​Now it was my turn to get the nasty cold and cough Matt had been fighting since leaving Thimphu. Therefore, I was in a bit of a daze on the early morning bus ride from Trongsa to our jumping off point to begin the Nabji-Korphu trek, a low-elevation route good for the wintertime to rural communities of the Mon and Kheng peoples. The Monpa are believed to be the first inhabitants of Bhutan, numbering around 3,000. They speak their own language and sustain elements of their pre-Buddhist animistic Bon religion along side contemporary Buddhist practice. We had been in communication Phurba, a local guide from the Jangbi, one of just a few Monpa villages within Jigme Dorji National Park. He met us shortly after we deboarded the bus, and after sorting out a little mix up with our permit situation to enter the National Park with a few phone calls, we began hiking toward his village.

Local people believe that seeing a langur monkey on your journey is good luck, whereas spotting a mischievous macaque monkey will bring the opposite upon you. So we took it as a good omen for our trek (and my health) that we passed by a tree full of the gorgeous golden langurs shortly after crossing the river into the Park. After a few hours of walking uphill, we reached Jangbi, seemingly just a few houses and several of which belonged to members of Phurba’s family. We took tea in the altar room and chatted with his sister. Eventually, she invited us in to the much warmer kitchen with a bukhari, but warned us that we might think it was “dirty”. By dirty, she meant undeveloped and it became apparent that the family was a little self-conscious about having chilip guests in their humble home. We did our best to put them at ease, sitting on the wood floor, playing with the…uh, how to say, not-so-clean kids, and enthusiastically tucking in to the super spicy food Phurba’s brother, Chimi, prepared over an open hearth. Just before dusk, we took a tour of their farm, learning what cardamom plants look like, that porcupine are nuisance to their crops, and wondering about the unharvested pomelos rotting on the ground.

At dinner, we were offered homemade ara and Phurba’s father shared a hardcover book with us that turned out to be an Indian grad student’s dissertation on the Monpa’s intimate relationship with their forest environment, something we would see in practice time and again as we continued the trek. Already, we had been served at dinner a bitter dish of cane shoot collected from the forest. Phurba’s family had been interviewed in the data collection and thus received a copy of the dissertation in appreciation. I would have loved to review the research in more depth, but I was heading toward serious dysfunctionality with my cold, so we excused ourselves for an 8 o’clock bedtime.

We bid farewell to the family the next morning and set off with Phurba and Chimi into the jungle. I was grateful that the trek was not so strenuous since I was struggling for energy despite 11 hours of sleep and Dayquil in my system. We encountered golden langurs several times, as well as a striking rufous-necked hornbill. After a hot packed lunch at an overlook of the valley marked by a chorten, we passed by a historical site where Guru Rinpoche had meditated, the evidence being an imprint of his (quite large) head in an overhanging rock. He also left a few footprints and fingerprints in an impassable cliff face that he cut a path through.

About seven hours after departing, we reached the trekker’s campsite at Kudra, not quite as nicely maintained as the one in Jangbi that Phurba’s family is in charge of. There was no water and the boys had forgotten matches to start a fire, so they ran off to the two-house village to connect some hoses and borrow matches. Dinner included some wild spinach that they harvested along the trail. We ate next to a cozy campfire until a light rain sent us to bed in the cooking shelter since we did not bring a tent for this trek.

We visited four more historical sites of Guru Rinpoche’s adventures while trekking toward the village of Nabji the next day. The first was a cave system of tight passageways said to emerge at Kurjey Lhakhang in Bumthang, near where we live. In this one, we also encountered a tremendously scary spider on the wall where we had been bracing with our hands, but happily it did not move as we inspected it. Another was a deep bore hole in a rock, actually a phallus imprint where the mighty Guru had “subdued” a demoness. We had planned on camping in Nabji as well, but we found the campsite to be in disarray. Cows had been splatter painting with their poop inside the shelter where we would need to sleep and again there was no water. We sought out a homestay and learned that the village committee had decided that trekkers must stay in houses rather than camp, likely to generate more income for the community.

