Our next stop was the Punakha dzong. Dzongs are forts that used to be political and administrative centres. Some dzongs still function as government offices, and almost all functional ones also have shrines and monks residing within the premises. The Punakha dzong is beautiful, and this being our first visit to one, we didn’t know what to expect. We were stunned and awed into silence.
Here I shall let the pictures speak. They were not shot for the purpose of this blog, so they’re far from adequate. But they still speak way more than any words of mine possibly can. Suffice to say that we spent way more time here than we intended to, and dropped the idea to travel to the Wangdue Phodrang dzong.
I could however mention one little thing here. In one of the rooms on the first floor, we found a shrine. This is different from the one in the picture. Those were huge idols in a big hall. This was a lot more modest, a room with a shrine, and a monk quietly at work. He was making one of those decorative pieces with multicoloured concentric circles that we had seen in every temple we visited. We were curious about it, but the monk did not seem to speak Hindi or English. In fact he didn’t seem interested in speaking at all. What was really interesting was the material he was using, it seemed like white butter. That’s what made it so soft and easy to mould. He mixed it with colours (don’t know what he used for colours, but I could see coloured sticks lying around) to get the pastel shades. He would squeeze out a small piece from the coloured balls he’d made, and work it into a circle with his fingers. He made several of these in different sizes and colours. And then he put them together one over another in decreasing size. They stuck easily. And then would attach it to the main sculpture he was designing with a toothpick.
I wanted to stay awhile longer, spend sometime by the clear green water, but it was getting late. As I mentioned earlier, drivers in Bhutan don’t like to travel after dark, and sure enough the traffic reduces considerably as the sun goes down. We went back to Punakha town to see if we could find some more passengers to Thimphu. While the driver scouted around, Ramya and I looked for something to eat. But it was too much to ask for a sleepy little town like Punakha. One small restaurant that we found had a fixed menu that they were serving at that hour, and it was non-vegetarian. Being vegetarian really can be a huge disadvantage in some regions.
The driver hadn’t found any passengers, so we left, an uneventful drive back to Thimphu. How I missed Toshi!
Here I shall let the pictures speak. They were not shot for the purpose of this blog, so they’re far from adequate. But they still speak way more than any words of mine possibly can. Suffice to say that we spent way more time here than we intended to, and dropped the idea to travel to the Wangdue Phodrang dzong.
I could however mention one little thing here. In one of the rooms on the first floor, we found a shrine. This is different from the one in the picture. Those were huge idols in a big hall. This was a lot more modest, a room with a shrine, and a monk quietly at work. He was making one of those decorative pieces with multicoloured concentric circles that we had seen in every temple we visited. We were curious about it, but the monk did not seem to speak Hindi or English. In fact he didn’t seem interested in speaking at all. What was really interesting was the material he was using, it seemed like white butter. That’s what made it so soft and easy to mould. He mixed it with colours (don’t know what he used for colours, but I could see coloured sticks lying around) to get the pastel shades. He would squeeze out a small piece from the coloured balls he’d made, and work it into a circle with his fingers. He made several of these in different sizes and colours. And then he put them together one over another in decreasing size. They stuck easily. And then would attach it to the main sculpture he was designing with a toothpick.
I wanted to stay awhile longer, spend sometime by the clear green water, but it was getting late. As I mentioned earlier, drivers in Bhutan don’t like to travel after dark, and sure enough the traffic reduces considerably as the sun goes down. We went back to Punakha town to see if we could find some more passengers to Thimphu. While the driver scouted around, Ramya and I looked for something to eat. But it was too much to ask for a sleepy little town like Punakha. One small restaurant that we found had a fixed menu that they were serving at that hour, and it was non-vegetarian. Being vegetarian really can be a huge disadvantage in some regions.
The driver hadn’t found any passengers, so we left, an uneventful drive back to Thimphu. How I missed Toshi!
1 comment:
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