We pass a farmhouse, whose walls are painted with motifs of tigers, devils and the curious symbol of a weasel disgorging pearls. Doje explains. The Guardian King of the North Direction traditionally holds a weasel, so anything emanating from a weasel’s mouth denotes good fortune. Obvious really.
The clouds pile up as our trail climbs through oak and pine forest. Souvenirs are laid out for sale at every other corner. After an hour and a half’s walking, the track levels out at a chorten with prayer wheels inside, from which a wide path leads to a log-cabin tea house with wood-burning stove and good local food. Outside is a terrace with fine views of the temple. It is believed to have been founded by the saint Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, who rode here on a tigress in the 8th century and took on terrifying form to chase away the evil spirits and convert the valley to Buddhism.
In 1998 a fire gutted the main sanctuary. Its restoration proved a formidable technological challenge, but it’s almost completely rebuilt. Newly carved sections were hauled up from workshops 1000 feet below by a system of ropes and pulleys.
From across the valley, the white walls with the maroon band gleam from the top of the sheer tongue of rock that marks Takstang out as one of the most spectacular holy places anywhere in the world.
Day One Hundred and Eight : Jangothang
Just short of 24,000 feet (7315 m), Jomolhari is one of the highest mountains in Bhutan. Seen from our tiny, fragile campsite, it fills the northwestern horizon, an immense hemispherical slab, hung with mighty crusts of snow and ice save where the rock flanks of the mountain, too steep to hold anything, stand out raw and sheer.
Unlike Everest, which kept a majestic distance, Jomolhari looms very close, a presence so powerful and all-pervasive that at times it seems to be growing before our eyes. Unsurprisingly, this is a sacred mountain and no-one has ever stood on its summit.
The far side of Jomolhari is in Tibet and around it wind narrow passes that have long been used for trans-Himalayan trade. Proof of this lies in the half-collapsed dry-stone walls of a castle, built to control this meeting of two valleys. A track continues up beyond our camp and we follow it towards Ngile La, a pass at 15,700 feet (4785 m). Another mighty mountain rises close to us. Jichu Drake, at 22,300 feet (6795 m), is a classic Paramount peak, more shapely than Jomolhari, from which a beautiful glacier trails, covering the rocks in gleaming, blue-tinted ice sheets. A milky-green stream leaks from beneath it. We’re above the tree line here, but there are yaks and the odd farm, on one of which lives a national character whom Doje is keen for me to meet.
The farmhouse is of the traditional manorial style, surrounded by a compound protected by a five-foot-high wall made from stone and topped with birch twigs and dried yak dung.
Inside the compound is a solar panel unit and a number of archery targets. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan.
We climb an outside staircase, at the top of which waits the bony figure of Choni Dorje. He’s 82, and has lived here all his life. He’s that happy combination, a yak herder and poet, and a few years back wrote a song extolling the virtues of his favourite yak, called something like ‘Jewel of the Mountains’. Describing the beast from horn to tail in loving terms, it struck a national chord and he was asked to Thimpu to sing his song to the King. He doesn’t look strong. He has a cataract in one eye, turning it milky blue, white hair tight around a prominent skull, sunken cheeks and a wispy Fu-Manchu beard.
But he seems cheered to see us and happy to give us a tear-jerking rendition of his big hit. Just to bring the tone down, I reply with a verse of the Lumberjack Song, which, sadly, I can never fully remember.
Choni Dorje’s granddaughter invites us inside to the big, open, timber-floored room, where four generations live together. Bed-rolls are neatly stowed at one side of the room, along with the woven rugs and blankets to keep out what must be bitter cold. A little marmalade cat peers at us from a dark corner. As befits the house of a man who wrote a love song to the animal, there are bits of yak all over the place; haunches of dried yak meat and coiled entrails hang from roof beams and a pile of yak dung is stacked by the cast-iron stove. A small shrine with a Buddha lies behind a curtain off to one side.
As we drink our butter tea, I have to remind myself that Choni Dorje, his family, his yaks and his marmalade cat have lived their entire lives higher than the summit of the Eiger.
Day One Hundred and Nine : Jangothang to Takengthanka
One by one we stumble out onto the frosty grass after a bitterly cold night. The tents are comfortable enough when you’re inside, but squeezing through that tight-zippered door is like coming out of the womb. Doje tells me that Jangothang means ‘land of ruins’ and looking at the state of us, it seems appropriate. I think we’ve been in the mountains too long. Last night was a sharp reminder of the high-altitude conditions that we thought we’d left behind.
Of course, the payback for the pain is tremendous scenery, unpolluted air, brilliant light and utter silence. And once I’m up and dressed and have splashed some water on my face, I know I shall miss all these things. By tonight the majestic peaks of the Himalaya will be behind us for the last time, so, while the tents are being struck and our ponies loaded up for the journey, I pick my way up past the monolithic boulders rolled down by the glaciers and through the birch scrub and the tough little juniper trees towards Jomolhari. It’s a final act of homage to the high mountains and, as Jomolhari fills the sky, I feel a bit like one of the characters in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the spaceship has landed.
The Himalayan peaks are seen by the people who live among them as awful places, abodes of jealous gods and places where the dead are gathered, and I have the feeling they’ve got it right. What do we know, we who romanticize them? We who fly in and use them to prove something to ourselves, to plant our flags, talk of ‘conquest’ and then go home. I can almost feel the shoulders of Jomolhari heaving with laughter.
I find a mossy rock and just sit for a while. I look down at our camp, with flocks of alpine choughs swooping noisily in to look for morsels of food, and feel my own personal pangs of regret at leaving all this behind. There are few places outside the Himalaya where the relation of man to nature can be experienced on such a gigantic scale, and something like that may not change your life, but it does stretch it a bit.
Jomolhari is draped in cloud as we set off across the stream and down along the broad, treeless meadow of grass and stones that leads down the valley. Within minutes the mountain is out of sight.
A yak caravan sways up towards us. Doje says he prefers to use horses and donkeys for carrying. He says they’re much brighter than yaks and look where they’re going.
Jomolhari is 11 miles (18 km) behind us by the time we reach our next campsite. It’s in a tight neck of the mountains, where the valley becomes a gorge. Thickly wooded slopes of cedar, blue pine, maple and larch rise behind us and the stream we’ve followed since it left the glacier is now a river, some 30 feet wide and running fast and clear. A fire has been lit and internal warmth is taken care of by a slug or two of Special Courier Bhutanese Whisky. The description on the bottle, ‘brewed at Gelephu Distillery (a unit of Army Welfare Project)’, suggests that we are not only warming ourselves but helping the Bhutanese military at the same time. Very odd. Food is served early and I’m one of the last to bed. It’s a quarter to nine and snowing.
Day One Hundred and Ten : Takengthanka to Sharma Zampa
My tent flap is heavier when I push it aside this morning. A layer of rime has built up overnight and, as I squeeze out into the world, it brushes across my back, propelling me forwards with a shock.