Our host, as well as the entire village, was in “celebration mode” thanks to the annual tshechu beginning the day before. We seemed to have a knack for happening upon these events. After Chimi took over the kitchen and we ate dinner, we headed down to the village’s temple for the evening session of masked dances, featuring a rare ter cham, or treasure dance. Before we arrived to the courtyard, Phurba emphasized that we could not take photos of this particular dance, and we clearly agreed. He reminded us several more times while we watched other dances leading up to it, and each time we reassured him we would not pull out our cameras or our phones. Then, an atsara (festival clown) came over to let us know there would be a “special” dance that we could not photograph. Laso (okay), no problem. Not long after that, a fire marshal type looking man introduced himself, then got right to the point of officially informing us there could be no photos. Yes sir, no photos. During a pause between performances, an announcement was made to the entire audience regarding the ban on photography for the next dance. Phurba translated for us, and we nodded in concurrence, then he translated it two more times just to be sure.

Finally, the lights in the courtyard were shut off, and only the glow of fire in the middle of the dance floor remained. A group of men and, surprisingly for us, young boys emerged from a nearby building wearing white cloths tied around their heads and…(almost) nothing else. The men wore a thong-like string configuration with their bare “treasure” tied up to it, so that it was better on display, I suppose. Many treasures were also decorated with puffs of fluffy feathers, colorful strings, perhaps bells. It was a little difficult to see the details in the dark. They whooped, hollered, and clanged bells as they danced, then took turns running around the perimeter of the dance area, pausing to energetically shake what they got. The younger boys left the dance as things got more intense, but returned towards the end to be part of the phallus blessing. The naked dancers formed a circle around the fire, and women of all ages walked clockwise within it, in a continuous bow to the men’s honored parts. In the fall, we had also witnessed a more sexualized and homoerotic version of this ter cham during the Jambay Lhakhang tshechu in Bumthang. It made this one seem tame in comparison. Nonetheless, seeing elderly women being blessed by the penises of boys who could be their grandchildren was one of those fascinating moments of travel that required a large helping of cultural relativism to appreciate.

Apparently, the naked dance originated in this village and the neighboring village of  Korphu in the 8th century. According to one travel company’s website, “legend has it that a band of devils were obstructing the construction of a Lhakhang (temple) in Nabjikorphu, delaying the work. As a ruse and to distract the devils, Terton Dorji Lingpa launched the naked dance. It served its purpose as the outrageous antics of the naked dancers kept the devils spellbound. The construction was thus completed. The dance reached Jambay Lhakhang since Terton Dorji Lingpa also consecrated [it].” A Terton is a treasure revealer, and refers to finding hidden scriptures and other religious artifacts, often in natural features like caves, as well as having dances such as this one revealed to their consciousness during deep meditations. Another travel company website claims, “The locals…believe that the penis is one of the most precious treasures, as all sentient beings are brought into the world by this organ.” Hmmm, interesting, because I can think of one other organ that might fit that description as well…

On the way back to our homestay, I considered playing a joke on Phurba by asking him if he’d like to see the amazing photos I took of the naked dance. I thought better of it though, fearing that if any other villagers overheard me, I might get instantly pummeled. And in a moment of sweet irony, we had spotted the pushy chilip photographer from the Trongsa tshechu at the naked dance as well, forced to actually stand back and watch something without his righteous tool to behave like a jack ass with.

We thought it was a little odd that two neighboring villages held their tshechus on the exact same dates until we learned from a German anthropologist studying the Korphu tshechu that they used to be staggered so both villages could attend the other's. A rivalry in recent years has caused them to competitively claim the same dates. We were trying not to play favorites though, and also wanted to explore another village, so we hiked for a couple of hours up to Korphu. After touring the village with Phurba’s monk friend and being offered some fresh homebrew known as singchang along the way, we entered the courtyard for the smallest tshechu we had ever seen with no more than fifty people in attendance. Despite this, we were intrigued that the atsaras were all about using a microphone hooked up to a large and in charge sound system, and got confirmation that this was a new adaptation as a result of the recently constructed road to the village. Like Nabji, there was also much more involvement of children in the tshechu than we had seen at the larger ones, from child atsaras to a lunch break karaoke/dance hour featuring most of the kids in the village.

We were so in love with this tshechu that we didn’t return to Nabji until its daytime festivities were wrapping up. However, just as we settled in to the kitchen for dinner at our homestay, we were informed that we needed to get out of the house because it would be “danger” to remain inside. Given our communication challenges with Phurba, the best we could surmise was that an intense fire ritual was about to be performed that could catch the house on fire. We rushed down to the Lhakhang just in time to watch a procession bringing down torma to eventually throw into a huge bonfire in the field below. We thus concluded the risk of remaining in the house was in a spiritual sense rather than a practical reality. The evening’s program continued with a very repetitive but endlessly humorous play, at least for those who could understand it. We sipped ara for our amusement instead, as well as to guard against the dropping temperature. Feeling a bit tshechu-ed out for the day, we took our leave just as a community dinner was being served, followed by more dances late into the night, of course. It seems these rural communities really go all out for their tshechus!

