Anthology Part 1 - Beyond the Sky and the Earth

Reading a Newcomer's Perspective

From Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

By Jamie Zeppa

When Zeppa was 24 years old she left Canada to teach in Bhutan. This memoir grew out of an essay she wrote about her early days in the country.

[1] Mountains all around, climbing up to peaks, rolling into valleys, again and again. Bhutan
[2] is all and only mountains. I know the technical explanation for the landscape, landmass
[3] meeting landmass, the Indian subcontinent colliding into Asia thirty or forty million years
[4] ago, but I cannot imagine it. It is easier to picture a giant child gathering earth in great
[5] armfuls, piling up rock, pinching mud into ridges and sharp peaks, knuckling out little
[6] valleys and gorges, poking holes for water to fall through.

[7] It is my first night in Thimphu, the capital, a ninety-minute drive from the airport in
[8] Paro. It took five different flights over four days to get here, from Toronto to Montreal to
[9] Amsterdam to New Delhi to Calcutta to Paro. I am exhausted, but I cannot sleep.
[10] From my simple, pine-paneled room at the Druk Sherig hotel, I watch mountains rise to
[11] meet the moon. I used to wonder what was on the other side of mountains, how the
[12] landscape resolved itself beyond the immediate wall in front of you. Flying in from the
[13] baked-brown plains of India this morning, I found out: on the other side of mountains
[14] are mountains, more mountains and mountains again. The entire earth below us
[15] was a convulsion of crests and gorges and wind-sharpened pinnacles. Just past Everest,
[16] I caught a glimpse of the Tibetan plateau, the edge of a frozen desert 4,500 meters
[17] above sea level. Thimphu’s altitude is about half of that but even here, the winter air
[18] is thin and dry and very cold.

[19] The next morning, I share breakfast of instant coffee, powdered milk, plasticky white
[20] bread and flavorless1 red jam in the hotel with two other Canadians who have signed on
[21] to teach in Bhutan for two years. Lorna has golden brown hair, freckles and a no non-
[22] sense, home-on-the-farm demeanor2 that is frequently shattered by her ringing laughter
[23] and stories of the wild characters that populate her life in Saskatchewan. Sasha from
[24] British Columbia is slight and dark, with an impish smile. After breakfast, we have a brief
[25] meeting with Gordon, the field director of the WUSC program in Bhutan, and then walk
[26] along the main road of Thimphu. Both Lorna and Sasha have traveled3 extensively;
[27] Lorna trekked all over Europe and northern Africa and Sasha worked for a year in an
[28] orphanage in Bombay. They are both ecstatic about Bhutan so far, and I stay close to
[29] them, hoping to pick up some of their enthusiasm.

[30] Although Thimphu’s official population is 20,000, it seems even smaller. It doesn’t even
[31] have traffic lights. Blue-suited policemen stationed at two intersections along the main
[32] street direct the occasional truck or landcruiser using incomprehensible but graceful
[33] hand gestures. The buildings all have the same pitched roof, trefoil windows and heavy
[34] beams painted with lotus flowers, jewels and clouds. One-storied shops with wooden-
[35] shuttered windows open onto the street. They seem to be selling the same things:
[36] onions, rice, tea, milk powder, dried fish, plastic buckets and metal plates, quilts and
[37] packages of stale, soft cookies from India−Bourbon Biscuits, Coconut Crunchies and the
[38] hideously colored4 Orange Cream Biscuits. There are more signs of the outside world
[39] than I had expected: teenagers in acid washed jeans, Willie Nelson’s greatest hits after
[40] the news in English on the Bhutan Broadcasting Service, a Rambo poster in a bar.
[41] Overall, these signs of cultural infiltration are few, but they are startling against the
[42] Bhutanese-ness of everything else.
[43] The town itself looks very old, with cracked sidewalks and faded paintwork, but Gordon
[44] told us that it didn't exist thirty-odd years ago. Before the sixties, when the third king
[45] decided to make it the capital, it was nothing but rice paddies, a few farmhouses, and a
[46] dzong−one of the fortresses that are scattered throughout the country. Thimphu is
[47] actually new. “Thimphu will look like New York to you when you come back after a year
[48] in the east,” he said.

[49] At the end of the main road is Tashichho Dzong, the seat of the Royal Government of
[50] Bhutan, a grand, whitewashed, red-roofed, golden-tipped fortress, built in the traditional
[51] way, without blueprints or nails. Beyond, hamlets are connected by footpaths, and
[52] terraced fields, barren now, climb steadily from the river and merge into forest. Thimphu
[53] will never look like New York to me, I think.

