Land of the Thunder Dragon - Part 4

We were taken a bit further east to the Phobjikha valley, the pronunciation of which will baffle non-Bhutanese in perpetuity. We saw our first yaks on the way there too, which was quite a thrill, as you can imagine.

"Moo"

The herder lives in a yak hair tent (a yurt, in whichever language calls them yurts) which, using black magic, has a hole to let smoke out but also somehow prevents rain ingress. He/she tethers them up at night and during the day lets them stare balefully at passing tourists. The yaks, like the rest of the cattle in Bhutan, are only used for either utility or dairy.  I know the Bhutanese eat yak and beef, but they get other countries to do the gory stuff for them.

In the area is Gangtey Monastery, known for the intricate woodwork of its architecture. I don't know what the catchment area policy is for monks, and I'm sure its a respectable job regardless of where you end up, but I can't help but think it might be preferable to be stationed in one of the Punakha temples -with its subtropical climate and bananas- than living in a stone room on a windy Himalayan hillside with a rug for a door. But whatevs, I'm sure it's better than that yak herder's job up the page.

The valley is particularly famous for being one of the very few homes of the black-necked crane, which live either there or Tibet and bits of north India. There is a local festival about them, and their migratory route has them fly three times in a circle over the Gangtey monastery when either arriving or leaving - to which all kinds of auspicious and religious significance is attached as it mimics the kora, the clockwise walking around of holy places practised by Buddhists.

We saw  quite a few if the cranes while walking through the valley, a walk that felt a lot like playing Skyrim on the Xbox.  It has a certain moody photogenicity about it.

The land not protected for the wildlife is used for farmland. Specifically they grow potatoes here, which are not eaten widely in Bhutan and so are instead sold mainly to Bangladesh.  And business is good:  the farmers' need to expand their lands to fully exploit trade links with neighbouring countries is the main factor to negotiate for conversationalists in the area.

This is done almost entirely by hand.  This blog post is just stacking up with jobs I don't want.

We stopped at a small hamlet, and our guide took us inside one of the farm houses.

Round the back, they were busy chopping up turnips for animal feed.  A conversation took place and we were ushered inside.  Downstairs was used for the storage of tatties, so we had to climb upstairs on the 'traditional' stairway, which is essentially a ladder.

Upstairs, the family matriarch was (very) busy making up ara, the local rice wine.  Apparently it's drunk pretty much everyday to take the edge off, so she was making it in bulk.  That's what the jerrycans were for.  Obviously we were offered some and so -not being uncivilised- we accepted.  It was served warm as it had literally just been made, and tasted not too bad for moonshine, in that I was not immediately struck blind by ketone poisoning.

We were shown around the living area of the house, which was all the upstairs area.  The pride of place is the altar which all good Buddhist homes and apartments will contain.  Chan -not being backwards in coming forwards on the questions front- ascertained what she was cooking for dinner, but also found out that this house has been in the lady's family for 210 years, and that she had lived there personally for all of her 61 years, having been born there.  As an aside: property here is generally passed to the daughters of the family, with men sent out to find their own way.

I'll point out that our guide hadn't asked permission for our arrival beforehand, nor was he particularly familiar with this family, this is just the accepted level of hospitality and he considered this the best way to demonstrate their culture. So there you go.

Looking around, and at all the activity in the fields around, it was easy to think of this place as being stuck in some quaint 19th century agrarian existence, but then the lady pulled a mobile out of some hidden fold in her gown and went off for a natter in the next room.
Also, there is a massive satellite dish in the back yard.

They needs themselves some Geordie Shore

After our stay in the valley, we drove back to Paro - which is just as rocky and awful on the way back.  We are quite interested to come back in a couple of years to see if they've managed to fix their roads on time, they're looking for a 2018 finish.  The same job (chiseling out a few hundred miles of mountain) in the UK would have a schedule marked in epochs.  But you can do wonders with cheap labour and lip-service health and safety, so we'll see.

We did also see a family of monkey by the roadside on the way back. They did not pelt us with rocks as their friends had previously as we drove by, nor did they mistake my head for a watermelon, so that's one more diplomatic success to chalk up.

