Glimpses into Bhutan in the Year 2000 – A Travel Diary Part 4

 

10^th of October

Our hotel is called Wangdicholing Tourist Lodge [now called Resort]. In the morning we have to move to Jakar Village Lodge [Jakar Village Below Jakar Dzong, Bumthang 32001 Bhutan].

From the car I can see hemp everywhere.

First Temple -: Jampa or Jambey Lhakhang. Very old, beautiful; was also cleared for the king's visit. It is a temple dedicated to Maitreya.

The national language of Bhutan is Dzongkha. It is close to what we call classic Tibetan and belangs to the tibeto-birman languages, which belongs to the non-sinitic sino-tibetan languages. Have a look at the different taxonomic approaches [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibeto-Burman_languages]. Oher languages of Bhutan include: Brokkat, Brokpa, Chocangaca, Lakha, and various dialects. Dzongkha is a monsyllabic tonal language and is written in an offspring of nagari like Tibetan, Ladakhi, Nepali and others. Orthography is tricky as some letters are used to mark the tone and are otherwise not pronounced. So: lha, bla, la and lags are all pronounced la but each with a different tone. Rinzing Wangchuk would be written like rigs'dzin dband phyug. This makes it hard to quickly acquire a few word from a word list.

Kadrichannang – please

Kajingche – thank you

Kusuzongpa – Greetings

Gonmatre – excuse me

Second Temple -: Kurje Lhakhang. Guru Rinpoche's body imprint in the stone is worshiped. Similarity to Tibetan architecture.

 

Flowers - a tulip that opens.

"When we eat it, we get the devil," said a little boy who saw me eating hemp. Wonderful salat.

Third Temple -: Tamzhing Lhündrup Monastery, behind the suspension bridge. Black Hat Dance - perhaps a cleansing rite.
Unreal how the black crows fly past the black shadows of the woods.

King Jigme Singgye Wangchuk came. We saw the people on the side of the road, all lined up. Incence offerings were made.

An Italian group thought the words were funny: "The dzong is closed."

J. and I walked one more street past the Dzong to have a look at the Swiss forest project.