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.

Over the Andes

This post is liberally and randomly dotted with pretty pictures in dubious chronological order, as I can't remember which is from where.

We got from Mendoza to Santiago by way of coach, taking the winding road over the Andes mountains.  The terminal in Mendoza is a bit demented - 40 bus ranks, countless offices for bus and tour firms, money changers, water and empanada sellers etc..  More alarmingly, our bus wasn't on the departure schedule.  The bod in the ticket office helpfully drew a circle around the departure time on my printed-off voucher, which did little to assuage my doubts about the coach's actual existence.   Ultimately a bus did turn up, and we handed our bags over to the porter loading the luggage bay - along with half my surplus pesos for his trouble. They don't work for the bus companies, they just work for tips.  Anyone handling the bodybags when they've not been calibrated for domestic flight deserves my groats.

We had booked our seats ahead of time and had managed to reserve two at the top and front.  If you're making a trip as dramatic as this one, you want the view.  Our compatriots in the other two front seats were a friendly and chatty Irish bloke who was resident in Buenos Aires and therefore spoke a helpful amount of Spanish, and a middle-aged American guy who was pleasant enough but was also perhaps not entirely there.  He had the perpetual open-mouthed grin of the recently sedated or of serial killers. I think perhaps that the wheel was turning but the hamster was likely dead. 

The border is an adventure in endurance bureaucracy.  It looks even worse if you're doing it by car -we saw tailbacks for an easy three miles.  We had it easy by comparison in that the buses just drove around the cars and queue up outside a large hanger.  Bus by bus we disembarked and joined a spider of lines leading to desks variously staffed by Argentine and Chilean immigration staff.  The idea was that you got signed out by the Argies and stamped in by the Chileans.  It worked after a fashion.

Then we were paraded into another room with sinister looking metal table and a massive x-ray machine.  There we laid out any carry-on bags and waited while they dragged off our luggage from the bus and ran it through the machine.  We were in attendance in case they wanted to look inside.  Meanwhile, they go over the bus with a fine toothed comb and a team of very distractable dogs.  The point of all of this is partially to look for the normal contraband, but mainly to stop the import of biological matter like diary, meat, plants and untreated wood.  They're serious about it too.  Non of the various paramilitary-looking constabularies and government agents we've encountered in South America look half as geared up for war as the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture.

After a modest hour and a bit (the bus companies allow something like 1-3 hours for the border crossing on their schedule), we were back on our way.  At this point they passed around a hat for tips for the guys who handled our bags at border control.  I was prepped for this, so they got got the other half of my Argie monopoly money.  It's best to lose that benighted currency before you reach civilisation.

You have one job and you suck at it

On the other side,  the road winds perilously around sheer drops a dozen or so times.  This is made all the more fun by being on a duble-decker coach.  The scenery is spectacular on the way through; white peaks and rivers of snow melt all around.

As the scenery gets a bit more conventional once you've reached the bottom, they play a couple of films on the bus TV screens.  They played that new National Lampoon's film, which I'm pretty sure isn't on general release.  Their copy had Spanish subtitles overlaid on top of Chinese subtitles, which meant one of the staff had plainly Bittorrented it on his down time.  

The bus terminal in Santiago was another level of ridiculous. It was 20 coaches crammed into the space of 8, all of whom apparently on a mission to be the biggest possible obstacle. I'll talk more about Santiago in a bit because we're coming back here after a brief stint in the Atacama desert.   

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch:  Wir überquerten die Anden mit dem Bus. Der Kerl, der neben mir saß, war vielleicht ein bisschen dumm.
Die Aussicht war wunderschön, aber die Grenze Bürokratie war lächerlich.

So good they named it twice

As I’ve mentioned, we’re in New York. We’ve actually been here about nine days and since we’ve been too busy being on holiday,  I need to make some effort to catch you all up while it’s still in recent memory.

So, last Sunday we took the Adirondack Amtrak train down from Montreal to Penn station.  I wasn’t really paying attention when Chan booked it and figured it was about, what, three hours? Look at the map and ignore the scale like me. Guess how long. Nope, 10.5 hours. About the same as our flight out of the UK.  The route is very pretty, though, and it did mean that the bodybags could be dragged on without budget airline baggage restrictions compelling us to wear three pairs of trousers.  Chan has just told me it’s one of the world’s great train journeys and that I’m a savage.

