A dog's first ball!

Valley of the black-necked cranes

Monks at the Trongsa dzong

I had a difficult night largely because of a rock hard pillow. Within minutes my ear was hurting because it was so hard and I quickly gave up on it. That left me with no pillow so I had to make do with my jumper rolled up. Today I’ve nicked the cushion out of our vehicle so I’ll have that tonight. As predicted the fire quickly went out under my inactive guardianship but I was only just starting to feel the cold when the alarm went. Not that I had had a great deal of sleep because I was woken about 5am by the Chinese contingent, who had been so noisy at dinner last night, hauling their bags like steamrollers down the corridor.

We were served breakfast this morning instead of getting a buffet breakfast and were just given eggs and toast. At most of the other places we have had fruit juice, cereal and a cooked breakfast and toast. It is the only meal of the day that I look forward to and my stomach finds acceptable so it was rather disappointing to have such a sparse offering.

Today we were sightseeing in and around Bumthang, which is a small town in central Bhutan with about 34,000 inhabitants. The main street looks like a set from a Wild West film with wooden buildings housing shops and bars. In the afternoon, we hit the town in search of crackers, to go with our Swiss cheese, stamps, water, bananas and a ball for the dog. Our hotel has 2 dogs and one goes around with a stone in its mouth and loves you to throw the stone so he can retrieve it. We felt sorry for him and so scoured the town for a ball. Ideally we wanted a tennis ball but couldn’t find any balls at all until finally we found a couple of squishy rubber balls. He will probably demolish them rapidly but at least he will have had the chance to know the pleasure of having his own ball.

In the morning we visited 2 temples. The first one was very old and the paintings were in quite poor repair. The second one was well maintained but in one of the temples there was a Buddha with a very aggressive face. It immediately freaked me out and I had this overwhelming feeling of being in the presence of some terrible evil. Normally I don’t get these type of feelings at all and it’s usually my daughters who are psychically/spiritually sensitive but the feeling was so strong that I had to leave immediately and get far away from the temple and the buildings. Fortunately I had my cross around my neck and I held it in front of me to ward off the potential evil much as you see vampire fighters do and I felt protected but it was really unsettling.

After the nasty evil temple we went to the dzong but didn’t stay that long because we’d reached the stage of once-you’ve-seen-one-dzong.... We returned to the hotel for lunch for our usual meal but today they managed to destroy the potatoes for me by adding ginger to them. I hate ginger but that was one less dish I had to try and force down.

In the afternoon we visited a building that used to be the 2^nd king’s palace and has now been taken over by monks. It would have looked beautiful in its heyday with a lot of rich lapis lazuli blue in the decorations but sadly it hadn’t been cared for or renovated and the wood was decaying and the painting fading. Such a shame!

From there we went to the Swiss cheese place where we were able to buy some emmentahl and some soft cheese – hence the search for crackers in the town. Once we returned to the hotel we were able to have cheese and biscuits with our tea and feel half way normal. We also gave the dog his ball, although at times the opportunity for some cheese won out over the ball. He proved remarkably able at running after it and catching it and we bought him 2 so he can be given the second one once he’s destroyed the first.

After dinner our guide is talking about taking us to a dance place to see the ‘real’ Bhutan. He keeps talking about men giving girls 100 rupees to dance for them and with them so I’m not sure that this is the type of place that I will be comfortable going to. I suspect that I will be the party pooper and decline to go. Relationships in Bhutan don’t seem to be formalised like they are in the west. Our guide is on his second ‘marriage’ but from what we can gather he doesn’t seem to have been through any sort of ceremony with either of his wives and certainly hasn’t divorced the first before he married the second. There seems to be a certain laxness here when it comes to sexual relations. Perhaps this is a reflection of the phallus culture??