The Boys' Sick Room - My Humble Abode

I’m perched high on the ridge of a Himalayan foothill, a rise thousands of feet from the valley floor. The area is densely vegetated and steep. There are monkeys and wild boar in the jungle. It seems like it would be humid and hot but for now, spring just beginning, the hillside receives cool breezes and pleasing temperatures.

Jampeling Higher Secondary School, where I teach and live, serves half boarders, half day-scholars. I’m occupying a kind of quarantine ward next to the boy’s dorm warden. My home is a large room, the size of an average American two-car garage. The décor is similar too: all concrete, cold and plain. It has a sink, another small, closet-like room where I’m meant to bathe, and another room of the same size with a squat toilet. Named for its original purpose, my home is affectionately called the Boys' Sick Room.

Like many who hear about my accommodation, when I arrived, I asked, “What happens if a boy gets sick while I’m living in here?”

“Boys don’t get sick, sir.”

“Never?”

“Never, sir. All year, maybe one boy feels a little ill. He does not need the Sick Room though. Now the girls, they get sick! So many girls get sick. We need the Girl’s Sick Room very much.”

I’m not going to feign open acceptance of this concrete barracks. Though I was forewarned that I’d be in a remote area with little services, I was duped by the powers-that-be, those who arranged my teaching position and accommodation, that the Boy’s Sick Room wasn’t that bad.

“You have a modern toilet, a sink, and a geezer,” a woman explained. “It’s rare to have a geezer in your accommodation.”

“A geezer?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Oh, of course. You’ll have hot water all the time.”

Befuddled, I considered what I was missing: Geezer. Geezer?

Ah.

Geyser. Water heater.

The geezer, a tank perched high in a room that must be a shower room but resembles more a solitary confinement cell, produced a wonderful outpour of scalding hot water, for nearly seven seconds. Then there was a deep gurgling noise, a choking, a death gasp, and the stream came to a halt. The cold water however, came in a frigid deluge, copious enough to make a polar beer hypothermic. And there I was, naked as a jaybird, hoping for a hot shower.

But I came prepared. As part of the teacher orientation in Thimphu, I was told that I needed an immersion boiler (the term was about as familiar to me as a hot water geezer.) I purchased the thing, but was reassured by Karma—the name of the man dropping us off at our sites, not the concept of eternal comeuppance—that I would not need the immersion boiler as per the glories of the geezer. Good thing I didn’t believe in Karma.

After shivering a bit, drying off, and dressing, I confronted the immersion boiler, a metal coil connected to a wire that is meant to be plugged into the wall. The whole contraption is then supposed to be dumped into a bucket of water in order to heat it up. My understanding of electricity is basic to say the least. Still, I’ll wager that electrifying a metal coil and throwing it into a bucket of water isn’t the safest of methods to produce bathwater.

When in Rome.

I tended to the immersion boiler carefully as, in the very same conversation that the powers-that-be told us to purchase one, they also included, “Do NOT test the heat of the water by putting your finger in when it’s still plugged in. There have been several deaths from electric shock when people do this.” Then, to allay our fears, they added, “But don’t worry. None of those deaths were foreign teachers.”

Luckily, the immersion boiler only produced the faintest of sounds like a turn-of-the-century electric chair. When steam started to rise from the bucket, I disconnected Sparky from the wall, tested the water (tepid), did not die, and proceeded to strip down (again) and give myself a bucket bath.

Here’s where any romanticizing of living in “The Happiest Country in the World” goes on hiatus. I believe Americans, even those most critical of said citizens, like I am, consider hot showers a basic human right. Perhaps such a small percentage of Americans venture abroad solely based on the fact that they cannot be assured that heavenly promise of limitless hot water at the start or end of a long day. The courage it takes to climb El Capitan or navigate a country where you do not know the language is minor compared to what is needed to stand naked in a concrete room and dump quarts of tepid water on you in the name of personal hygiene. I’d not bathe at all for the year if it was socially acceptable. But alas, I am an anomaly enough around here already and do not need to add an aura of stench to announce my arrival. So I dump the water on top of me and scream and dump and scream, and summon up enough courage to stop in the frigid air and lather up. Then I repeat with the minor pours until there is a theory of cleanliness about me. The light film of soap that is always left serves as an effective deodorant.

The first time I went about this process to its completion, I realized that an ambidextrous approach is best; if you only use your right hand for the pouring, that same hand and arm never gets rinsed and you are left with an arm covered in soap and no more hot water with which to get the soap off. I also learned later on, when I let the immersion boiler really heat the water in the bucket, that scalding water poured over one’s head in small amounts is also not enjoyable. I’ve since found a comfortable median, but it does not change the fact that when I am not pouring I must stand in the cold air, soaked to the bone, my only relief a quart at a time of warm water.

The “modern” toilet in the Boy’s Sick Room is a squat toilet whose only novelty that can be considered modern is its flush. Gone are the days where one need to fill a bucket with water and wash one’s fecal matter down the porcelain maw. The modern concept of a flush serves that purpose. Unless of course, the flush doesn’t work and only trickles the faintest of streams around an island of filth, as is the case in the Boy’s Sick Room. Then the pouring of water from a bucket comes in handy.