The following morning our packing routine was interrupted by Phurba excitedly busting in to our room to inform us of an old Monpa woman performing a shamanic ritual to rid a neighboring house of sickness. We were welcomed to observe the chanting and drumming on the deck of the house for a while, then returned to our hosts' house to settle up. Down at the Lhakhang, the tshechu was getting underway with blessing ceremonies. After getting some crowd-pleasing special attention from the atsaras, we joined the line to receive a blessing from the presiding rinpoche and another from a phallus presumably dipped in holy water. Afterwards, the women were getting picked up and twirled around by the men. I was no exception as the husband of the couple who hosted us grabbed me, although he noticeably went easy on me.

With that unexpected experience as our grand finale, we gave final assurances to multiple inquiries of which local tshechu was better that BOTH had been uniquely amazing, then started our hike down the road leading out of Nabji. While we were certainly honored to have witnessed these intimate community traditions up close and personal, our enthusiasm was ultimately no match for Phurba’s. He had not been to either of these Khengpa villages for eight years, yet he was constantly bumping into old classmates, friends, and acquaintances for whom he remembered exactly how they knew each other.

After all of the festivities of the few days, we were grateful for the simple, quiet movement of an easy hike down the road to the village of Nimshong. We noticed Chimi snapping off a couple of fern fiddleheads as he walked ahead of us and wondered if nakey would be on the dinner menu. When he answered in the affirmative, Matt pointed out that he would need to find a whole lot more. A grin spread across his face as he opened up the fold of his gho to reveal a heap of young fern fronds tucked inside. As we approached Nimshong late in the afternoon, Phurba informed us that we would ask around to stay in a house rather than using the campground as we had expected. We were a bit put off by this sudden change in plans, not because Nimshong appeared far less prosperous than Nabji and Korphu with its unadorned stilted wooden houses, but rather we were feeling saturated with wonderful but energy-intensive social interactions and were hoping for a more relaxing evening. Phurba put forth various reasons, but what it really came down to is that, except for the nakey collected on the hike, they were low on provisions.

After settling in to the altar room of a sweet old woman’s house, we were plied with tea and local mandarin oranges. Then Phurba informed us we had been invited to the annual prayer ritual at another house, similar to what we had experienced at the Haa Valley Homestay. We rallied our energy for the opportunity, amazed at how much ritual we had stumbled upon during this trek. We sat outside of their altar room and sipped ara while the monks prayed and played instruments inside. When the ceremony had finished, we were served bowls of rice topped with thick strips of chewy pork fat, considered the best part of the pig in Bhutan. We made a weak effort, but it was pretty difficult to stomach. Luckily, Chimi had also been cooking up the fiddleheads and other dishes for dinner back at our host’s home, so we excused ourselves for a second dinner. When we returned to the house having the annual ritual afterward, the mood had definitely turned purely celebratory and we were soon pulled into the circle of dancing in the tiny altar room. We captivated the attention of a very drunk young woman who repeatedly insisted that her (4-5 year old) “baby” told her that we were his true parents and that we needed to take her baby home with us. When this claim was less effective that she had hoped, she then tried to get us to come to her house to give us oranges. Phurba tried to help, but “My baby is sleeping. You are his momma.” persisted while firmly grabbing my hand, so we got out of there after just a few dances.
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The following morning, we rejoined with the main road running through Zhemgang and had our “divorce” with Phurba (and Chimi) as he called it, sealing the deal with a shot of whiskey at a roadside shop since they did not have ara. They caught a bus heading north back toward their village shortly thereafter. We were left once again on our own, sitting on the side of the road, but this time without the benefit of our trusty two-wheeled companions to help us get to where we were trying to go next…

After a few days of taking care of travel logistics in Thimphu, we were ready to take on the most intensive cycling section of our trip. We pedaled up to Dochu La for the second time, with the mountain panorama mostly enshrouded in clouds this time. Then we bundled up for the descent down the other side to Punakha, a fun ride on a freshly paved double-laned road, perhaps the most completed section of the ongoing effort to widen the entire East-West Highway.

