Phajoding

The road doesn't go up the mountain much further past my house. A few more bends and you gate to the Royal Gate. Past this, I am not allowed. The ravine that follows is the domain of the four Queens -- all sisters -- wives of the Fourth Druk Gyalpo. The mountains above are accessible from another path. The path goes along the ridge up the mountain to a series of monasteries 4,000 feet higher -- in the clouds most of the time.

As you start the hike at the Bhutan Broadcasting System Tower, you are met by tens of thousands of prayer flags. It's like 1,000 carnivals all at once all dedicated to making blessings for all sentient beings. Prayer flags are always massed at strategic points where the wind can carry the prayers from the passes to the rivers where they get carried far and wide by the water.

After a couple of hours, you come to a small monastery with one caretaker monk. It was built in 1345 and has a beautiful temple inside where I said my prayers. Two hours later, you get to Phajoding - a set of beautiful monasteries. Since it was Para-Nirvana, each had a puja (ritual) going on with chanting and horn-blowing. Next to the main monastery is a sacred pond. All the lakes and ponds here are sacred and it is forbidden to swim in them or disturb them in any way. More on this later.

In one of the monasteries is a dragon's egg. A large round stone that has been there for several hundred years -- and yes, it is believed to be a dragon's egg. As you look up, you see one more monastery another thousand feet higher perched on the cliff just under the top ridge. We made this hike - another hour - in the mist. When we arrived, we made offerings to the monks and entered an incense smoke-filled room with women and men chanting at their own rhythm and rotating their prayer beads. We made prayers and then went outside to have butter tea and biscuits. Filled out water bottles with cold holy water from three different springs, spun the prayer wheels in the chortens, and began our descent.

Had we gone further - and climbed over the ridge, we would have come to an active aerial buiral ground. This is where some families bring deceased children. When the child dies, they carry the body all the way up the mountain, wrapped in cloth and leave it there for the birds and animals to eat. Sometimes, they dismember the body first. It is hard to imagine how families have the courage and faith to do this - the purpose is to not waste anything -- to make sure the body becomes of use to other sentient beings - to provide nourishment for them.

Another hour later, in leopard territory, and nearly always cloaked in mist and fog, is one of the larger sacred lakes surrounded by rhododendron. I have yet to visit this lake but there is a haunting story that comes from there. A few years ago, some boys went there and threw rocks in the lake, a sign of disrespect. The clouds and rain rolled in immediately and they got lost for a month in the forests. 4 of the 6 boys died and the other two emerged emaciated in an entirely different valley.

You cannot mountaineer here. The mountains are the homes of deities as are the lakes. Nature here is imbibed with spirits and it is no wonder why when you see the clouds form, change and move like ghostly apparitions. The Himalayas definitely feel like another realm. I extended my trip here by one week yesterday so that I could spend some trekking the realm of these spirits.