A day in to my stay in the Boys' Sick Room, the water stopped working all together. I think I maxed out the capability of the plumbing, what with expecting to both bathe and have water to drink. The Boy’s Sick Room has never had to entertain such a prima donna. I addressed the lack of water with the point-person that I am supposed to address such issues with. As if sensing the dilemma he came and kindly asked, “Is everything working fine, sir?”

To which I responded, “Actually, sir, the water has stopped working.”

“Yes, sir. And the geezer, sir?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really work either.”

“Really, sir? I think that maybe it does, sir.”

We walked into solitary, and I showed him the lack of water, hot or otherwise.

“But everything else works, sir?”

I thought critically of what other items he might be considering, items that either work or don’t work. The stove, that I purchased, works. The tiny space heater that I purchased, did not work; it lasted about a half day, sputtering and whining and then cantankerously clunking to a stop. For all intents and purposes the Boys' Sick Bed worked, and the Boy’s Sick Tables and Chairs that they provided me with were sufficient for sitting and placing things on.

“Yes, it all works.”

“Excellent, sir. I am glad.”

Then, without another mention of the water, he walked off, pleased that I had a functioning bed and tables.

The water goes out every three weeks or so. I’m told it’s a long hike to the water source and when there is a break in the line—often from cattle herders who divert the water into troughs—someone needs to take it upon himself to hike up there and fix the break. There is no town service to do this, the teachers or the principal himself must go up there to connect the water. Since this area is developing, people are also tapping into our line and taking the water into their own homes. This doesn’t stop the water entirely from reaching the Boys' Sick Room—which is the end of the line. Rather, I get the last dregs of water, the surviving stream after numerous syphoning and stealing from the Jampeling water line. When it’s dinnertime and many people are using the water, I only get tear drops from the tap. Conversely though, when no one is using the water, usually late at night, my tap hisses, all the pressure of the entire line culminating in a piercing treble right at the back of the Sick Room.

The power goes out much more frequently than the water. Everyone has candles and flashlights on hand for such occasions. I have my trusty headlamp, though I am not seasoned enough yet to remember to keep it in the same place. When the lights suddenly go out and I am left standing in the dark, I grope blindly around the room until I encounter it again. It’s a fun little game.

Mine’s a quaint existence. I’m told that by Bhutanese standards I live in a “semi-urban” area. There are a few shops around, all selling the same staples: onions, potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, ramen noodles, lentils, eggs, processed cheese, Lays potato chips (masala flavored), betel nut, Coca-Cola. Fruit is hard to come by. So is alcohol since I live close to a dry college campus. My meals are plain and I often eat the same thing every meal of the day for days in a row. Luckily I am invited to eat with neighbors often, which breaks the routine of egg and potato. They know where to get meat, a feat that I still haven’t figured out myself.

All’s good though. When I catch a rat scurry across my floor, or a giant spider perches above me while I bathe, I remind myself that this experience is exactly what I hoped for. I wanted to get out into a remote region of the world, to live in a way that is starkly different than my American life. There is some good learning to be done when all is new, different, and uncomfortable. And I am relishing just how different it is.

As an aside, I’ve been in Jampeling for a month and a half now. It’s cold season here and in every class I teach there are at least three or four students who cough throughout the period. Some days students are absent, the day-scholars at home in their beds, cared for by their mothers. As one would expect, the boarding students are also absent at times, girls and boys. I know the girls are off in the Girls' Sick Room, being taken care of by the matron. But the boys, they have to go back into the dorm room where it smells like teenage male hormones, where their buddies are loud and obnoxious and lack real pity or desire to help their suffering friend. When I see that the boys are absent from some illness, do I feel bad that they have no quiet place to recover, no warm bed away from the dorm rooms? Hell no. The Boys' Sick Room is my home. They better get their asses back to the dorms.

Besides, boys don’t get sick anyway. 

A Walk to the Bakery

I prepare for my walk to the upper market. Mr. Tiger has offered to find me a ride, but I need the exercise and really, it’s not that far away. It’ll take thirty minutes and I’ll be able to get bread, a rare commodity in these parts. 

From Jampeling’s position on the vista point of a high foothill, the path climbs steeply to the road. I have two choices of ascension: I can take the paved path past the principal’s quarters where he’ll be sitting outside in the sun, painting intricate deities or Buddhist symbols onto wooden furniture he built himself. He’ll invite me in for tea and tea will turn into beer and beer into dinner and I’ll never make it to the market. I could also take the path that winds through the caretakers’ quarters. I’ll climb the strati of class, with an Escherean twist; as I go up, the homes are poorer, wood and straw and corrugated metal. They are tidy though, and the tenants seem without concern that I hike right through their front porches, over their latrines, into their lives for a few brief seconds. It’s an intimate crossing. I’ll offer greetings—kuzu zangpo la—and they’ll respond with the same. Maybe they’ll ask a follow up question that I won’t understand. I’ll smile and look bewildered and they’ll feel sorry for me and let me pass without further inquiries. Higher up I’ll pass the Indian road workers, poorer still, who will hold their stares at me until I am long gone. I’ll smile and nod, but I’ll only receive the slightest acknowledgement of the gesture. I’ll wonder if it’s their fatigue, or their homesickness, or their anger that makes them so taciturn.

