Holiday in India & Bhutan (12): Punakha
Sunday too was part sightseeing and part travel.
Leaving our hotel at 9 am, we walked through rice fields to the village of Lobesa and up steps and slopes to the Chimi Lhakand Temple and Monastery which was first built in 1499. It has two really odd dedications.
First, it is dedicated to a guy called Lam Drukpa Kuenley (1455-1570) who was a Buddhist master so eccentric in his behaviour that he was known as the ‘Divine Madman’ and the use of his phallus as a weapon of truth led to its description as a ‘flaming thunderbolt’.
Second, it is dedicated to the fertility rites of the tantric tradition and it is popular with women who wish to become pregnant. As a result, local shops sell representations of the phallus in every size and every material and every colour.
As our guide put it: “We don’t have nuclear weapons, We have the power of the phallus”. When group members were looking for a souvenir phallus, one female member said: “I’m looking for smaller one” and I replied “It’s the first time I’ve heard a woman say that”.
Our next destination was utterly different: the Punakha Dzong or Palace of Great Happiness located at the confluence of the Phochu and Michu rivers. It was first built in 1637, with subsequent centuries recording damage by fires, floods and an earthquake, always followed by rebuilding.
It consists of a six-story, gold-domed tower, three wonderfully ornate courtyards, and a stupendous temple with a huge Buddha and a shock of brightest colours (which we were not allowed to photograph). Second only to the Tiger’s Nest, this was my favourite site of the holiday.
This trip has been full of surprises and lunch today was certainly one of them. It was at the Gyatsothang Farm House and hosted by its owners in their spacious garden. To reach the farmhouse, we had to traverse two long pedestrian-only suspension bridges over the rushing river which was easier for a some group members than for others. Jenny and I loved it.
At 2.45 pm, we set off from Punakha to retrace much of our road route of yesterday but in reverse. So we climbed bend after bend up to the Dochula Pass and then descended bend after bend down to Thimphu. Yesterday there was so much mist at the Pass that we could not see the Himalayas and today the mist was even worse. But at least the cafeteria at the Pass served coffee and biscuits to keep us going until we arrived at the splendid Druk Hotel at 5.40 pm.
Thimphu – nicknamed Shangri-La – was founded in the 13th century when a huge fortress was built there. The small town only became the national capital in 1961 when it was moved from Punakha. The current population is about 50,000. It is said that Thimphu is the only world capital without traffic lights (in the daytime, traffic is directed by policemen and, at night, drivers sort things out for themselves).