Some of the still-shot from my recent tour to Merak

A majestic Yak just arrived back from winter grazing land to their home place

 Early sprouting of Blue Poppy flower after intensive snowfall during winter season.

Culture : Different region different costume

Joy of learning : Students trying to catch each other while playing a game

Offering made during the ritual performance made out of flour and decorated with the butter on it. In most of the cases it is left on the roof of the house which will be later eaten by the visiting birds.

Merak before the onset of spring season after cold winter ( altitude : 3500 m asl)  

Journey to the Highest Peak

Nakchungla pass

“LA THONG SA GANG GE CHI THO KHA, GANG KEAI PAY KHAWA CHAG NU LU…..” Regardless of it being one of the popular songs of nineties. It sounded not more than like a howling of the solitary jackal under a bright full moon struggling to find a mate while we sang on the peak of Nakchungla. With up climb of every foot step, pace of my heartbeat increased proportionately making me difficult to breath.

Seeing for the first time, the beauty of Himalayan scree is indescribable with my limited vocabulary.  Huge boulders stacked over each other, enriched with crimson blooming drenched by fleck of snow harbored beneath respectfully bowing Rhododendron trees, depict the impressive atmosphere of Nakchungla pass located at 4100 m altitude.

Merak village

Blooming of Rhododendron

A half a decade back, journeying Merak was considered to be physically exhausting but an explorative trip for an enthusiastic nature lover. Walking via ancient trial under the canopy of cool broadleaf forest, a traveler will be privileged to encounter with a gardens of blooming Rhododendron and a typically beautiful flowering of Michelia trees exhaling a pleasant aroma. Perching over lush green trees, the flying feather welcomes the traveler with the melodies song sung by the flying flocks. But lately with construction of approach farm road, commuters opt to travel by the vehicle that shortens the journey by more than six hours. Charm of travelling is changed with limited opportunity to interact with the nature and traveler seems to be psychologically exhausted with the construction of the Merak farm road.

Signage

With constant two to three hours drive from the Phongmey, traveler will reach to road end point approaching to Merak. For first time visitors signage like “Entering to the Big Foot valley” pinned over the standing Cypress trees with gentle dropping leaves hold their breath for a moment, curiously trying to extract exact message form board.  Literally, big foot is associated   with the legend of mythical creature (Yeti) known to be dwelling in and around the hills of Merak.

Culture

Ethnically the inhabitants of Merak are more likely with the tribes of neighboring Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and a trace of autonomous region of the Tibet.  Draped in a thick red or black woolen cloths resembling a skirt and a pent stitched from unprocessed hide of animals with a mini sword entangled over their waist and a peculiar black woolen cap over their head represents the formal male costume. But it’s not uncommon to see people wearing an unrefined hide of ungulates resembling a halve-sleeved coat during the informal hours. Decorated with the bulky precious stones in the form of necklace with a red apple colored cheeks and a cascading hair seldom plated represent the culture of the female. They wear cloth of mixed colored woven from the wools and a same cap of the gents to protect from the cold and rains respectively. 

Located at 3500 m altitude, winter season is very harsh with blanket of snow cover for most of the times with difficulty to travel and survive because of cold. Livestock migration towards lower altitude before the onset of the winter season is unavoidable due to extreme weather condition. From the centuries, “Brokpas” indigenous inhabitants of Merak were nomads and the tradition is still surviving with no much changes. Their nomadic life style can be attributed to extremely harsh weather conditions that hardly allow any agriculture crops to survive.

Jomo Kungkhor

Ama Jomo, an extraordinary lady from the Tibet is believed to be settled at the premises of Merak during an ancient time and these days, she is being worshiped as a protective local deity by the inhabitants. Present days the shrines of Ama Jomo in the form of impressions over the stones is seen spreading throughout valley in spite of her palace on the peak of Jomo Kungkhor at more than 4500 m altitude facing Merak.

For the first time visitor before crossing any passes of the peak on the way to the village, every visitor has to sing at least a song, so as to honor and please Ama Jomo. This tradition has been in practice since a time of their forefathers and believe to bring misfortune to the locality incase the new visitor enter without singing. Maintaining hygiene could be one of the issues when it comes to nomadic life style but Brokpas really concerns about the cleanliness of their hearth since it is believed to bring misfortune on dirtying of it.     