            I opt for the path by the principal’s quarters, remembering that he is out of town so I’ll be able to cross without being doted on. As I climb the steep concrete stairs through thick woods, I look at the crest and four monks are sitting perched on the concrete roadside rail. They stare down at me as an oddity, a white man surfacing from the foothill jungles. As I approach, I can see that the maroon wrapped figures are young—teenagers perhaps—just about the age of my students. I nod and one approaches in a brazen, John Wayne strut.

            “Hello, sir. How are you, sir?” He seems shocked by his own boldness but, as if suddenly aware of my surprise as well, acts as if his greeting is as natural as the stinging nettle bordering the road.

            “I’m fine. How are you?”

            He continues with the John Wayne. “Okay. Fine, sir. What is your name, sir?”

            “I’m Josh.”

            He extends his hand and I shake it. He smiles and softens. His friends look on and laugh. There is no sense of profound meditation, no lotus position or guttural prayers among these teen boys. One is wearing Nikes. They’re just figuring out what to do with their rapt curiosity. Who is this figure that is standing on the roadside with them?

            “Sir is traveling here?”

            “No, teaching here.”

            “College, sir?”

            “Higher secondary school. Just here, at Jampeling.”

            “Ah. Teacher, sir?”

            “Yes. Teacher.”

            We stand there for a few quiet seconds, the others still looking me up and down, smiling.

            I interrupt, “Well, I’m going to keep going up. I’ve got some shopping to do. Nice to meet you.”

            “Nice to meet you, sir.”

            I leave the monks and keep moving up the winding road, recently paved, smelling of tar and heat. I pass a small stall where I know they sell doma because the odor wafts out and I am reminded of the gagging feeling I had when I took the betel nut for the first time. I pass the garment shop where ersatz t-shirts and sweatpants are sold. In front of one shop a man stands smartly dressed in his gho. His hair is gelled up. He wears glasses, has a freshly washed face.

            “Hello, sir,” he says.

            “Hello,” I respond, wondering if I have met this man before. I’m sure that I have not.

            “How is everything at Jampeling, sir?”

            “Wonderful.”

            “So you are settled in then?”

            “Yes, sir,” I respond, now stopped and standing close to him. “It’s comfortable down there.”

            “Excellent, sir. I am glad to hear it.” Sensing me struggle to place the man, he adds, “I am a librarian at the college.”

            “Ah. How long have you been working at Sherubtse, sir?”

            “Oh, many years now. I knew the other foreign teacher at Jampeling. She was here five years ago. Natalie.”

            “I see sir.”

            “Well, enjoy your stay with us, sir. I hope that you enjoy Bhutan.”

            “Yes, sir. I am enjoying it very much.”

            I say goodbye and keep moving up the hill. I follow the road as it borders the college. Groups of young men in traditional dress pass by. Like the others, they stare from afar. As I approach, they look down until right before we pass. Then they cast me another quick glance, a snapshot of the strange man that they saw today. When I pass the groups of girls they do the same only they become silent when I get near. When they are a few steps behind me I hear them giggle and chide each other and say things in Sharchop that I wish I understood. Some of the young girls and boys that I pass will stop and bow and say, “Good afternoon, sir,” and I’ll realize that they are students at Jampeling. They recognize me before I recognize them.

            Mr. Sonam, the shopkeeper, comes out of his shop and greets me. “Hello, Josh. How are you today?”

            I’ve only met Mr. Sonam once before, in line while I was at Telecom getting an internet connection. He smiles as we talk.

“You are settled in now, I hope?”

“Yes, sir. Very comfortable.”

“Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Come by the shop and we’ll have tea.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

I say goodbye and keep heading up toward the market. The sidewalk is completely destroyed in parts, chunks of concrete litter the way as if from a landslide. There is a large dirt lot that I have to cross. Chip bags and plastic blow across it. The wind kicks up the dust and sends it billowing through the lot. Old ladies in worn kiras twirl handheld prayer wheels, recite mantras, and spit blood red doma onto the dirt.

            Mr. Dechen’s shop is next to the bakery. He is a teacher at Jampeling too and in the evenings he sits at the shop, hoping for good business and a bit of extra income. We stop and chat for a bit and he tells me that he wants to organize a trip to the Guru Rinpoche statue and to a beautiful picnic spot. “You will like it,” he says and I confirm that I’ll go if the plan comes to fruition. We bid each other goodbye.

           The baker sits outside of the bakery on a sun-bleached and warped wooden bench. When he sees me heading into the tiny shop he jumps up, enters, and positions himself behind the counter. The bread is in good supply. I order eight small loaves, and the shop keeper says nothing about the price until I ask specifically. 

