Wind Horse Kingdom

October 2023

Khandu was proud and a little embarrassed by the perfect pavement we were riding. In this part of Bhutan near Thimphu, the capital city, we didn’t have to worry about landslides. He insisted the money we paid for our expensive visas went toward rebuilding washed out bridges on his country’s rugged mountain roads, as if a sketchy road were the only way to get a thrill on a motorcycle. In truth, traffic in this Himalayan Buddhist hermit kingdom was tame. It was an unfamiliar experience riding a highway in the eastern hemisphere without the terror I’d gotten hooked on after so many trips to neighboring India. It amazed me how two cultures living so close could live so differently. Just 100 miles from the border with West Bengal, the city of Thimphu’s drivers invited us to pass and used their turn signals to warn us about oncoming cars (a noble version of the way Americans warn each other about speed traps). Indians might be gentle with one another in bumper to bumper city traffic, but on the highway it’s every man for himself.

Without Khandu, we weren’t allowed to be in the country. The Bhutanese government required a licensed tour operator to chaperone us at all times. We couldn’t do better for a guide. Khandu had fallen in love with motorcycles while working as a mechanical engineer in India, where Royal Enfield bikes are ubiquitous. When he returned to Bhutan, he wrote a letter to the King asking permission to lead motorcycle tours. His majesty, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, granted him the concession. The government permit allowed him to transform his passion into a business. More than a business, he built a motorcycle culture from scratch on the strength of his character.

The route was a simple out and back from Paro, Bhutan’s second city in the drier western region. The country is divided into two biospheres by a north-south running spur of the Himalayan Mountains. The entire country is the size of western Washington State, my home in the US, with 10% of the population. All of Bhutan has less than 800,000 people. We’d be riding east over the mountains to the more tropical part. Our destination was the coronation site of the King and the winter residence of the country’s Master Abbot, Lama Khempo, at Punakha. What I’d heard about the small town of Punakha’s massive castle fortress seemed mythical. In a lush valley at the confluence of two rivers, Bhutan’s tribes were united in the 1600’s by a renegade Tibetan lama called Zhabdrung Rimpoche. He brought the scattered tribal fiefs together to form a separate culture, distinct from Tibet. The Tibetans invaded Bhutan for the next 400 years. A succession of lamas set up fortresses, or “dzongs”, all over the country. The locations they chose were easy to defend like the arm of a mountain with cliffs on three sides, or near a body of water with access from a bridge. They became important religious centers for Mahayana Buddhism. While never under the British empire, Bhutan was granted independence by Britain’s colonial Indian Army at the turn of the 20th century. The security guarantees the British gave them were enough to keep the Tibetans away for good.

Paro

As I crossed a footbridge to Paro Dzong just a few hours off the plane, a young novice in crimson robes ran past me to catch up with his friends. The fortress still serves as a religious school. Its bright white walls sit on a hillside overlooking neon yellow fields of rice, ready for harvest. A fast, shallow river flows in front of it like a moat. Higher up the hillside is a round monastery that now serves as the national museum. Inside the gate, a walking path led through a meadow of tall grass to its base. Nobu, our licensed walking guide explained that on the fortress side of the bridge, traditional dress was mandatory for all Bhutanese. Every woman in sight wore a long skirt and short, gold jacket. The men wore a short belted robe called a “gho”, with tall socks and a sash.

My partner on the ride was a Texan man named Taylor. He was older than me and a similar spirit. We’d both read the same biographies of Genghis Khan and Comanchee Indian chiefs. We both beat the same path around the world. He’d been to India and the Middle East. Like me, he’d spent time in Japan. When I reached out to TUSK Motorcycle Tours through their website, I asked for dates and prices. Khandu told me about a short, 5-day tour in October with a solo American. It fit perfectly with a work trip I had planned to Southern India. After a lot of paperwork and a large, sketchy wire transfer to an unlisted Bhutanese bank, the government granted a visa to join Taylor.

We were on Himalayan model Royal Enfield motorcycles. Khandu maintains a fleet of 15-20 bikes in pristine shape. Some of that maintenance is done on the road because Khandu leads every ride himself. When I pointed out that the front brake was soft, Khandu changed the fluid and bled the lines in the hotel parking lot. We left the dzong and explored the opposite hillsides for a better view of Paro. The city is actually a rural rice farming community. The majority of residents live in farmhouses scattered over the fields that cover the valley bottom. Downtown is only 5 square blocks of low rise buildings on a neon yellow mosaic. Every structure is decorated with artistry and built with care. Each has a traditional roofline with hand painted designs and red chili peppers hung out to dry on the eaves. The impression is like a Bavarian alpine village transported from ancient China.

We rode to the top of the hill on the opposite side of the valley. What I thought were patches of snow from the plane turned out to be clusters of prayer flags on long pine wood poles. Khandu told me the white ones tipped by wooden spears are put up by families to remember their dead. It takes 108 flags to purify the karma of a single lifetime. The flags flap prayers until they release their last fiber into the wind. Ghostly forests of bare, sun-bleached poles run the length of the ridge.

