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Here are some photos from Common Sense and Whiskey, chapter 4, Bhutan. Our visit was in June, 1997. You can buy professional prints of most of these photos in the Bhutan Gallery. You can buy Common Sense and Whiskey on Amazon.com, or by clicking here.
Or, go back to Chapter 3: Papua New Guinea, or on to Chapter 5: The Trans-Siberian Railroad
Monks at he Queens’ personal monastery, on a bluff over Thimpu town, Thimpu, Bhutan.
As we walked in, a young woman threw dice onto a plate held by a monk. Phruba observed for a while.
“That girl has exams starting tomorrow. She is seeing if she will do well.”dragonmountainruralthunderkingdomghopaddybuddhismmonkthimpuasiabuddhisthimalayamonasteryarchitecturebhutanese
Indigenous Art School, Thimpu, Bhutan. Trying to keep traditional ways alive, the government brings children who show talent here from all over the country to learn to draw the traditional religious thangkas, or paintings, and to learn carving and sculpting.
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Rolling out of town on our way upcountry, we stopped for this nice view, through prayer flags, above Thimpu.
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At an immigration checkpoint, here's a prayer wheel turned by water power. This is terribly auspicious for the guy who built it because the more you turn a prayer wheel the better. He’s set for life, or at least the life of the stream.
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Wangdi was lined with ramshackle Indian-style trading stalls that Barbara Crossette (in her book So Close to Heaven) kindly observed, “defy all attempts to define them as quaint.”
Slapping sticks of dynamite on the rock, holding it in place with mud. Phruba, Mirja and I scurried back. Jigme rolled the van back around the corner to a place with no rocks above it. The blast rocked down and back up the valley and rocked us in our chests. It shook smaller pines out of the ground and sent them skittering down the hill in a hundred places. It cracked the rock.
The archery finals had the whole town turned out. They pitted Druk Air versus the Agriculture Ministry, these two teams winnowed from the original eight. Rain couldn’t dampen spirits, but not a gho on the grounds smelled fresh.
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