           I step back out into the Himalayan air and think, “I am in Bhutan.” And I do my love-chant, quietly whispering, “Bhutan. Bhutan. Bhutan,” three times in a row, before descending back down the road, back to my home for the time being.

Losar -- Part II

Nicki Minaj blares through my door.

The music is full decibel. Unrestrained.

I open the door and a computer has been set up just there on the porch. Speakers are connected and facing directly into my Boy’s Sick Room. Nicki Minaj turned banshee. The DJ is pint-sized Yoezer, dressed as if he summoned a universal idea of an American pop deejay: he’s wearing neon green sunglasses, is holding a ten Ngultrum note in one hand (likely couldn’t get ahold of a Benjamin) and a toy gun in the other. I almost expect him to say, “‘What up homie?” to me, but instead he says something else in Kengpa. Still, I translate it in my head as, “What up homie?” and before he can threaten to cap my ass, I move to the front yard, where Gyeltshen and the others have piled a heap of dry wood nearly eight feet tall. 

“Fire,” he says.

“Big fire,” I say.

Mr. Dorji has a Coke bottle filled with kerosene. He sprays it all over the wood. “Really big fire!” he says.

It is the year of the fire monkey after all, so we should honor him appropriately. I gauge the distance from the pile of wood to the corner of my Boy’s Sick Room. Hopefully it’s not too big of a fire, I think. Before I or anyone else considers the risk of igniting my room, the stack is lit and it takes off. The flames build upon one another, engulfing the wood. Dusk has descended and the fire becomes brighter and brighter in the twilit sky. The stone wall dances in shadow and light. Heat reverberates, the leaves of the nearby trees shuttering in upward waves. Though we placed our plastic chairs close at first, we begin shuffling them back further, the heat too unbearable to stay close. We strip off layers. Gone are the jackets. Gone are the sweaters. We stand in t-shirts and polo-shirts and still the heat is uncomfortable. Again I gauge the distance from fire to the Boy’s Sick Room. It seems safe, for now.

Ikel comes out with Druk 11000s.

“Do you drink, sir?”

“A little bit, yes.”

“Okay, sir. Beer, sir?”

“Sure, beer’s great.”

Ikel places the bottles on the table, and K.D. grabs one, opening it with his teeth. He pours my share of the Druk 11000 into a glass, all the way to the rim, the liquid curving up like a lens. Then he pours himself one, filling it the same way. The others hold their drinks in the air and say, “Cheers!” and we take sips. Before I can even lean back to settle in, K.D. tops off my glass, again leaving an amber convexity at the rim. I look at his glass, grab a bottle and top him off. He says, “No, no, sir,” but holds the glass out willingly.

This give and take goes on throughout the night: “More beer, sir? No, no.” Fills it up. “Finished, sir? Have some more? No, K.D., I couldn’t.” Fills it up. “Seriously now, I can’t.” Fills it up. I recall what a veteran chillup teacher told me before I came out to the east: “You have to be rude. You have to demand that they don’t fill up your cup. Be mean even. It feels weird, but that’s the only way to stop getting served.” But I’ve fallen into a rhythm with K.D., and music has started to play and I will not be the one to hamper the merriment.

We stand up and make a circle around the fire. Dzongka songs are being played from the DJ stand—did Yoezer drop that beat?—and all begin to dance. Gyeltshen does not drink. He does not need to. When the music starts his smile reveals complete bliss. He bobs his head and shakes his arms, twisting his hands in the air, mudra style. I copy him, but somehow my hand gestures look more like a flightless bird attempting a takeoff.

Ikel looks over at me and chuckles. She is capable, her dancing as natural and vivacious as the fire itself.

“I’ve had wine,” she says.

The song changes to a Hindi pop song. Everyone sings along but me. The dance changes slightly, we begin to rotate around the fire. We do false-steps and shoulder-rocks and fist-pumps (well, I fist pump) to the beat, moving and laughing and celebrating.

You’re a good dancer,” I say to Ikel. “You can tell that you like to dance a lot.”

“Maybe,” she says, her head tilting sideways slightly, a gesture that instantly reveals Bhutan’s cultural ties to India. “It’s because it’s Losar, the New Year.”

“You only dance at celebrations?”

“This one especially is important. This could be our last New Year. We don’t know what the future will bring.”

I nod, take a drink, and think Ikel will start her final year, whenever that may be, dancing.

The nature of our circumambulation changes for me with her comment. Sends me reeling. Or maybe it’s the 11000 Druk’s—Thunder Dragons—invading my bloodstream, thumping monk drums just under my temples. The fire becomes a stupa, and my dancing a meditation. Impermanence on the mind.

This very well could be it for me. The summer is supposed to bring landslides and I have been warned, “Don’t travel in the summer. The roads are too dangerous.” There is malaria in the jungle. HIV in the cities. A foreign teacher has died here, four years ago. The autopsy revealed septicemia. It is not uncommon to be warned of evil spirits and creatures unknown. There are wild animals and drunk taxi drivers, bandits and psychopaths. What’s in the water? What lurks in the shadows? Could the Year of the Fire Monkey be my last?

