Holiday in India & Bhutan (11): Paro To Punakha
Saturday was part sightseeing and part travel.
According to the original programme, this morning we should have visited the National Museum – something recommended to me by a friend. But the museum was closed, so we were taken instead to an archery contest. Now archery is the national sport in Bhutan and astonishingly these guys were aiming for a target 145 metres (475 feet) away. Whenever someone managed to hit the target, everyone in the team did a little song and dance in celebration.
Next stop was the fortress monastery of Rinpung Dzong This was first constructed in 1646 and damaged by fire in 1907. The monastery is home to almost 200 monks and has 14 shrines and chapels. It is a festival of colour: the building exteriors, the walls and the rooms are a kaleidoscope of intricate symbolism and bright colours and our guide Jigme gave us a detailed explanation of the tree of life and the process of reincarnation.
Our next visit was to a place called the Phuba Mandala Display Center. Now a mandala is a geometric configuration of symbols which one finds in the eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Shinto.
In this particular part of Bhutan, there is a version known as sand mandala which uses dyed coloured sand to create the design. This is done by picking up and placing the grains of sand with two fingers and the process can take hours, weeks or months. Then the art work is swept up, placed in a plastic bag and thrown in a river as a symbol of the Buddhist notion of the impermanence of all things. We were invited to create our own mandalas and take them away in little plastic bags.
At this point, we had a very pleasant surprise. We knew that lunch was in Paro, but we found that it was outdoors by a river in warm sunshine. After throwing our mandalas in the river, we ate well. I was enjoying a conversation after the meal when I felt myself sliding backwards and to the ground as my chair broke and collapsed. After all this Buddhist talk of the wheel of life and the idea of impermanence, I was brought down to earth.
At 1.45 pm, we left Paro and headed east and then north to arrive at 5.30 pm in Punakha. It was an up and down journey with a break at the highest point, not just of this ride but of our entire holiday: the Dochula Pass which is 10,236 feet (3,120 metres). The site is special for being the location of no fewer than 108 stupas – 108 is an especially auspicious number in Buddhism – created in 2005 at the instigation of the Queen Mother.
Our hotel in Punakha is the fabulous Green Resort which, as well as as the largest bedrooms and bathrooms of our entire trip, has such convenient accessories as a four point extension lead for all our electronic devices.