[54] The Bhutanese are a very handsome people, “the best built race of men I ever saw,”
[55] wrote emissary George Bogle on his way to Tibet in 1774, and I find I agree. Of medium
[56] height and sturdily built, they have beautiful aristocratic faces with dark, almond-shaped
[57] eyes, high cheekbones and gentle smiles. Both men and women wear their black hair
[58] short. The women wear a kira, a brightly striped, ankle-length dress and the men a gho,
[59] a knee-length robe that resembles a kimono, except that the top part is exceptionally
[60] voluminous. The Bhutanese of Nepali origin tend to be taller, with sharper features and
[61] darker complexions. They too wear the gho and kira. People look at us curiously, but
[62] they do not seem surprised at our presence. Although we see few other foreigners in
[63] town, we know they are here. Gordon said something this morning about Thimphu’s
[64] small but friendly “ex-pat” community.

[65] When we stop to ask for directions at a hotel, the young man behind the counter walks
[66] with us to the street, pointing out the way, explaining politely in impeccable English. I
[67] search for the right word to describe the people, for the quality that impresses me
[68] most−dignity, unselfconsciousness, good humor5, grace−but can find no single word to
[69] hold all of my impressions.

[70] In Thimphu, we attend a week-long orientation session with twelve other Irish, British,
[71] Australian and New Zealand teachers new to Bhutan. Our first lessons, in Bhutanese
[72] history, are the most interesting. Historical records show that waves of Tibetan
[73] immigrants settled in Bhutan sometime before the tenth century, but the area is thought
[74] to have been inhabited long before that. In the eighth century, the Indian saint
[75] Padmasambhava brought Buddhism to the area, where it absorbed many elements of
[76] Bon, the indigenous shamanist religion. The new religion took hold but was not a
[77] unifying force. The area remained a collection of isolated valleys, each ruled by its own
[78] king. When the Tibetan lama Ngawang Namgyel arrived in 1616, he set about unifying
[79] the valleys under one central authority and gave the country the name Druk Yul,
[80] meaning Land of the Thunder Dragon. Earlier names for Bhutan are just as beautiful−the
[81] Tibetans knew the country as the Southern Land of Medicinal Herbs and the South
[82] Sandalwood Country. Districts within Bhutan were even more felicitously-named:
[83] Rainbow District of Desires, Lotus Grove of the Gods, Blooming Valley of Luxuriant
[84] Fruits, the Land of Longing and Silver Pines. Bhutan, the name by which the country
[85] became known to the outside world, is thought to be derived from Bhotanta, meaning
[86] the “end of Tibet” or from the Sanskrit Bhu-uttan, meaning “highlands”.

[87] While the rest of Asia was being overrun by Europeans of varying hue but similar cry,
[88] only a handful of Westerners found their way into Bhutan. Two Portuguese Jesuits came
[89] to call in 1627, and six British missions paid brief but cordial visits from the late 1700s
[90] until the middle of the next century. Relations with the British took a nasty turn during
[91] the disastrous visit of Ashley Eden in 1864. Eden, who had gone to sort out a small
[92] problem of Bhutanese raids on the British territory, had his back slapped, his hair pulled,
[93] and his face rubbed with wet dough, and was then forced to sign an outrageous treaty
[94] that led to a brief war between the British and the Bhutanese. Considering the
[95] consolidated British empire in the south, and the Great Game being played out in the
[96] north between the colonial powers, Bhutan’s preservation of its independence was
[97] remarkable. I am full of admiration for this small country that has managed to look after
[98] itself so well.

Notes

1 flavorless: American spelling of flavourless
2 demeanor: American spelling of demeanour
3 traveled: American spelling of travelled
4 colored: American spelling of coloured
5 humor: American spelling of humour
Emissary: a person sent as a representative.
Indigenous: originating in a particular place.

Reading the text

The extract is long enough for first impressions to be tested and revised; a summary cannot replace the language and sequence on the page.

Zeppa was 24 when she left Canada to teach in Bhutan. That is a biographical fact supplied by the anthology. The text also shows that she has travelled for four days, is physically exhausted and is seeing Bhutan as a newcomer. What those facts suggest about her state of mind is interpretation, so it must remain accountable to the writing.

A topic is what the text concerns: arrival, mountains, travel, culture. A perspective is the writer's particular way of seeing that topic. Here, Zeppa's perspective is mixed from the beginning. The landscape seems magnificent but hard to comprehend; her body is tired and cold; familiar comforts disappoint; direct observation repeatedly complicates expectation.

Because this is memoir, the immediate first-person voice has two layers. It lets us experience the younger traveller's uncertainty while the later writer chooses which moments to include and how to arrange them. That crafted immediacy matters: the extract is a remembered encounter, not an objective guidebook.

Tracing the Whole-Text Perspective Arc

Structure is the order in which the reader is allowed to understand Zeppa's response. The extract does not simply travel from negative to positive. It alternates wonder with friction, then widens from a private first night to streets, people, history and national independence.