I dance to cleanse myself of the fear. I am alive and well. A’int nothin’ gonna get me down.

Dakchak deng dir jawa tsom pala gek dang nyewar tsewa künshi né dödön pel pel samdön yishin drüb tashi delek phünsum tsokpar shok.

May the work that we are now about to begin be free from all obstacles and imminent dangers, and, meeting with ever-growing fulfillment and success, bring good fortune, prosperity, happiness and peace.

 “Beer, sir?”

“I’ve had a lot. I think I’m good.”

The comment doesn’t take. K.D. and I raise overflowing glasses and take sips. Conversation picks up. English is spoken freely now.

An American song comes on.

“You know this one, sir?”

“I’ve heard it. But I don’t know it.”

“Show us the American dance, sir.”

“We don’t have a lot of dances with specific moves. We just kinda make it up as we go along.”

“Show us, sir. Come on. Show us.”

There is a trite beat, an easy-to-dance-to beat. But now, as the de facto expert on American dance, the beat seems complex and cunning. I hope the sweat is from the fire. Making myself look stupid is easy, but making everybody look stupid is a whole other responsibility.

American dance. American dance.

My shoulders start to undulate. Side to side. My hands go forward, straight in front of me, like a mummy.

“Ya’ll ever seen the Cabbage Patch?” I ask.

My words are disregarded, the others paying close attention to my American moves. No one answers. They assume the mummy position with me.

“Stir the pot,” I say. “Stir the pot.” Everyone follows the move, twisting hips while their arms circle the air. The Cabbage Patch is a hit, I think. But one can only stir the proverbial pot for so long until the move gets boring.

“What about the Shopping Cart?”

For an agrarian people, this one might be as foreign as they come. The world is not blessed—or burdened—with the gross infinity of supermarket product choices like America. But, the moves are simple enough, and very quickly, my dance students catch on.

I test another one. “A’ight, a’ight. How about the Sprinkler?”

The song is interminable. I exhaust my repertoire over the course of the next minute and a half: we Whip, we Nene, we Superman, we Dougie. We C-Walk, or attempt to C-Walk. We go back to 1996 and do the Butterfly, and I remember my first middle school social, when Crystal Smith watched me first attempt the moves and then laughed, saying, “Look at this white boy try’n ‘a Butterfly.” My newfound Bhutanese friends now have an eclectic variety of American dances to share with their friends. I imagine years down the line, during some other cultural celebration where an aging Gyeltshen hears another American song come on. I imagine him standing before the crowd and instructing, “I will show you the dances of the Nene and the C-Walk. Long ago my American friend shared this traditional dance with me, and now I will pass the knowledge on to you. In this way, we will celebrate.”

Finally, I put my hands in the air and say, “That’s it. That’s all I got.”

The others look slightly disappointed; the song is only half way through. It lingers in the background, disconnected. I just stand there. Mercifully, someone runs over and switches to another song. It’s Hindi, I believe. Not American. I’d like to think though, that the ultimate goal was realized. Everyone learned the ‘American dance.’

The fire has collapsed onto itself, a monolith devoured. The flames are cooler now and we sit close. It appears that there is a method for stopping the flow of alcohol: drink all the bottles dry. We kill the final Druk 11000, take it down, and move to Gyeltshen’s living room for dinner. Again we eat with our hands and sit and converse. There are framed black and white pictures of Bhutan’s five illustrious kings high on one wall. On the adjacent wall, pictures of Gyeltshen and his wife under prayer flags, and on a snowy mountain side. The woodstove is stoked and warms the room. The TV behind us flips images of beautiful women in saris, and thick-haired men with buttoned down shirts open at the chest. Again the women in the room breastfeed their infants. We take tea and continue the conversation, though now Kengpa is taking precedent and English is used sparingly.

At its own pace, the night winds down. Without pretext or excuse, the others gather their belongings, dress the children in warm clothes, and begin to leave. There seems to be a natural rhythm that all are in tune to. Except me. The others arrive with the rhythm, eat with rhythm, serve tea with it, care for children with it, return home with it. I follow cues. He arrives, so I go too. She eats, so I do too. They stand up to go home, I do too.

“Good night,” I say. “Thank you for the great day.”

“I hope you are feeling comfortable, sir.”

“Yes, very comfortable. I have had a wonderful time. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir. Come over any time, sir. You are always welcome here.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Back in the Boy’s Sick Room, I lay down on the stiff mattress and pull the plastic feeling covers over myself. I turn off the lights, close my eyes, and wonder if the others have gone to sleep too. Does the rhythm say to fall asleep now? Have I found the rhythm too?

Losar

Dreaming takes me away again. Off to that world that isn’t here: the strangely familiar spaces, the impossible romances, the warmth of a summer morning. I melt into the landscape, settle and take root.

And then BAM. I wake up and it’s real again. Afterimages linger for a second and I realize, Holy shit, I’m in Bhutan. It takes a few moments but I understand how far away I am. This is no dream. I’m awake. Alive. And I better go along and do something with myself.

