The Gongdu effect

Source: Feature: The Gongdu effect | Kuenselonline.com

A 12-day walk through remote Mongar and Pemagatshel

Time Out: The royal entourage at a break during the arduous trek

FEATURE 2 May, 2010 - We stood ready in Zimzorong, carrying rucksacks filled with medicines, knee caps, dried food, raincoats, pain relieving sprays, bottles of water, glucose and the like for the 12-day walk with His Majesty through the remotest gewogs in Mongar and Pemagatsel in eastern Bhutan.
Zimzorong is a footpath junction on the Gyelpoizhing-Nganglam highway that is still under construction and 14 km from Gyelpozhing town. It has four shops that sell everything from clothes to liquor and serve villages in Khengkar gewog.

“It’s a difficult journey and the villages on the way have nothing at all,” someone told us in Gyelpozhing town when we began the walk three days ago.

From Zimzorong’ it is a two-hour steep winding climb through the pine trees to Tongla village. Nothing moved. The only sound we heard was our footsteps on the gravel path and heavy panting. The dry hard earth emitted so much heat that afternoon we were bathed in perspiration that dripped into the eyes.

The descent from the chorten in Yudari village hurt our knees. The lights of Kengkhar school seemed to move farther away as we jogged towards it. We slept in the classroom right after dinner.

On the third day, still hours away from our destination, Pam village, night began to set in. Even as we rushed to get out of the woods, our feet felt heavier with each step up the climb, the heavy Hitec boots forcing them to drag on the dusty path.

Our hands swelled as the heavy backpack straps pressed hard on our shoulders. Minutes ago in Gorthongla, a villager had said that it would take another hour and a half to get to Pam. For us, non-regular walkers, it meant more than two hours.

The journey we had made with such difficulty is usual activity for even children in the villages. Primary school kids, villagers said, do dozen of trips during the vacation to sell oranges and earn money for school expenses. In Kengkhar school, children walk for two hours everyday to fetch water for the school mess.

Many a time, villagers tread that path to Gyelpozhing just to buy a pair of slippers or a bag of imported rice.

“We can’t buy from the local shops because the prices are almost double,” said a villager in Jurmi. Pam village does not even have a shop. The nearest one is a day’s walk.

The next two days took us through the country’s poorest villages in Gongdu gewog. There were also places and people with interesting names. The names of the villages end in ri (Udari, Nanari..) which means river, but the villagers face acute shortage of water. A man in the village is called Nga Da Gyalpo (His Majesty the King).

Most of the houses are made of bamboo and use banana leaves as roofing material. They seem to be clinging to steep rocky hillsides. Besides orange trees, there were patches of clearing in the forests surrounding the houses indicating the practice of slash and burn cultivation to grow maize.

Climbing and sliding down the rocky hillside, we moved further down south from Kengkhar, where land fragmentation has pressured farmers from 50 villages to take up slash and burn cultivation in Weringla dungkhag.

The Weringla dungpa said that, though the place has huge potential in horticulture, limited land, coupled with lack of market, has been a problem.

Lengkhong, 65, a father of 10 children from Gongdu, admitted there is no future for his children in the village. Not in the way he sees it. Thus, eight of his children are away. “We’ve no road connection or electricity,” he said. But they have a drinking water supply.

Women waited along the way dressed in their best to welcome us. They offered ara (local brew) from huge traditional bamboo flasks and fruits as part of their tradition.

Many of them are happily married, but most were divorced. Tandin Wangmo’s first husband died when her two sons were toddlers. She met another man from whom she has a daughter, but his relatives disapproved of their marriage.

There are many like her. Tandin’s eldest son, aged 14, used to work in the fields to help her raise the family. Her three children are now amongst hundreds from the dzongkhag to receive the education allowance kidu.

The high rate of divorce has left many vulnerable children and destitute people in the villages. Its number seemed to grow with every village we went through.

But most of these rural villages have access to the cellular network. A villager in Gorthongla village does not mind walking for an hour to Pam and back, several times a week to recharge mobile phone batteries. “Mobile is the only luxury we have,” said Leki. Friends and family members in towns recharge their phone vouchers.

As the journey continued, we saw villagers now peacefully cultivating in areas where the Indian militants had once camped a decade ago. The fields are so steep, a slip means rolling down to the bottom of the valley.

Yet villagers are hopeful. The Gyelposhing-Nganglam highway, which passes through the villages on the banks of the Dangmechu, could help them out of poverty within a few years. A massive hydro electric project is also planned along the river.

On the last day of the walk, a crimson western sky turned to a grey blanket and slowly spread across the sky. We took part in a tshogchang and rested. We drank the milk and ate tengma (flattened maize). There was one last descent and a climb before getting to a mining road in Nganglam, Pemagatsel. As we left, the women bid us farewell, singing and waving scarves from a hill until we could no longer see them.

By Tshering Palden