Practice of polyandry in terms of marriage is not uncommon in order to meet the demand of manpower to lead the nomadic lifestyle. “Bropka Yoeshay” a fermented cheese those are stored in an air tight leather pouch for several months are well know cheese across the nation and considered as the delicacy of the Brokpas.

On visiting the temple and monasteries along the villages, one will sight at least a portrait of H.H. Dalia Lama inside it unlike monasteries around other parts of the nation. It symbolizes the practice of Gyelokpa a branch of the Buddhism that is strongly practiced in Tibet. Culture and tradition is a sort of an identity chain that links us to our forefathers who have inherited from their ancestors. It is certain that culture and a tradition are being developed with convenience to the locality and it differs from one locality to another and they owe to be respected. So do here in Brokpas community instead of burning/cremation, they tend to slice body of death ones and throw in the river which sound little bit uneasy for the first time visitor.  

Mode of transportation

Their livestock comprises of Yak, Sheep, local cattle, Zoe and Zom and horses up to certain extend. Zoe and Zom are a typical hybrid of Yak and local cattle which bear less fur than the yak more than the cattle and fairly looks like a yak. “Kyoe”  the second generation of Zoe and Zom are slaughtered when they attend the age of not more than several weeks as they are considered to be unproductive.  This hybrid shows typical characters whereby they don’t entertain milking if their calves are not slaughtered and tend to become too aggressive. Regardless of horses people out here uses yak and cattle as a mode of transportation. 

Approximately, more than 3 hours uphill climb from Merak and six to seven hours from Sakteng,   Nakchung-la is unavoidable and one of the highest passes between the two settlements.  Coated with snow and fueled by   unpleasantly cold gusty atmosphere, the peak is renowned for its difficulty in crossing both by travelers and animal/pony without getting totally exhausted.  According to the oral history, people of Sakteng and Merak are said to be originated from the subordinates/ followers of Ama Jomo partitioned by Nakchung-la on their journey towards Merak. It’s believed that she was accompanied by a group of people on her way from Tibet in search of beautiful and peaceful place to reside. A huge group was known to consist of mixture of wealthy, healthy, poor and a weak people and livestock. When the expedition team reached to place called Lhondrojong (direct translation : returning place)  which is located few hours down the base of the peak of Nakchungla towards Sakteng, Amo Jomo envisioned that weak people won’t be able to cross it. Relating to those incidents at present; inhabitants of Sakteng are considered as little poor, weak and naïve comparative to Merak since they are believed to be the descendents of those weak and poor people of Ama Jomo’s expedition team returned from Lhondrojong and settled at Sakteng. But it’s all on account of oral history, which requires further validation. Both culturally and traditionally, native inhabitants of Merak and Sakteng are identical apart from insignificant difference in their accent of speaking.

Walking over a melting snow

Draped in a green uniform with ruck sack on my back and a handy cannon camera hanging over my neck supported by magnum boot and a bucket cap to protect from scorching heavenly eyes, enthusiastically we started our loop trail journey in early hours of the day break from the Merak; though actual loop starts from Khardung near Phongmey village.   

On progressive climbing of Nakchungla from its base, with every footstep, I could see the fading bird’s eye view of clustered settlement of Merak. With fading view my breathing shortened proportionately followed by bit of giddiness.   By then, we were on the mid of the peak from where it was vividly visible with a snow sparking over it. Zeal to climb didn’t subside in me and continued our journey over melting snow with sweets in my mouth to avoid catching from altitude sickness.                                  

At last, after more than three hours constant uphill walking through woodland, scorching sun and a melting snow, we could reach Nachungla pass whereby we sang a song to keep their tradition alive with our precious and limited energy left in us. Though fully exhausted, I could feel and notice the sense of satisfaction and joy among our team while enjoying the fresh air of Nakchungla.     

  

Cost of Urbanisation

Had there been water scarcity several decades ago, Mongar-pas won’t have settled in middle of inclined mountain. Sharchokpa, the indigenous inhabitants of eastern Bhutan who are generally considered to be naïve and innocent by virtue were deprived of modern facilities until the inception of mega projects like Kurichu Hydro-power Project Cooperation (KHPC) and majestic Mongar Regional Referral Hospital.

Urbanisation is marked by the construction of several storeyed concrete buildings which overshadowed colourful conventional architectures that once dominated the hamlet town. With the booming business people from different parts of the country tend to encroach the town that was once hardly known to business tycoons.