An obsession realized is hard to describe. For the past three years, more really, I was poring over images and videos of this far flung place. During those times, I cultivated an idea of what it must be like in Bhutan: smell of incense; feeling of cold, alpine air and mountain sunshine; chants of monks, deep and guttural; Himalayan peaks stretching as far as the eye can see; spiritual, abundant happiness.

In that waking moment though, when reality strikes, Bhutan is none of those things. My concrete barracks, the Boy’s Sick Room, is frigid in the morning. And in the afternoon. And in the evening. It’s most noticeable after waking though, when I have to confront a day in a foreign country. A step into the cold is a step into culture, one that I must engage in not solely because I exist here now, but because I promised myself to exist here well and to take full advantage of it.

Feral dogs bark in the distance. A merchandise transport truck from India growls along the roadway about a half mile up. There are bird noises I’ve never heard before. Lame Pup comes shivering to my front steps, limping, rank, and looking for food.

I awake and hear Yoezer and Celine playing next door. Yoezer is four, I think, and Celine three. They banter in Kengpa, one of many languages spoken in this country. I know none of the languages, and though I have semi-committed to learning Sharchop, the language of the east, whenever I ask what a word means, they tell me, “That was Dzongka actually,” or “We were speaking Nepali,” or “That was English. What, you can’t understand my accent?” The discussion between Yoezer and Celine, which sounds earnest, is nonetheless unintelligible. They shout and giggle and discuss, all in cuck-cucks and throaty jöms.

In one swift motion I slip out of my sleeping bag and I step into the cold air. Long-underwear and t-shirt and sweatshirt and light down jacket. Scarf and hat. Wool socks. I make way to the squat toilet, always pungent, and I relieve myself.

The day has begun.

I cross to my battered wooden door, which still clearly shows the orange and green and blue hand painted symbols which I believe bring good luck to a house. They could just be pretty though. I open the door and step outside and am greeted with a view that no online video or picture album could prepare me for. I am just under the clouds. The sun is beginning to pour in, an effusion of light emanating, it seems, from the misty clouds themselves rather than from a single source. The world beyond is all mountains, steep and, in many sections, uninhabited. The south faces are dry and the villages clearly stand out for lack of trees. The north faces, where I live, are much greener, much more vegetated. Houses poke out of the greenery and punctuate the hillside erratically. On the occasion of a flat bit of land, rice paddies sprout horizontal like gills on the side of an emerald fish.

Today is an important day. It’s the Lunar New Year, Losar, as the Bhutanese call it. Gyeltshen, my neighbor, and his family and friends have invited me to celebrate with them. They lay out a large, thin foam pad on the grass in front of our kind of duplex and we sit in a circle in our pajamas and eat a salty vegetable porridge, tokpa, and drink butter tea, sooja. The sun pours over us and we squint as we talk. They speak Kengpa and I can’t make heads or tails of it. My brain produces a dumb, silent Error message over and over: Not Japanese. Not Spanish.

There are, however, bursts of English. Numbers are said in English, as are certain phrases like, “best way,” and “very interesting.” I’m also referred to as “sir,” both as a sign of respect and because many of them do not know my name yet.

“Does sir like hot food? Are chilies okay for sir? How long will sir be staying? Does sir have family down there?”

“Down where?”

“Sir’s country?”

“Yes, I have family.”

“So sir is married?”

“Oh, no. I have my parents and sister in America, but I am not married.”

“Bachelor, sir?”

“Yes. Bachelor.”

An unmarried, thirty two year-old white guy is about as aberrant as it gets out here. The notion of not having a wife and a few kids by my age is almost sinful I feel. As we sit on the pad, three out of the five women are breastfeeding healthy, rotund babies. Celine and Yoezer run around and play, occasionally coming in for a bite of tokpa or a tubular rice cake. The men tell me about how they have no free time anymore and the women glare at them and return to the work of caring for the children.

Gyeltshen, the boy’s dorm room warden and my neighbor, sits stoically among the others. I’d think he was unfriendly if it wasn’t for the occasional glance my way and smile, and the way he takes his three-month old son into his arms and playfully jostles him, making baby-sounds that are universal. Phuntsho, who lives a little ways away but who came to join the Losar festivities, is very talkative. She makes jokes and asks questions and tells me how much I will like it here. Here, is still an intangible concept; I still wonder, Where am I?

In the afternoon we play games. Gyeltshen challenges me to a game of chess. As we play, some of the others, Mr. Dorji and K.D., gather around and sit close. They watch our calculated moves as if they were watching a thriller on the T.V. In the end, I win, but I think Gyeltshen gave away a few pieces—part of that Bhutanese hospitality. 

Then we gamble. I put in twenty Ngultrum to the game of cards and am given three. I have a pair of nines, but Sangay has a run. She collects an eighth of the pot and we go again. I’m out again with a poor hand and Mr. Dorji collects his winnings. Finally, after a few rounds I have a high pair of queens, and another eighth of the pot goes to me. By the end of the round I’m up forty Ngultrum, nearly a whole U.S. dollar.

