Blessed Rainy Day in Trashiyangtse

It was actually a weekend. In honor of Friday 23 September, Blessed Rainy Day, Scott and I and some friends got a long weekend. On top of the Friday off and our usual Sunday holiday, we took our half day of work off Saturday and had three glorious full days of no work.

Scott, our lecturer friend Sonam Wangmo, and I jumped in Sonam's car Friday morning and headed to Trashiyangtse (with a quick breakfast stop in Lankhar at Aum Deki's). Sonam had packed us a picnic lunch so we were looking for a good lunch spot before reaching Yangtse (Trashiyangtse is typically shortened to just "Yangtse").

Even before lunch though, there was some important events along the way.

We stopped at Gom Kora, where Scott and I had visited earlier in the year. We stopped because Sonam wanted to make an offering and also because Gom Kora is just so beautiful.

As I'm sure I've already mentioned, Gom Kora is not only beautiful but sacred as well. It's the site of where Guru Rompoche meditated inside a cave and was scared by a serpent. Also at Gom Kora is a big, heavy rock. Carrying it while walking around Gom Kora brings some sort of spiritual luck. Scott picked it up and carried just long enough.

And then at 1 pm, he insisted we pull over to find a stream from which we could take a quick bath. Normally, a skeptic of relgious rituals and supersititious beliefs, Scott had been convinced that at 1 pm, a time proclaimed by a high lama the day before or the day of Blessed Rainy Day, he should splash some water on his head. So that's what we did. Scott pulled over by a stream, walked to the water, and took a head bath. Sonam Wangmo and I, not wanting to walk through leech territory or just not that into the idea of getting wet at 1 pm, didn't do the same. We stayed on the road and watched and took pictures.

Right after our picnic lunch on the side of the road across the river from the Old Trashiyangtse Dzong, we stopped at Chorten Kora. Chorten Kora is a smaller replica of the stupa of Bodhnath which is in Nepal.



After arriving in Yangtse, we had a wonderful evening with friends who had also traveled for the holiday. Sonam spotted the father of a friend, Colonel Kado, who, in recent years is a tour guide and was with some German tourists. He ended up hanging out with us for most of the evening, offering a 5-gallon old oil container of ara. Our teacher friends in Bartsam had friends from Canada visiting, a married couple who had biked from Thimphu with their 3-year old daughter in tow.

The next day, the ten of us set out for Dechen Phodrang. We had hoped a taxi would drive us to the end of the dirt road, which would make for a quick hike to the lakhang. Unfortunately, the taxi could not make it so the quick hike turned into something longer.

It rained for the entirety of what would ordinarily be a really pleasant walk to an old temple, stopping along the way at a school for lunch. We were happy to get under the school's protective covering.

Along the way to Dechen Phodrang, we ran into a man walking the opposite direction. He stopped to talk to Sonam, as all Bhutanese greet each other as they're walking by. The man turned out to be the caretaker of Dechen Phodrang. He switched his direction and walked with us to the temple.

There's a lot of significance to the Dechen Phodrang Lakhang, more than Sonam had any idea about. There was a lot of evidence of Guru Rimpoche meditating there, the imprint of his back left into the rock face that makes up the wall of the temple. You're supposed to rub your hand along the smooth indent. And there were other items as well, even some stones that could end fertility issues.

Even though it was one of the most interesting temples I've ever visited, I was anxious to start hiking back to town, in the rain, before darkness fell.

The next morning, five of us (at this point, we had lost our Bartsam friends with their biking friends) headed to the small town of Kinney to start our hike to Om Ba Nay, considered to be the most significant temple in the east on par with Taktseng in the West. Om Ba Nay is the Tiger's Nest of the east. The houses in Kinney were clustered like a small European hamlet, uncommon in Bhutan.

A view along the way...

You can see Om Ba Nay perched on the cliffs.

The hike there was perhaps the nicest hike I've been on in Bhutan. Two days after Blessed Rainy Day, the sun favored us that day. The ground was dry, we were dry. We passed small villages along the way that gave Sonam a bottle of buttermilk - a refreshment she was hoping for - and offered us tea and lunch, which we couldn't accept due to time.

A local woman guided us directly there and we met a mad monk and a shiney new statue of Guru Rinpoche.

We ate on the same platform where the Guru was perched, and look out onto this view.

Chillies drying in the sun and rice paddies...


We returned to Kinney, where the car was parked, with lemons, giant grapefruits, and the exhaustion of a beautiful day spent hiking.