Unlike, rest of the urban areas, residents of the Mongar town tend to speak versatile sharchopkha (local eastern dialect) despite one’s cultural background. Its unavoidable fact that Mongar is comparatively fastest growing town among rest of the Eastern districts with variety of people from every nook and corner of the nation residing either as employee or businessmen but there seems to be little impact of urbanisation in terms of culture. For a first time visitors, seldom it’s surprising to witness an expatriate fluently conversing in local dialect.

Energy which is literally said that it can be neither created nor destroyed but can be changed from one form to another is the core driver of an urbanisation or a human civilization. It is dependent on the availability of resources, which seems to be unsustainable in the face of rapid urbanisation.  People tend to consume more resources with change in life style along with increase in population concentrated in a pocket of the urban area. Attracted by better opportunities, increased in the number of rural people moving towards the urban area seems to be unavoidable fueling most discussed issue of rural urban migration. So does Monggar town is not exempted from such fate.  

Yakpogang stream

Not more than a decade ago, Yakpogang stream was known for its ferocity during the monsoon and a cascade flow during the winter. Huge area of terrace located near the enclave of Research Centre Wengkhar, presently left fallow due to the shortage of irrigation water was considered to be once a fertile land irrigated by then a furious stream. The same stream is also being used as a source of drinking water by the residents of the town. At current scenario, whenever there is a heavy downpour, stream tends to swell creating hope in the people but lasting not more than an hour or two.  Looking back to the situation, not more than a decade ago a local resident of Yakpogang has a different story to be unfolded. Primarily, they attribute the shrinkage of water volume discharge from the same Yakpogang stream to massive timber extraction from the catchment area to meet the demand of developmental activities in Monggar town.    

Easygoing nature of Bhutanese with narrow vision, when it comes to usage of natural resources tend to possess major threat leading to sustainability in question. With the very late exposure to modern civilization, Bhutanese people never had to face the problem of natural resource crisis as it has been very little explored by our forefathers. But scenario is changing with accessibility of Bhutanese to very high tech sophisticated way of exploring the resources to bridge the gap of rapid developmental activities.

Stone chips crushing plant

Similarly, Construction and Development Co-operation limited  (CDCL) came up with the stone chips crushing plant at Kilikhar to serve the immediate need of stone chips for developmental activities like a road, without which developmental works will be stagnant.  Although such plants are unavoidable, they have to go through certain set of bureaucratic approval for its establishment to minimize its negative impact to both social and environment. Being a young responsible citizen and an environmentalist, it’s little bit surprising to see that the aforementioned plant is established with destruction of potential drinking water sources from where  people still tend to harness water that is being polluted by the plant due to acute water shortage in the town.

As said “better late than never”, with the outcry of the town residents over acute drinking water shortage, policy maker has come up with the idea of first ever  Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme by declaring once overexploited forest of Yakpogang as a Community Forest (CF) to address the issue. Hopefully scheme is working successfully with visible improvement in forest condition. 

But the issue doesn’t subside here; there is a need to explore more reliable and immediate solutions to the problem.

Trying my skill in arts to portray my thoughts.

Stormy night 

Imaginary beach  

Late night watering  by Mr. Moon  

Future of our Earth. 

Capturing the memories of lovely autumn

Harmonious  nature 

 Concise   Eco-tourism

Book that helped me to broaden my understanding about Buddhism

Journey to Liberation:

A life story of the Buddha according to the Mahayana Tradition

Different culture has a different version of story about a lone Buddha, right from its birth till enlightenment. But this book authored by Khenpo Phuntsok Tashi concisely talks from Mahayana perspective. Content of the book superficially touches every aspect of the Buddha’s life and its preaching. Written in simple language with best interpretation, this book can serve as the guiding principle for the youth who has a little knowledge about the life of enlightened Buddha with enthusiasm to become decent Buddhist practitioner. Khenpo not only tries to enlighten reader with the well heard life story of the Buddha but also make reader informed about the interpretation behind Buddhist paintings and posture of the statues that are seen in every holy places right from the majestic temples to the small altar rooms in every individual apartment. Elaborated with sketch at the end of every chapter makes it much easier to understand the content of the book without much difficulty.

Story initially begins with the birth and a confined life of by then a prince who is prophesied to be either a powerful ruler of the universe, if not an enlightened Buddha. Few chapter emphases on early life of the Buddha as a prince who use to be undefeatable in every discipline honoured with every worldly pleasure within a confined walls of the palace with thousand wives.