When the gambling stops the women head to the kitchen. For hours they are singing and dancing. There is a crashing of pans, hissing of pressure cookers. The real celebration is effusing from that kitchen and we, the men, are not invited. We sit outside and shoot the shit. Succulence and spice escape the walls and tempt our appetites. The women bring out a welter of curried chicken and fish. They bring pork with chili peppers, the pork ninety-five percent fat and five percent meat. They bring the infamous ema datsi, spicy green chilies in cheese sauce. Red rice and white rice are jettisoned from inside of rice cookers in their inner-pots. There is dal and saag and dried beef. The hosts insist I eat first and I know that this is a gesture of respect. But I do not want to stand out as a guest, but rather, as a new friend, so I insist that someone else go before me.

“No sir, you go, you go.”

“No, no, no. Please someone else first.”

“No it must be you, sir.”

“Someone show me how,” I offer as an excuse, just to get someone in line before me. But then I regret the statement. Show me how? Now they’re going to think that I don’t know how to serve myself food. Fantastic.

Mr. Dorji offers to show me how, and he kindly demonstrates the scooping of the rice into the bowl and the placing of the curries onto the rice. I copy him with aplomb, hoping to prove that I am not an idiot.

When we sit back down on the mat, I realize that I don’t have a spoon. But then I see that no one has a spoon. Sensing my dilemma, a woman offers, “Spoon, sir?” I can’t falter again, lest they think: What, he doesn’t know how to eat with his hands, either?

“No, I’ll eat with my hands, just like you guys.”

“It’s okay, sir, we’ll give you a spoon.”

“No, no, no. I can do it. No spoon,” I demand.

“Okay, sir. You’ll get used to our custom then.”

“That’s right,” I say.

“Do you know how to wash your hand with the rice?”

I debate saying, “I totally know how to do that,” and instead revert back to the simple ape I am. “No. Show me, please.”

Mr. Dorji takes a small pinch of rice and rolls it into a ball between the palms of his hands. He rolls the ball around, up his fingers, across the meat of his thumbs, down toward his wrist. When he is finished, the little ball is a dark grey, having collected all dirt that was stuck to his hand. I copy him, and my ball crumbles half way through. I pretend I was finished ‘washing’ my hands anyway, and I put the crumbled bit of rice onto the mat and watch the others to learn the technique for grabbing at my food.

I have been missing this experience as a traveler. I have eaten with a knife and fork, I have eaten with chopsticks, but I have yet to eat with my hands; there was a great part of the world that I was missing. Bhutan offered the bridge.

My friends’ hands are calloused and brown. One hand holds the plate. The other is the grasping crane. The claw of the crane drops to the edge of the plate, scoops more rice than curry, massages the mixture, balls it and then the crane lifts and turns palm up and inserts the mix into mouth. I think to myself, There has to be a right way and a wrong way to do this. But as I watch, techniques vary. Some look to create a ball of food, others pick at the large solid pieces—the beef and pork chunks, the steamed radishes and cheese soaked chilies—eat those first and then grab a pile of rice and drop it down the hatch. There is no way to keep the hands clean—what would be the point of that—the cheesy sauces and spicy curries, the oils and fats and little flecks of cilantro and survivor rice grains cling to their hands, and before the bowl is finished, someone beckons them for seconds and first they refuse vehemently, and then are up and heaping more rice, more curry, more fatty pork and dal into their bowls. They come back to their seats and ask me to take seconds too.

I do my best, relieved that there appear to be no rules. I relish the tactile stimulation that arises with my fingers deep in a warm bed of rice. There is something tawdry about how the oils lubricate each digit, a violation of rules ingrained when I was very young and my mother would scold, “Don’t eat with your hands!” Here in the hinterlands, the rules have changed. I go in for more, and take handful after handful of delicious mix. I caress the spongy fat of the pork. I scoop up the ema datsi and heave it into my face. I pinch the dried beef and delicately slip it onto my tongue. And then I line up for seconds and do it all over again. I scrape my second serving clean with all four fingers together, as if holding an invisible cloth. And then I sit back in sweet satiety.

“Are you adjusting to the fooding sir?"

“Yes, I can handle it.”

“You liked the meal then, sir?”

“That was delicious,” I say. The women look pleased. The men have the same lugubrious smile that I do, their one soiled hand perched dangling off a knee, drying and resting, waiting to be washed.

We wash our hands and I retire for a nap. That great fatigue that comes with adjusting to a new life abroad has not gotten any easier despite my now accumulating experience. It’s a feeling I crave, that barrage of culture—new language, heat and humidity, the smells of wood smoke and new plants and feces; the eating of strange meals in strange ways; the T.V. constantly on, news in Dzongka and Hindi soap operas; the kids roaming wildly; the vast views with stupas and temples and prayer flags scattered across the hills; it’s my constant state of worry: am I accepting enough food, refusing enough, sitting properly, addressing people properly, acting friendly enough but not superficial; Will I be okay here? Will I make it? And it’s all exhausting.

The input is so alive. It is easy to fall asleep now. Just so easy.

Wild West. Wild East.

Take me to Thimphu.

