Each morning teachers sign in in the principal's office. I was flipping through to find my page and saw May, April, March, February slip by. Where have the months gone? Agonizingly slowly they passed by as I was struggling to adjust. Now they seem to have evaporated.
At home the months and seasons have markers for me. The lilac tree, snow melting and familiar school holidays. Here all is new. My markers are election holidays, Lord Buddha's Parinirvana, and Guru Rinpoche's birthday.
Of course a memorable marker of time will be Rob's visit. He has already been here a week. On Sunday we traveled to Wangchu with Namkha, fellow teacher and archer. Archery is Bhutan's national sport and they play with expensive compound bows. The targets are tiny and they are shooting 145 metres. We walked to a picnic site at the river which is raging brown with monsoon waters. I had not noticed the "beware of snakes" sign on my previous visit with Dave. Rob and Namkha saw a large cobra cross the road later in the day.
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| Compound - target is between red flags tine |
The river valley was hot and muggy. We walked up towards the Lakhang (temple) built on an old Dzong site they uncovered while excavating for the dam. I had found drawings of the dzong in 1783, in a great old book I discovered in the library. The book contains diary excerpts and sketches by Samuel Davis, a cartographer on an Indian/English trade exploration to Bhutan. He was a talented artist and the drawings are fascinating. Walking up we came across traditional archery being played with bamboo bows and arrows. A significantly larger amount of local ara was being consumed at the match. The shooting distance is about the same, less hits on the target, due to either a lack of accuracy or perhaps ara.
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| Traditional - you can see the target behind the middle man |
Wangchu is labeled Chukha on many maps and is in the valley bottom at 1650 metres above sea level. Tsimilakha is on google earth at an elevation of 2350m. The drive is about 14 to 16 kilometres, crisscrossing the mountainside. Wangchu village sits almost directly below Tsimilakha and you can peer down at it from our school picnic grounds.
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Zangdopelri Lakhang |
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