Touched and realised by the incidences encountered during his first royal entourage outside the luxuries palace, prince renounces his princely life in search of simple truth that governs human life. Struggling for six long years leading the life of austerity in the forest, he finally attains the enlightenment sitting under Bodhi tree cushioned by Tsa-Kusha (broom grass). Most of the statues that are erected in every worshiping places at present generation with right hand pointing downward depicts the particular moment of his life when Buddha touched the land beneath him as a witness of his enlightenment to prove against the false allegation made by the demon.  

Later portion of the book deals with the preaching of Buddha’s finding about the truth initially starting from the Deer park in Sarnath, in the region of Varanasi followed by different places including the abode of the God, where his late mother is known to be reincarnated.

With successful preaching for several decades, at the age of eighty Buddha attained Mahaparinvana “the great entry into the non-suffering state” (literally it means death) at place named Kushinagar. 

Letter to my best friend

Dear DRUK 11,000,

Good people say that you are the root of evil deeds, I did believe on that statement when I use to be among one of them. Even the ardent Buddhist practitioner has a superstitious belief that drinking alcohol is against the standard norms of Buddhism despite the fact every ritual is incomplete without usage of an alcohol as a DUETSE (blessed holy liquid) but it does have a logic as drunkard people hardly have a good judgmental capacity.

Back at college life, when I use to be among one of the social drinkers I had a good experience of how alcohol alter the character of decent people. As a seldom drinker I use to observe how people act after drinking and found that there are three stages of alcohol intoxication.  Till 35% intoxication of alcohol people enjoy the company of drinkers, they share views on intellectual talks which I find is bit encouraging. When they reach 75% of intoxication level, people start to develop an extra sense about their behaviors and feel themselves insecure about the situation and simply worry about what people around them might think about their drinking characters and finally when people cross 75% of intoxication level they  forget about themselves and tend to act senselessly.  Reviewing the story behind why Buddhist followers are against the consumption of alcohol, I should quote that the pious monk must have reached beyond 75% of intoxication when he slaughtered a goat and slept a night with a young lady, which are against the practice of Buddhist philosophy.          

Clinically it has been proved that consumption of alcohol is injurious to the health and it’s a sort of poison that instantly kills a thousand of consumers around the globe. Despite the tendency of the liver to grow after certain level of damage, chronic alcoholism results in liver cirrhosis which is the cause of ultimate death. 

Down the line few months after getting employed as civil servant, although I was aware of above beliefs and the proven scientific facts, I did drink lot of alcohol. Brand didn't make much difference, as my sole objective of drinking was to have intoxication to get rid of mental disturbances that I was suffering from.  Druk 11000, the only beer brand available in Bhutan after the ban imposed over import of externally manufactured alcohol products dominated my preference followed by the highlander whiskey. 

Though drinking habit was in my hereditary line, I could experience that once you are into alcoholism, the hardly developed good habits easily get wiped away. Prior to drinking habits of mine, I use to have meals in time regularly in spite of my marital status as bachelor and everything use to be with routine. The word called “mess” wasn't in my dictionary until I adopted the habit of drinking.

Druk 11000, I am thankful to you for accompanying me during both the happiest and bad times of me, which I won’t be able to forget you in my life ahead. Being able to hold you was the pride of me. To be with you was the happiest moment of my life. But going away from you will be the deadliest nightmare I will ever have which will haunt me down. Even than I ‘m left with no choices than to go away from you because of my medical condition.

BYE! BYE!   DRUK 11000, hope to be with you in future if my health condition improves and I will miss you.

Yours faithful consumer 

Eye-catching scene from my recent tour

Direct translation - Jamkhar : name of the village , Thuu :  lower part of the female reproductive tract in local dialect. This structure is considered as a sacred place (shrine) and its located facing Jamkhar village on the way to Trashiyangtse. Its  legend is associated with the practice of night hunting  at Jamkhar village and  says that whenever this hole is watery, its confirmed that one's night hunting will be successful. 

Single flag pole with five straight  leading shoot that serves the purpose of hoisting five different color flags which are considered as auspicious in Buddhism ( Tangma chu village, Lhuentse)

Stone that resembles like a giant frog. Except  artificial painting, rest of the structure is natural. (Above Sheree chu, Mongar)