We had read Tripadvisor horror stories about all of the toilets blocking up 2 hours into the journey, but our trip was fine.  Border control officers boarded after a bit and made everyone feel like an illegal for an hour (seriously guys, we just like coming here for the shopping; long term we prefer drizzle and sarcasm), but otherwise the trip was pleasant enough and there was free Wi-Fi.  I also made the mistake of showing Chan how to take continuous photos with our camera and now have 477 photographs of passing scenery.

   
This times at least 12 each

We got into town about 21:30 (9:30pm in local money; don’t get me started) and made our way over to the Ace Hotel - the most hip of the hipster hotels. All the staff have beards, wear braces and have Sailor Jerry tattoos.  I really quite liked it.  The rooms have original cast iron fittings and vintage furniture (obviously), there’s a stocked Smeg fridge full of expensive things I really wanted, the gym had a heavy bag, and it transpired that the in-house restaurant we used for breakfast has a Michelin star. 

 
It is perhaps a little insufferable

We dove out for something to eat and ended up in Madison Square Park, where they have a Shake Shack.  For the uninitiated, it’s a popular burger chain.  Chan remains unimpressed, but they sell beer and also show nutritional information showing how much healthier that beer is than their soft drinks. That’s something to take with you after eating 1200 calories of fried cow.  

 
The lettuce is one of your five-a-day, too

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir sind mit dem Zug nach New York.  Dannach haben wir in einem modisch Hotel geblieben.  Das Hotel war ein wenig unausstehlich, aber ich irgendwie gefiel es jedenfalls.

Mount Rushmore, Deadwood and Bikers

When “we” (for “we” read “Chantelle”) were planning this whole endeavour, we got to this part of the trip –between Colorado and Wisconsin- and found that many places around Rapid City, South Dakota were entirely sold out.  This area was really convenient for us, so we just assumed at the time that these rooms weren’t available because we were booking too far ahead and ended up booking a motel in Wall, SD (home of Wall Drug store, advertised for literally 200 miles in every direction as the home of free ice water and the 5 cent coffee).

Anyway, we were talking to a couple at a bar/restaurant in Denver the night before (it transpires he was a food critic for the Denver Post) and we were talking about our difficulty finding accommodation in South Dakota.  With some mirth they pointed out that the reason for this is the imminence of the Sturgis Biker Rally – a rally of several hundred thousand bikers, biker-related vendors and interested observers.  It is also the 75th anniversary of said rally. This explained a few things.  It also explained why the entrance to Mount Rushmore (which is in the vicinity) looked like this:

We got in eventually and did some obligatory tourist photos (I thought it would be bigger, btw)
. 

Good call on Teddy Roosevelt;  Dude got shot and kept on giving his speech.

 
Pictured: Photos of non-comparable majesty.

So now we knew what we were in for and because I’m a fan of the show, we popped up to Deadwood for a nosy.  Deadwood is next door to Sturgis, so it had one or two bikers in attendance.

 

Not pictured: thieving Cornish miners and Chinese Butchers

What I didn’t know is that Deadwood, true to historical form, is maintained and financed by gambling.  Thing is, gambling is illegal in South Dakota as it is in the majority of the United States, so it has it’s own exceptional concessionary licence.  The booze, gambling and motorcycles lend it a certain appropriate decadence. All I needed now was Lovejoy hanging out a window and yelling “Cocksuckers!” at the crowd.


Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: (Changing back to perfect case as it’s more comfortable) Wir haben unsere  Reise zwischen Denver und Milwaukee zufällig wahrend eine grosse Motorradsternfahrt gebucht. Genau genommen, ist es am größten Motorradsternfahrt  (hoffentlich habe ich das korrekt raten, wie sagt man dass) in Amerika. Auf jeden Fall, haben wir Mount Rushmore und Deadwood gesehen. Wir haben die Motorradfahrer sehr freundlich gefunden. 

(I might’ve made a right mess of that translation.  My German teachers would be shocked, I know. Let me know the scale of the damage by email)