However, we were far from finished climbing for the day, since we managed to select a homestay in a village high above the valley floor. We called our host, Aum Leki, at the turn off to begin the ascent and estimated it would take us an hour to reach her farmstead. She informed us that a monk would be waiting for us on the side of the road since it would be difficult to find her house on our own. One hour turned in to two hours, and after gaining about 2,500 feet, we finally saw a cell phone light illuminating the outline of crimson robes in the darkness. We apologized to the monk, who was Aum Leki’s neighbor, for the long roadside wait, but Sonam responded that he simply used the time to conduct his evening prayers and immediately launched in to the specifics of US politics until we reached his house. Then Aum Leki’s father-in-law took over escorting us down the rough dirt road to their house, unnecessarily grabbing on to my bike to “help” me walk it along. With only partial control it was a bit difficult to keep the bike steady with the weight of the panniers on the back rack, but he was quite determined not to let go.

Aum Leki was quite relieved to see us arrive and per Bhutanese custom, we immediately sat down in the altar room for tea, snacks, and welcome pours of ara. We were soon joined by a guide, Chencho, and his Australian client, Pete, both of whom we had met in the Bhutan Swallowtail office in Thimphu a couple of days before. At first we were a little put off by the “hotelness” of our room, but as soon as we realized our attached bathroom had a piping hot shower, all misgivings of lack of authenticity were somehow forgotten. After cleaning up from our long day of cycling, we headed over to the kitchen and sat on cushions around the bukhari to eat a typical Bhutanese dinner of red rice, ema datsi (chilies in cheese sauce), dal (blended lentil soup), and bitter gourd and finished up with a few more cups of ara before heading off for an early bedtime.

The next morning we bid farewell to Pete and Chencho and sat outside on a sunny patio with lovely views of the valley for a late leisurely breakfast. The lower elevation of Punakha made it feel semi-tropical with roses blooming in the garden and citrus ripening on the trees. We walked around the property and met Aum Leki’s “pet” wild boar kept in a tiny enclosure, which she caught in her fields as a boarlet. Apparently the boar is a picky eater and only eats rice, so she wants to give it away, but not to anyone who will eat it. Looks like she will be keeping it for a while…

Aum Leki took us on a short hike to Norbugang village, the home of the four Queen Mothers. We passed by their Royal Palace where preparations were underway to celebrate the first birthday of the Gyalsey (the Crown Prince) on February 5th. Then we met a Forestry Officer returning from a wood use inspection, and he invited to his house for tea. It was getting late in the afternoon by the time we began walking again and we were ready to chill back at the farm, but for some unknown reason Aum Leki seemed to really want us to see her daughter’s school, so we kept going. The students were on winter break, but we explored the grounds and met the friendly principal while he was washing his car in the driveway.

Meanwhile, the father-in-law had been preparing a hot stone bath for us, and indeed the third one of the trip was also a charm. It was one big tub sunken in to the ground enclosed in a wooden hut, but the open doorway allowed partial valley views. This time I overdid it asking for hot rocks, so we spent about as much time out of the tub cooling off as we did soaking, but it still worked wonders on our sore muscles from our ride the day before. After we were finished, their friends came over to enjoy the bath while dinner in the kitchen was a similar affair as the night before, this time with the addition of some fresh curd that Aum Leki had picked up at a neighbor’s on the way back from our walk.

The following morning, I bought one of Aum Leki’s weavings as a way to remember her sweetness, then got going on the epic day we had plotted out for ourselves. We zoomed down to the floor of the valley and crossed the river, rejoining the National Highway at Bajo. The reality of cycling through the road widening work hit us hard with a very dusty and loose gravel section right off the bat. Fortunately, as we slowly progressed up toward our next pass of Pele La, the road substrate improved even if the dust levels did not. Matt had developed an energy-zapping cough that was further aggravated by the cold temperature and road dust, so it became a struggle to reach the only lodging we knew of, a simple guesthouse a few miles below the pass. We rolled in around 7pm, tired and hungry, and grabbed one of the frigid rooms above the restaurant. After snarfing down rice, kewa datsi (potatoes and chilies in cheese sauce), and dried beef curry, we brought a bucket of hot water from the kitchen up to the bathroom since the pipes were frozen, then crashed in our sleeping bag on top of the bed, both for warmth and the fact that it was obvious the sheets had not been changed for quite some time. We know this because there were little pieces of chewed doma (betelnut) and stains of its characteristic red spit when we pulled back the covers, as well as a forgotten flashlight.

