Well, we have made it into Bhutan, but that is for another day. Because the day after we arrived was the opening day of the famous five day annual Paro Festival at Paro’s fabulous Buddhist dzong, or monastic fortress. This place is huge, with massive walls and perched on a hill overlooking the town. There is an initial courtyard, mostly for secular administrative stuff, and then an inner courtyard in the religious part, with a huge square tower between the two like the keep and inner bailey of a European castle.
The inner courtyard is where the festival takes place: the whitewashed stone wall of the tower makes up one side, while the other three are a three storey gallery with either railings for looking over or windows for looking into the square. We got there a little after 8:00 am, our guide having gone earlier to scout locations. Even though we were early there were already excited groups of people streaming in and finding places to sit – if you were thinking about advance online ticket sales and assigned seating you can stop now. Bhutanese people are required to wear traditional dress to things like this and looked fantastic, the patterns and colour of the crowds marred only by the fact that there is not yet a cure for tourists’ lack of fashion sense, but the pockets of slovenly westerners in puffers and jeans were not enough to ruin things.
The seating choices were either to sit on the cold stone floor, cross legged so as not to waste space, or make a dash for the upper deck and squeeze into a spot at the rail. We chose the third floor and scored a good spot. At which point our guide gave me a more than gentle shove and told me to quickly get “out there” before someone else did. “Out there” was the 2.5 foot wide ledge that ran around the perimeter of the gallery, and my job was to limbo under the rail and then lever myself into a sitting position, all without overlevering myself over the edge and onto the stones, thereby dismaying the other attendees. And by “sitting” I mean cross legged, since if I disengaged either leg my foot would stick out over the edge and that was clearly not going to be entertained. Anyway the 135 year old man beside me seemed to be comfortable like that so I decided to settle in. As we waited for things to start I could see the special seats on the second floor gallery for the chief monk of the dzong, with his blue felt hat, and other monks whose seats declined in stature just as they themselves declined, all enjoying the little plates of candies and paan that had been put out and toying with their mobiles while they waited.
And then finally it began, led off by horns like bagpipe drones that had the very bagpipe-like effect of going right through your skull and disabling some undoubtedly important part of your brain. There were also cymbals and trumpety things too, but mostly it was about the dancers, though there was also a quartet of masked clowns who generally goofed around including while the dancers were trying to do something more serious. The dances were traditional, telling ancient Bhutanese Buddhist stories. Some were masked, with dancers representing either protective deities or the demons being subdued. The most intense was the black hat dance, with dancers twirling around for so long that they began to look entranced. This was the longest, lasting from approximately when my left leg fell asleep to when my right hip simply gave up and spontaneously dislocated.
We rearranged the timing for this trip when our agent in Bhutan told us we could make the festival if we did so, and we are happy we took his advice.
bengalbhutanblog.ca 
Leave a comment