MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2018

FALL 2018 ML BLUE 55 I wake the next day, and the headache is gone. I put on my mother’s dorky homemade bubblegum coloured knit hat. I used to make fun of mom’s age- inappropriate and outlandish clothes—now that she’s gone, I wear them all the time. Inside the cook tent, steamy from the rice cooker, Leki, the chef, hands me a blanket and refills my hot water bottle; most tourists eat in the dining tent, but sickness earns me special status. We spend many mornings like this. Stepping out to start walking, it’s unseasonably cold in Bhutan this April, but the fresh snow intensifies everything—you can almost taste the pine in the air. Bordering such crowded countries as China and India, the small kingdom of Bhutan and its 800,000 inhabitants have a special relationship with nature. Travellers must buy a pre-planned itinerary before arriving, and no one is permitted to hike on mountains above 6,000 metres—they are too sacred. For hours, Rinzin and I walk beside long elegant pine trees and curtains of white moss sprinkled with red rhododendrons. The path opens up onto a meadow—on the peak, above a river below, dozens of tall wooden poles with tattered white flags flutter in the wind: the Bhutanese equivalent to a memorial garden. The belief is that the prayer flags will assist the spirit of the deceased on to reincarnation. “You might think I’m crazy, but I believe,” says Rinzin, who senses my skepticism. “No, not crazy,” I reply. “I just haven’t figured out what to think.” LEFT A guide treks along the Druk Path as the sun sets in the mountains. ABOVE A lone man cuts a striking figure as he walks among a cluster of prayer flags erected 45 days after a death, to guide and protect the soul on its way into the next life.