We got a fresh start on tackling Pele La the next morning, taking about two more hours to reach the top and having gained about 7,000 feet of elevation since leaving Punakha Valley the day before. With not much to see at the pass except a chorten and some souvenir stalls, we did not linger and began our hard-earned ride down towards Trongsa. It took most of the day to reach a famous viewpoint of the Trongsa Dzong at roughly the same elevation across the valley, so close but still so far away. We were reminded of cycling along the fjords of Iceland, as we had to descend all the way down to a river cutting through the back end of a side valley and ride all the way back up the other side to actually reach the spot we had gazed upon a few hours before.

The road dust had turned to mud in the side valley excursion, so we arrived to the wonderful Tashi Ninjay Guesthouse in a sorry state of cleanliness. The lovely staff were not phased in the least and gave us a great room with a balcony overlooking the massive, stately dzong brightly lit up in the night.

Purely by luck, we arrived to Trongsa midway through a multi-day tshechu (Buddhist festival) held in the courtyard of the dzong. We decided to stay an extra day to attend the remainder of it, as well as to let Matt recuperate. Pushing through his sickness for two big days of cycling had definitely caught up to him. Having observed several tshechus already, this one felt familiar, but also had a few dances that we had not seen before. Much like visiting Bhutan’s monasteries, there is a high degree of commonality between tshechus, but each provides a unique experience created by the setting, the local community in attendance, and paying attention to the details of the costumes and the dancing.

Matt rested up in the afternoon, while I watched until the end of the cham (sacred masked dance) performances. In the evening, we wandered through a temporary tent city of restaurants and karaoke bars that had popped up for the festival. We cozied up next to the bukhari in a particularly inviting tent for some momos (dumpings) and beers, trying not to be too obviously intrigued with a group of monks who were fully participating in the drunken revelry surrounding us.

The last day of the tshechu displayed a thondrol, a beautifully embroidered multi-storey tapestry featuring Guru Rinpoche, a great Tibetan saint that liberated many parts of Bhutan from demons. The thondrol is believed to be able to remove one’s sins upon sight. It is only unfurled once per year at daybreak, and while we were still snoring away at that point, we did make it to the courtyard before it was rolled up again. Semi-organized, or perhaps semi-chaotic, lines had formed in the courtyard to pass by the base of the thondrol and underneath a statue of Zhabdrung Ngawang Ngamyel, Bhutan’s unifier, to receive a blessing. We skipped the wait for the blessing and instead did some fascinating people watching from a balcony overlooking the entire courtyard.

Unfortunately, the person who most captivated our attention was a chilip in a bright green jacket and a camera with a tremendously long lens. He seemed to think that his camera gave him absolute entitlement to walk anywhere he pleased at any time and point it at anyone he felt like with any prior permission or interaction. He would stand in front of others and block their view, then walk across the dance floor in the middle of a performance for a new angle. With the lens he had, there was really no need to do either. Even if he was a legit professional, which somehow we highly doubted, his behavior made us cringe, yet we did not have the willpower to ignore him and gave in to watching his every annoying move.
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After we had done our own more discreet documenting, we took our leave from the tshechu and spent the remainder of the day cleaning off our bikes, hand washing some laundry, sorting out gear, and shopping for an immanent two-week diversion from the cycle tour to explore the little-visited southern district of Zhemgang the least developed dzongkhag of Bhutan.

We spent most of New Year’s Eve cycling from the lovely Haa Valley Homestay to Thimphu. Heading downstream, the road actually brought us higher and higher up as the valley narrowed. This road has not yet been subjected to widening construction, so it was a really pleasant ride with sweeping views of rural homesteads dispersed across rolling hills. We descended abruptly to Chuzom, a river confluence and road junction point, then rode the “busy” road back to Thimphu mostly in the dark.

We celebrated NYE by taking a cold shower (not by choice) at our usual Thimphu base, Hotel Sambauv, then headed out to our favorite restaurant, A La Carte, for our favorite food in the city: amazingly authentic tasting Thai papaya salad with grilled chicken, and a “KFC” chicken burger, much better than the real thing. The place was already packed with partiers dressed in their best ensembles, knee-high boots, 80s ripped jeans, purple faux fur coats, and the like. As for us, we splurged out on some $1.25 drink specials, hot apple cider whiskey and butter-fried ara, of which the latter tasted like a harsh egg nog when using a bit of imagination. Then, as our tradition dictates, we were in bed before midnight, listening to fireworks and a surge of general revelry around that one very special minute.

