Today was the big day. Our trek to Tiger's Nest. Before I talk about the trek, let me share a few facts about it:
- It is the site that is pretty much featured on the cover of every Bhutan book or website about Bhutan. It is listed as the top thing to do in the country.
- It is considered the most holy site in Bhutan. It's actual name is Tatkshang Goemba which translates into Tiger's Nest Monastery.
- It is perched on the side of cliff 900 meters above the Paro valley.
- It is said that Guru Rimpoche (who brought Buddhism to Bhutan from Tibet) flew to the site on the back of a tigress, rid it of a local demon and then meditated here for 3 months.
- The people of Bhutan consider it a pilgrimage site. A number of important monks have meditated here and unveiled holy texts.
- There have been a couple of fires along the years which destroyed parts of it. The biggest was in 1998 and they did reconstruction up until 2005.
- There are only three ways to get to the top: the aforementioned tigress, walk, or horse.
With that out of the way, after a good carb filled breakfast, we headed out conquer the proverbial summit. With Dawa down for the count, we had a new guide whose name we couldn't understand so we will just call him new guide. The poor guy had been up since 4 AM to take his group of 14 French people to the airport. He had been with them for 12 days and they did not speak English. He didn't speak French so it was obviously a bit challenging. He said he would get them to a place then point to things in a Lonely planet guidebook they had. We saw some other groups that brought translators but obviously they didn't think of that. Anyhow, it goes to say that he was glad to have 4 people he could communicate with, even though he didn't expect to be doing a 5 hour trek.
And let me address that 5 hour trek. You may say, no big deal. I can walk for 5 hours. Well, try it on steep, windy paths at higher altitude. Makes it a bit more difficult. After our trek on the second day here, our expectations on our abilities weren't that high. On the other hand, we are all in decent shape and we saw some of the other tourists here. We could do this.
The trek starts at base camp. And it was pretty crowded as everyone tries to get a start at around 9 AM to get to the monastery before noon. Dawa told us yesterday to take it at our own pace. And Moira has her own theory of setting small goals. But it wasn't as bad as we thought. We each did go at our own pace, but if you stopped every once in awhile, you could catch your breath pretty easily. Granted you had to watch your step along the way and avoid the annoying people who were getting a lift by horse, but there were some great views and picture taking spots. We made it to the cafeteria, or the halfway point, in a little under an hour. Everyone stops there for a tea break. There is something that inspires confidence to know you are half way there.
The second half wasn't that much trickier or harder but it did have a lot of steps at the very end. We had to go down (which was a nice break) and up 649 steps to go down, cross a bridge and then go up to the monastery. The closer you get, the more prayer flags you see. You can also hear them fluttering in the wind, as well as the roar of the waterfall, coming off the cliff. It is all amazing. When we got to the monastery entrance there were two policemen (do they have to walk up every day? How long do they have to stay?) who had us leave our bags, phones, cameras etc before we entered. Unlike Myanmar, you can't take pictures in temples. As Dawa told us, when your shoes are off, you can't use your camera. Oh, I should mention it took us about two hours of uphill climbing to reach this point.
Our new guide took us into the monastery where we visited 5 different temples. Like Dawa, he was a bit of a storyteller, but not quite as good or detailed. He told us stories of the paintings and different Buddha statues. The coolest thing was a trapdoor to a cave where different prestigious monks have gone to meditate. They shine a little flash light down but you can't see how far down it goes. No one is allowed to go down. Another interesting thing is now the cliff and monastery when looked at in a picture, resemble the way Guru Rimpoche's face is depicted in temples. Oh and I should mention there are about 5 monks who live in this part of the monastery as care takers. All the other monks - it is a meditation monastery - live in buildings higher up the cliff that you can't visit. They do the standard 3 years, 3 months, and 3 days of study (although some say 3 hours as well).
As we left the monastery and approached the bridge, the guide suggested that this would be a good place for us to hang our prayer flags that Steph bought on day 1 and carried all over the country. We weren't able to get them blessed by a monk but it is still okay to hang them. Our guide told us that we should each sign them on our element based on the year we were born. Steph and I are water. Moira was air. Lallande was fire. We each signed and then strung them all together, hanging them across the bridge, up to the cliff. Check out Moira's Facebook pics until I get back to the US and can post them here as well.
What goes up must go down. But before we went down we had to walk up a good portion of those 649 steps. The good thing is that it was less crowded so we were able to get better pictures. This is the point that I should mention that genius here, in anticipation of taking so many pictures today, charged her camera battery last night. And forgot to put the battery back in my camera. Which means I walked up and back with a useless camera. Thank Buddha for my iPhone camera.
All the Trekkers stop at the cafeteria again on the way back for lunch, which was a fine selection of sandwiches, sodas and cookies. Kidding. I am obviously starting to miss other food besides rice and noodles, although it is nice to feel like we are eating preservative free. So lunch was the typical rice (the red Bhutan kind), vegetable noodles, potatoes with cheese, chiles with cheese and vegetables. New guide told us it would be all vegetarian as it was so close to the monastery but, oddly, there was meat in the mixed vegetables. And of course there was tea. The rest of the walk down was relatively easy on the lungs although I am sure by tomorrow we will learn it wasn't easy on the legs and joints. All in all, not counting our stops, we trekked for about 4 hours. It was 4:50 with the climbing in the monastery. And closer to 5:30 with the tea and lunch breaks.
As we drove away and looked way up the mountain at the cliff, Steph said "who climbed that?" And we all said "We did!" Kasha and new guide found that quite amusing.
We learned on the walk that Dawa was really sick and going to go home. New guide would stay with us today and take us to the airport tomorrow. But Dawa was still taking care of things. He has new guide take us to another temple, whose name I can't find (can you tell we are getting to the end here?). The significant thing about this place was that a ceremony was going on because the head abbot, who is the top monk of the country, was there for 7 days. Which meant the place was totally decked out. They were doing some type of ceremony where we could hear the head abbot's chants as people were going in to get blessed. Lots of followers were there. We were still able to go in and check out the relatively small temple. We were glad we did as if had, in Steph and Lallande's words, some of the most exquisite Buddhas and statues of other deities that we had seen, particularly the compassionate Buddha. Our final stop was one in town to say good bye to Dawa. He was heading back to Thimphu to get better. It was this awkward do we hug him/do we shake his hand situation as we thanked him and gave him a tip. We went with a handshake as while Dawa was super nice, he wasn't a touchy feely kind of guy. He never shared any personal info. Meanwhile, Kasha whipped out his phone this afternoon to show us his daughter. We were like, "woah, where did that come from?"
We had a perfect night to this great day. We all got traditional hot stone baths and massages. Our sore bodies will thank us later.
Idea of the day: Moira thinks she will miss the hairpin turns of Bhutan. As we live I'm the largest grid-like city in the world, she said she is going to walk around the Upper West Side doing hairpin turns on her own. Watch out those who live there.
Important correction: Lallande did not grow up on Jacaranda Street. She lived there in California. Maybe that is where Lynette grew up.
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