Bhutan trip - preparing not to trek

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When I broke-out of the trek, and descended back to Paro, my main question was 'what now?' Karma, the owner of the travel agency, Travel with Nivvana, was much more precise. Her questions for me were: 'do you want to see a doctor so you can claim on your insurance?'; 'do you want to rearrange your flights so you can return home?'; and 'do you want me to arrange a cultural trip?'.

I responded that I wanted to see more of Bhutan, we worked out, over the next four days, to put together a trip that would suit me. It ended up taking so long as all the government agencies were closed over the weekend, and so could not issue revised permits and visa.

My parameters were that I wanted to see the cultural sights of Bhutan; its landscape and scenery; and wanted the opportunity to do some wildlife photography. In addition I preferred to go to fewer places, and spend several days at each spot, rather than rushing from place to place. Adding a cost ceiling completed my part in these preparations. So for these four days I wandered about Paro, and its immediate environs.
It was only after returning to Paro that I started to get a full idea of how pervasive and important archery is in Bhutan.

On the first day in Bhutan I had seen the local archery field, and seen some people in a friendly competition.  The Sunday I was there, it was a full moon, and it was a Buddhist festival day. The archery field was transformed - there was a serious match on, between two different Dzongkhag (equivalent to UK counties), and the match was also a celebration of the festival. Archery is to Bhutan what cricket is (was?) to the UK. There are two teams of five to eight competing; each competitor gets two shots from each end of the field; the match takes a long time (I was there most of the afternoon); the distances they fire over is long; and serious matches have a dress code - everyone is required to dress in the national dress. There is a great deal of offering and morale boosting between shots, as they go into team huddles. There is even a role for WAGs in this team building - their job is to flirt and to act provocatively with the opposition while they are in their huddle to try and put them off their beat. Archery is practiced at all levels, from infants to Olympic standards. Truck drivers tend to practice with heavy darts, while the very poor will throw rocks at a target. It is played by various sets of rules - modern compound bows, traditional bows only, and so on. There did not seem to be any use of modern sport bows, ie counterweights and sights. I saw no women involved with archery, but the dart throwing does seem to be by profession rather than gender.

The other sight of interest was a motor bike. I knew Royal Enfield were continuing to be made in India, but I had not seen a pure Indian design. The bike below corrected this omission.


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Black-necked cranes

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I had the opportunity to visit the Black-Necked Crane Information Centre while I was touring Bhutan. While there I realised that I have had the opportunity to see these birds at both ends of their migration route - from Tibet in the summer, over the Himalayas (at very great altitude), to Bhutan in the winter.

In the first pictures they are in Tibet feeding up in late summer in preparation for their migration southwards. Those in the snow are late leavers from Tibet, with winter just around the corner.

The last pictures show the only crane in Bhutan while I was there. All the other birds would have been in Tibet for the summer.

The bird in Bhutan is a rather sad story. It was injured by a feral dog, and has had to be retained in an enclosure, while it heals. The bird has been in its enclose for nearly two years. My guess was that it has healed, but is unlikely ever to be able to fly (you can see that the injury to its left wing is extensive, and seems to have set badly), and so will not be released to the wild.

These cranes are sociable animals and use the crane dance for mating, but also for all sorts of social interactions in groups of up to a dozen. While, like most wild birds, they can be frightened by humans near by, there is some evidence that they recognise men in the Bhutanese national costume, and are less scared by such individuals. This individual bird seems to have adapted somewhat to its living conditions, and will tolerate humans at fairly close quarters. It also, on occasion, does the crane dance when there are people there. I was very fortunate, that it did the dance for me.

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A Tale of Two Teasels