Our arrival in Thimphu marked the end of our concrete plans for the rest of winter break, so we had to put in some time figuring out the logistics of, well, the entire month of January. We met with our friends at Bhutan Swallowtail who were a great source of knowledge and advice, of course, being that they own a travel company and all. Slowly, and with a few investigatory phone calls and follow ups to those communications, a somewhat confirmed itinerary began to take shape.

Simultaneously, I took advantage of the down time in Thimphu to get up close and personal with Bhutan’s nationalized health care system. It had been several years since I had a thyroid function test to ensure I was on the proper dose of medication for my hypothyroidism. While traveling in Asia, I could walk in to any pharmacy and get the prescription medication for a couple of dollars, so there was little incentive to seek out a doctor after leaving the States.

Upon arriving at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital, I had no idea where to begin the process of getting a blood test, so we walked in to the Emergency Department and were advised to go to “Old Building 1,2,3,4,5”. We asked passersby until we found the Old Building, and then deduced that I needed a numbered call ticket to queue outside of either door 1,2,3,4, or 5. After a short wait, my number came up and I entered door three, not sure what should happen behind it. I had barely uttered hypothyroidism and blood test before the “generalist” doctor had written up a lab order, kindly but efficiently instructing me to go to the lab the next morning because it would already be closed for the day. We decided it would be a good idea to preview the lab’s location and found it in the New Building. The door was still open and we noticed a technician drawing a patient’s blood, so I simply walked in and sat down at a sampling station. We would have to come back the next morning for results though, which we did, queuing in a long but fast-moving line at a little window in the outdoor courtyard of the New Building. After receiving my print out of the test results, we hustled back inside to the window that gives out numbered call tickets to visit the “specialists” upstairs. This is where the real waiting began. After a few hours of sitting in the hallway, my number was finally coming up, so I huddled near the door along with a few other numbers ahead of and behind me, as custom appeared to require.

The doctor competently reviewed my test results, but was a bit dismayed that she could not reference my medical records in a hand written composition notebook like the other Bhutanese patients carried. I explained that my medical records were kept in my health care provider’s computer system in the US and assured her that I did not have a very interesting medical history. She wrote a prescription for the same dosage of levothyroxine that I had been self-medicating with, and a lab order for a whole slew of blood tests including liver and kidney function, glucose, electrolytes, and cholesterol. I first had to go next door to get a blood pressure check, then I was free to take my prescription to the pharmacy in exchange for a numbered ticket. The order was filled quite quickly and I received my pills in an unlabeled plastic baggie.

The next morning, we walked to the hospital for the fourth time (one time was a futile attempt when we didn’t realize it was closed for a national holiday), this time confident that we knew the drill. I got the follow up blood test and was told I could pick up the results between 1 and 2pm. When we returned in the afternoon, the print out was indeed ready, but the specialists were already gone. According to a bystander who noticed us looking around in confusion, once a doctor reaches 60, they stop seeing patients for the day. We weren’t terribly upset by this since all of my values fell within the normal range and I had done my own research regarding what each test signifies.

I left the hospital having paid nary a ngultrum, nor owing any, only having spent a decent amount of time there over the course of three days. I received reliable services and quality care even if the process was initially a bit confusing for an outsider. Ultimately, it was fascinating to participate in a system of health care so different from the US. At least for my scenario of non-urgent preventative care, I certainly preferred the investment of time over money. By shifting more of the responsibility and legwork to the patients, the hospital was able to operate efficiently while still accommodating all the people seeking medical assistance. Seemingly, no one is turned away because they cannot pay, because they are uninsured, or because they could not get an appointment. They have to wait their turn with patience, they have to keep track of their own medical history, they have to run around to different windows in different locations, but this system allows lab results to be available in a matter of hours and specialists to consult at least 60 patients per day. Could you imagine a doctor in the US with 60 appointments in a single day? That said, Matt and I wondered if we would have a similar reaction with a more complicated and/or time-sensitive medical condition. We have the privilege of paying for privatized health care if we need it, but most Bhutanese could not.
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By then, we were ready to move on from Thimphu. Each time we are there, we always have the best intentions of doing fun stuff like day hikes, visiting local temples, and even a few museums. Yet somehow, running errands, shopping, eating non-Bhutanese food, and sorting gear always takes precedence. This time was no different, but it was essential for the success of the rest of our journey back to Bumthang.