The rural scenery made me imagine Bhutan as what America would be like with Buddhism instead of manifest destiny and the prosperity gospel of evangelical Christianity. The government of Bhutan promotes its Gross National Happiness Index. In a Philip K. Dick history of Buddhist America, rural and urban citizens look out for one another; Grateful for a slow and steady rise in living standards without brash commercialism or pushy hustle. Yet, for all Bhutan’s ambivalence about GDP, there’s an unsubtle feeling of unfulfilled potential. The hotels during the busy season are mostly empty and the rooms feel like they haven’t been slept in for weeks. The dining rooms are quiet. I ate alone at a buffet in a large, empty hall with 5 waiters standing at attention. Despite the Pyongyang vibes, none of the waiters had student loans or crushing medical debt. Both are provided free by the state.

The next day we headed east to Thimphu through a highway that ran along the bottom of a river canyon. My RPMs suddenly redlined and I lost power. Khandu turned around to fix my broken clutch cable. TUSK carries spares of everything in a country with no motorcycle dealers or repair shops. Nearby, a suspension bridge led across the whitewater river to a dirt path up a hillside to a temple. Khandu said what the Bhutanese revere more than the temple, is the 500 year old bridge. It was built with chain links forged and hammered by hand. The palm-sized iron links are prized for bringing good fortune. The traveling monk that introduced iron metallurgy to the region still has his face on the currency. A second wooden one is strung up beside it; modern, but somehow less substantial. Before Khandu finished with the spare cable, I watched a man cross with a load of bricks on his back. It solved a mystery for me on how Buddhist temples get built in such hard to reach places. They stack a load on a wooden shelf, then wear the shelf like a backpack and climb.

When we put down our kickstands at the summit of Dochula Pass an hour later, wisps of fog were blowing through the shrines. I assumed a historical plaque I read about a queen committing herself to building 108 shrines to honor her dead warriors was a legend from Bhutan’s ancient past. Over coffee at the circular summit lodge, I learned it commemorated Bhutanese soldiers killed by Indian separatists near Assam in 2003. Bhutanese ritual deepens everything around it.

Punakha

Monkeys ran beside us as we rode down into the lush forest on the other side of the mountains. Prayer flags hung like nets at every sharp bend. Lettering on the mud flaps of heavily decorated trucks hauling timber out of the mountains whispered “Good” “Luck”. At the end of an emerald reservoir just above where two rivers joined, Punakho appeared like two large, red conning towers surfacing on the back of a monstrous white whale. An orchard of rhododendron trees frothed in its wake. We pulled into a cow field and stared at it in disbelief. It hardly seemed real. Nothing that beautiful exists in the world without billboards and hotels thrown up against its walls. The scale and perfection made it look like computer generated imagery.

A timber cantilever bridge spanned the narrowest part of the channel. We parked our bikes and crossed the bridge. Then climbed steep golden steps into a wide stone courtyard with a fig tree growing at its center. The courtyard was deserted and, without humans for scale, it played tricks on my eyes. The canopy of the huge tree shaded nearly the entire 200 foot width of the plaza. The Bodhi Tree, or Tree of Awakening, symbolizes the tree Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) sat beneath when he attained enlightenment. The central tower is for the brotherhood of monks called a Sangha. The top levels are the winter apartments of the Master Abbot and the King. The details spoke to the accessibility of the monarchy. Chickens pecked at the gaps in the stones. Slippers and rubber boots sat on the stairs outside while monks went about their duties. Group worship is reserved for ceremonies, but the main shrine of the fortress is open to visitors. Pillars sheathed in finely hammered gold leaf support the 40 foot ceilings. Four dimensions of artistry were on every surface. A statue of Shakyamuni Buddha reposes at the center. Fourteen generations of Chief Abbots dating back to 1637 line the walls beneath tapestries of the Buddha’s life.

I love the freedom of motorcycles. On solo rides I linger at every scenic spot until the sun blows out the light. I worried that being attached to a guide would stop me from getting shots I wanted. A group ride never turns around to get the shot. My strike missions to get photos during golden hour were out of the question. Once we reached the hotel, I couldn’t leave. The flipside was that the stops were efficient. Khandu could point out every angle, having been on countless trips to them over the years. I was only able to teach him a few he didn’t already know.

We visited one of the rice farms we’d been riding through the past four days. Khandu cancelled the farm-to-table dinner he arranged for us because the farmer needed the whole family to bring in the harvest. Multiple generations live in the same household. But the traditional stone bath after sunset was still on. Smoke rose from behind a low outbuilding where two wooden bathtubs protruded a foot beneath the wall. Wooden slats separated the rear section of the tub from the main section inside the hut. A farmer with a deeply lined face used metal tongs to pull red hot granite stones from an outdoor fire, then submerged the glowing stones in the bath water behind the slats. Naked inside the tub, I felt the floor of the tub shake as the rock bubbled and bounced like a baby dragon egg trying to hatch. Taylor crushed aromatic leaves in his tub and I pounded on the wall for more stones. This was their chance to find out how many it took to boil a human.