Wrapping up South Island

Playing catch up again.

After Milford Sound, we drove up to Queenstown.  It’s the home of bungee jumping and other silliness.  We took a jet boat trip around Lake Wakatipu and Rees River, which was exciting. The six year-old in front of us described it as “the best day ever”, which was high praise.

While you can see Kiwis (the birds) in the wild, its not likely due to both their scarcity and nocturnal habits.  We were determined to see at least one, so we visited the Kiwi and Birdlife centre to have a look.   This blurry mess is the best I can do for a photo:

We were introduced to the brilliantly-named Devastation the Possum, who, while cute, represents the blight that his kind are on these islands.

"I am the night"

There are no native mammals in New Zealand, due to it being underwater at some point in its volcanic history, so everything they have now (ferrets, stoats, weasels, possums, foxes, rabbits) were introduced and cause merry hell with the local ecosystem.  Everywhere we went that was forested, we saw warnings about the vast amounts of poison they’d laid to kill off anything furry.  So Devastation was there primarily to remind us not to swerve if we see his cousins in the headlights.  An odd message from a wildlife park, but there you go.  They were selling possum fur souvenirs in the gift shop.  Apparently they don’t release any baby kiwis until they reach "stoat-proof" size, which is exactly what you imagine.   Here’s an adult kiwi beating the piss out of a possum that came looking in her burrow:

While we were in town we went for a Thai meal, which involved the weirdest dessert I’ve ever had.  It involved tapioca, sweet corn and green.

Nothing is safe

We made our way north to Greymouth, home of the Monteith brewery, with whose products I had become passingly familiar.  Grudgingly, and with much persuading, I popped in for a tasting.

They have also ‘Shanty Town’ – a recreation of the mining town that was set up here in the 19th century during the heyday of the west coast gold mining industry.  It’s made up of a somewhat accurate town built from original stores and buildings, and has an authentic narrow-gauge mining train which you could ride to an old sawmill - lumber being the other main industry in the area at the time.  The stories told are generally of hardship, drunkenness and disease - which made me a bit homesick.

To get across to Christchurch, one drives along Arthur’s Pass.  Evidently it was -rather familiarly- named for Sir Arthur Dudley Dobson, who led the first group of Europeans across the pass.  It makes for some more pretty pictures:

Our last stop on the south island was in Christchurch.  Christchurch is one of the larger cities in NZ, the largest on the south island, but I feel it would be mostly unremarkable were it not for the series of earthquakes that reduced a large part of it to rubble.  I'll wind in my normal flippancy as it wasn't very funny, but what it has led to is some novel ways of coping during the very protracted rebuilding efforts.  The city centre is almost entirely building sites, but artists were commissioned to tart it up a bit.

This isn't one of them -this is a strip joint.  It was like that before the quakes and was left entirely unscathed.
The churches were fucked though.  I'm saying nothing.

The Re:Start mall is the most interesting feature of the city centre.  Bereft of a standing shopping centre, they built one out of shipping containers.  It's rather cool.

They built a temporary anglican cathedral out of paper (and shipping containers, natch) while they argue about how or if to rebuild the original one.  They did a cool thing with the stained-glass, in that they took shards of the original cathedral's shattered window and blew them up to form a mosaic.

There's some odd touches floating about, too.   This is a dance floor in the middle of a carpark, complete with disco ball and a ipod dock and speaker system made out of a washing machine. Evidently, people just rock up, hook up their tunes, throw in their coin and make a complete spectacle of themselves:

I'm just jealous because I dance like Rick Astley being stun-gunned.

When we were done here, we dropped off the still-confused Japanese car and caught our flight to Auckland.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Ich brauche, um aufzuholen seitdem ich recht langsam bin. Wir reisten von Milford Sound nach Queenstown, in denen wir auf einem Jet-Bootsfahrt ging. Wir reisten dann durch Arthurs Passstrasse nach Christchurch. Christchurch war sehr schlecht durch Erdbeben beschädigt und sie sind innovative Wege, um wieder aufzubauen.