is bought in Thimphu and sent up by car, along with a load of rushes and supplies.

  Life isn’t all grim at Chendebji camp. To offset some of the hardships two luxurious outdoor Bhutanese baths have been built. They are wooden with a compartment at one end where stones are added straight from the fire. As each stone is dropped in, it spits and sends up clouds of steam. Bathers stay in it as long as they can handle the temperature, which, unlike western-style baths, increases as the stones release more and more heat. The Bhutanese say half an hour in one of those keeps them warm for a week. The accommodation department fires up the baths every evening and there is a steady procession through them until late into the night.

  The water doesn’t get changed and there is a protocol that goes with bathtime. It’s Rinpoches in first and a fight for who gets to go next, picking up any stray blessings that may be floating in the bathwater. Then it’s everybody else, according to mob rule. The idea is to wash thoroughly with soap before entering the water but it doesn’t always happen. No-one seems terribly concerned. When it’s this cold, why quibble.

  But the absolute highlight of being on location is the food. Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach and so, to keep up morale, Mal has made food the highest priority.

  There are twenty-five people in the catering department, working out of two kitchens and providing traditional Bhutanese, Indian and continental food. They built their own tandoori oven and serve the food buffet style with the vast selection of dishes – at least a dozen – beautifully presented in huge elegant, bain marie serving dishes that would be perfectly at home in an exclusive hotel.

  Every night, under the stars in the pristine wilds of Bhutan

  – warmed by an outdoor bonfire while being serenaded by grass-munching yaks and the sound of rushing water from the nearby river – the 108 members of the cast and crew sit down to a gourmet feast. Meals are a social and culinary event that are longed for and lingered over.

  One of the head chefs is a gentle, smiling Tibetan man who lives in Manali, in northern India. Yeshe Lama usually works as a chef on forty-five-day treks and specialises in creating gourmet continental food for rich tourists from what can be carried on the back of a horse. His two great loves are cooking and walking and he says he will be happy to forgo his return ticket so he can walk home to Manali, almost the entire length of the Himalayas.

  Mal leaves Chendebji camp early in the afternoon and it is after midnight by the time he arrives at Taba. The painkillers have worn off and he looks grey. The evening chill and the high mountain passes on the trip have exacerbated his toothache. But nothing can daunt his enthusiasm for the thoughtful gift he has brought
me – a yak-tail rug. Yaks are hardy creatures, used to surviving in the most inhospitable of terrains, so their fur is pretty tough. The hair on their tails is even more so. This rug is like steel wool – dark grey and hurts to touch. Mal thinks it will be perfect for the hallway of our harbourside apartment. I try to imagine walking barefoot across steel wool to get to the fridge each morning. Not good.

  All the crew are sporting new yak accoutrements. As the weather turns colder the yaks come down from the mountains and in the past week there were quite a few around the pass where the crew was filming. One enterprising herdsman followed the crew back to camp and brought a few bags along to sell. They were snapped up in an instant. The next day the man returned, lugging with him his entire ‘range’. He had more bags, blankets and a couple of things made from the tail of the yak, including a rug. Again he sold the lot. Mal bought yak-hair bags as gifts from the production company to every foreign member of the crew and, bless him, the yak-tail rug for me.

  We wake to the smell of a yak in the bedroom. It’s discernible even above Kathryn’s morning nappy and, despite the nausea it inspires, secretly I’m pleased. There’s no way Australian customs will let us bring this rug into the country.

  Kathryn is delighted to see Mal’s face peer over her cot in the morning. He brings her back to bed and a maid appears with hot tea. We really could get used to this.

  The film dramas follow Mal and he doesn’t make it through breakfast before the phone calls start. I’m no movie-making expert but I can’t imagine that the problems that crop up for this production company would occur often in Hollywood.

  For the past week filming has been disrupted by demons. Evil spirits that the Bhutanese say are irritated by the positive energy of Rinpoche. This comes after some worrying calls from the anxious editors in Sydney, who say mysterious blue spots have started to appear on the film. Above the heads of two actors appear oddly shaped haloes. The camera people check all their equipment and can offer no explanation. It’s just one of those things, they shrug. It’s bad spirits, say the Bhutanese.