We left Punakho the next morning and rode to Thimphu. The capital is larger than Paro and has the feeling of a resort town like Whistler Village in British Columbia, Canada. There’s a collection of mid-rise buildings 7 stories tall beneath an enormous statue of a golden Buddha. Three hillsides forested with conifers surround the city. One includes a nature reserve for Bhutan’s national animal the Takin, a goat that looks like a buffalo about the size of a deer. Pedestrian suspension bridges connect neighborhoods to the city center. The city was busy with foot traffic. Crowds circled clockwise around a large stupa (always clockwise as a sign of devotion), a white bell shaped structure several stories tall and tapered to a point at the top. Buddhists use stupas to concentrate their prayers for better communication with heaven. Cars circled in the same direction at roundabouts. I bought souvenirs and tried not to get lost. Government buildings looked like Buddhist temples in the same way a large post office in the west will look like the acropolis in Athens, Greece.

Paro Taktsang

We left Thimphu before dawn the next day. It was a mid-October morning and bitter cold before the sun came up. I rode with my left hand gripping my engine to extract as much warmth as possible. I wanted to reach Tiger’s Nest in good light. Paro Taktsang, “The Tiger’s Nest”, is cliffside monastery up the valley from where we started our ride. You can see it from the valley bottom but there are no roads to access it from any direction. Khandu told us a story about hiking to it as a boy with his school teacher. He said it was more like rock climbing with carved handholds and individual steps hewn into the rock. Today, the upper section of the 2-mile trail (4 miles round-trip) has been enlarged into a two-person staircase with a steel railing. It begins as a dirt path and ascends nearly straight up through the forest. It takes visitors 1-3 hours to hike. Teams of small horses to carry tourists up a slower alternate route for the first mile, grazed beside stone cairns. Slightly crowded at the base, traffic on the trail thinned towards the top.

I glimpsed the monastery repeatedly through the trees. A series of red interlocking roofs ascended in a circular shape of diminishing tiers around the proud part of the cliff. Gilded trim caught the morning light. When I reached the lookout on the cliff directly across from it, white washed stone painted with golden disks stood out against crimson bands. Steep, ship-ladder staircases led from one level to the next. It was as if a portaledge were bolted into the cliff-face. There’s no trace of the outcropping of rock that supports it. The walls of the monastery are built flush with the cliffside. Three large pine trees stick out like candelabra from crack in the granite.

The trail left the forest and descended directly down the cliff, opposite the monastery. In a few hundred feet, it wrapped back sharply into a cleft made by a waterfall, then climbed the opposite side. The monastery was silent and almost completely deserted. Most groups were still making their way up the trail. Visitors have to surrender their shoes, backpacks, and cellphones before entering. A police officer rotates in monthly to guard the entrance. It’s so quiet my socks echoed like ski boots in a gondola terminal. The first sanctuary is a sacred, natural cave at the base of the complex. An Indian monk credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet, Guru Rinpoche, meditated alone there for 3 years in the 8-9th century before the monastery was built in the 1600s. The cave is opened once a year for the public to enter.

Nobu joined us on the hike and escorted us inside the monastery. A robed monk with a cleanly shaven head murmured a sutra at the back of the room, his head bowed in concentration. Then he answered a phone call. I understood the urge. Life demands action and pulls us away. I started my own meditation practice three years earlier, a month before America reported its first case of the Coronavirus. I was in a deep, obsessive love with a yoga instructor. I got into meditation to understand her and stuck with it to get over her.

Nobu and I sat on the floor in silence for 15 minutes. The sanctuary where pilgrims burned offerings at the feet of the Buddha smelled like cedar and musk, an intimate aroma like the discarded t-shirt of a partner. My mind was flooded with memories by the smell of a place I’d never been. I peeked from a window down the dizzying 2000 ft drop. I wondered how long I’d have to meditate for my adrenaline to return to normal. Each sanctuary is the size of a bedroom. In every one there is a large ceramic statue of a sitting Buddha, painted in gold and accompanied by Guru Rinpoche, and at least one other auspicious deity from Tibetan Buddhism. The teachings of the Shakyamuni Buddha don’t mention a creator, but Tibetan Buddhism has a crowded pantheon of divinities. Buddhism that came north from India was co-opted by native animists in isolated Himalayan mountain communities (like Catholicism co-opted pagan saints). Animal masks and spirits play a big role in ceremonies.

In the highest shrine, I made an offering and lit a bowl of burning tallow. If there’s a place where a seeker can find absolution from karma, it’s on a pilgrimage to the Tiger’s Nest. I could almost speak my deepest regrets aloud as I stepped away. The descent took just 30 minutes. We sat on a bench drinking pints of the local Druk brand lager and reflected on our final ride. Nobu had gone back up the trail to help a woman with a twisted ankle walk the last few hundred yards. If an Indian highway was every man for himself, Bhutan was every man in it together.

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Visit TUSK Motorcycle Tours to learn more about motorcycle tours in Bhutan: https://www.bhutantuskmotorcycle.com/