It’s Wild West here. But Billy the Kid would be a bodhisattva. Wyatt Earp a monk garbed in deep maroon. Buffalo Bill would have to trade his moniker to Takin Bill, the mountain beast—part cow, part goat, part water-buffalo—that I’d have thought was a myth had I not seen it with my own eyes. Trade six-shooters for prayer beads and mani. Trade dusters for the traditional dress of ghos and kiras. Trade bandoleers for kabnay, honorary sashes. Trade spittin’ tobaccy for betel nut and lime. But keep that undercurrent of wildness: the feral dogs, the hard looks to strangers; keep the spittin’ on the streets, and that sour market smell; keep the gathering of men with an air of trouble about ‘em; keep the drunken and querulous; keep the coquettish glances; keep that dust blowin’ through town, keep that middle-of-nowhere adventure feeling, that indigenous feeling; keep the cacophony, the immensity, the isolation. And picture it all happening in a mountain town gone loco.

Yeah, you’re gettin’ it, partner.

But there is so much more.

Half the roads are paved in this capital city. They’ve got fresh paint down and road signs written in Dzongkha. There is not a traffic light to be seen (in the whole country I’m told), rather an officer in something like a gazebo, directing traffic with wild gestures. The other half of the roads are packed dirt, erratically cobbled with stones once buried deep beneath these towering Himalayas. There is refuse congesting the walkways, heaps of it piled together and set alight. The conflagrations are toys for smiling, ash varnished kids, meeting grounds for groups of men, a romantic stop for couples headed up Lover’s Lane.

The Bhutanese are a beautiful people, swarthy and rosy-cheeked. What is that face? Some deeply hidden beauty, some mountain hermit beauty. Can’t get a handle on it; I have not seen a people like this before. Smiles are abundant, stained red with doma, many a missing tooth. Often the elderly gaze up at me with vitreous cataracts, unblinking. There are deep crevasses that carve their faces. That great sculptor known as Time has added lines to the crow’s feet around their eyes, built up scar tissue, folded in wrinkles to make fine layers of parchment skin. These faces are not like Time’s other works of art—those pretty, young faces with nary a crease in them, which are also abundant here. No, the faces that are cracked, withering and delicate, painstakingly detailed, those are the masterpieces, Time’s lifework reaching the height perfection. Beautiful.

Where the takin run wild.

It ain’t all National Geographic though, partner. There are punks with stringently coiffed hairdos, wearing studded leather jackets and skinny jeans. There are girls checking themselves out on their smartphones, primping and preening, pushing up cleavage and verifying the effect. There are gangs of boys smoking like chimneys, blatantly defying the nationwide anti-tobacco laws. There are businessmen in suits, and immigrants from India and Nepal loitering in front of construction sites, and children with their mothers out shopping for the day. Kiosk attendants look bored. Police officers intimidate. Homeless beg on the street.

It’s all going on here in Thimphu.

Not a tourist to be seen though. Just as you didn’t get camera toting, pasty white lookyloos in the dank saloons of the West, it’s hard to find a foreigner here. I walked the length of the city and didn’t see a single chillup until getting back to my hotel and rejoining the group. Capital cities like these are hard to find.

The nearby peaks are fresh with light snow. The behemoths to the north cannot be seen from my spot in the city, but the feeling of immensity persists. Forest is abundant.

Thimphu would be a beautiful city to stay in, but I am headed to The East, where, if the tales are true, it just gets wilder.

My group received a medical briefing from a resident doctor and the director of the program that brought me here. One story they recounted about The East went like this:

“A boy from one of the villages was on his way home for vacation from boarding school. He was on a path he always walked and knew well. Close to his home, a group of wild boar ran across the trail, very near to the boy. He stopped, scared by the boars. But then he saw that behind the boars a leopard was in pursuit. The leopard stopped on the path, distracted now by the boy, a much easier meal. It pursued the boy. It swiped at him and the claws caught the boy’s face and tore out an eye. The boy played dead and soon the leopard left him. The boy arose, took up his eye from the ground and ran home. His mother fainted when she saw the disfigured boy, so the boy had to run to his neighbor’s house. The neighbor eventually took him to the hospital, though they couldn’t save the boy’s eye.”

Such is a story from The East.

If that isn’t enough, they say leeches jump from the trees. They say that there are cases of malaria, and that dysentery is common. The wet season brings a persistent mold. There is precipitous terrain (teacher falls 20 feet and breaks hip), bad roads (cars plummet), false trails that will lead a wanderer astray (a group of boys lost for fourteen days; two dead). The doctor told us of ghost villages where the bears have taken over, eating the crops that the people no longer harvest.

What a great time to be alive and in Bhutan, for The East still exists and there are tales that strike fear. At home in Denver I was afraid; Bhutan was too foreign, too remote. I was growing content, complacent perhaps. Now I am even more terrified, that wonderful terror that I made a commitment to long ago: “Do what terrifies you.” My fear has stoked a fire and the tales of The East are a bellows, feeding that fear and turning it red hot. And here I am, a three days journey away.

To The East. To The East. To The East.