Last year I went hiking for
two days with some of my girlfriends. We went to Phajodhing in Thimphu. I had
been there once before in 2015, but it was only a day hike and had gone only
till the location of the lhakhangs. But last year was amazing. It was an ad-hoc
plan and just like that I decided to go with my cousin and her girl friends. We
were ten of us, some meeting for the first time.
The first time I went hiking
was with my brother and my nephew, we took two hours to reach till the
lkhakhangs (with no rest) and one and half hour on our way back. But that left
us with sore body for few days (lol). The second time I went, we took two and
half hours on our way up (we rested only once, when we reached the half way). Both
the times I went was sometime in October to the weather was just amazing. No
rain, no heat and not too cold.
When we reached the lhakhang,
we got served with hot tea and biscuits, it was an auspicious day so the monks were performing rituals and were serving every visitors. We visited all the
lhakhangs, got our blessings and had our lunch on the ground, and then continued walking up. We had to reach our destination at
Thujidra. That was another one and half hour walk up, stopping by in all the
small lhakhangs on the way and getting our blessings. By the time we reached up at
Thujidra and settled down in the guest house it was 5 pm. Although it was
starting to become darker, yet we could clearly see the beauty of the location,
the holy water dripping from the mountain and the view downhill, everything was
amazing. We had brought our ration for the night and the next day so we started
making our dinner in the common kitchen.
I might be giving the
impression that there is some sort of pay and use guest house…actually one of
the girls in our group knew someone who knew the abbot of Thujidra so we were
his guest. Since we didn’t want to impose on him we brought our own ration and used
lhakhang’s kitchen for cooking our meals. Because we had an early start the
next day we cooked the meals from the night itself and the next morning we all
packed our lunches and ate our breakfast. We were done packing and
started our walk by 6.30 am. Few of our friends had already requested two monks
from the institute the day before to be our guide to the lake (it is very risky to go without a guide for the first time, you don't wanna get lost up on the mountains)
So led by them we started off.
I must say, the first half an hour or so was soooooo tiring, it was a steep
uphill climb. Once we crossed that treacherous uphill climb it was a beautiful scene,
down we saw Thimphu valley and front we saw an unexpected plains which was
absolutely beautiful. We were glad to know that from that point on it was
pretty much plains, I mean basically we were on top of a mountain peak so no
more climb. It was just few ups and downs. Before we started our walk from that
point, the two monks lighted incense sticks and said short prayers to the local
deity for a safe journey.
We were advised to take sweets to avoid getting mountain sickness and to keep our selves well covered. We walked and walked an walked which felt like forever, but every moment was worth it, the view, the location we all couldn’t help but keep taking pictures. We were told that it usually takes around 6 hours (one way) so we maintained our pace since we had to return to the base by evening. There were so many lakes on the way and we visited all of them from far and said our prayers.
On the way we even met some of
the tourists and guides returning from trekking. Some were still camped. After almost
3 hours of walking, we decided to stop and have our packed lunch and rest for a
while. The spot was breathtaking, almost like in heaven. After the lunch we continued
and finally after another hour, we reached our destination. Upon reaching there, the monks once again lit the incense sticks and said the prayers. They advised us not to pollute the late or make loud noises near the lake since it is believed
that it will disturb the lake’s deity.
From above the lake looked
pretty close but the climb down to the lake was an entirely different story, we
had to literally crawl and hang on the shrubs in order to avoid tumbling down
to the lake. It must have taken us around 10-15 minutes to reach down safely…haha.
Once we reached near the lake we all offered our prayers and cleansed ourselves
with the holy late water. We stayed there for at least an hour taking rest and
taking a lot of pictures. Once we were contend, we decided to walk back.
Personally for me, the return
was very difficult, we started running out of water and we were getting more
and more tired. By the time we reached back to end of plains, we were all
really thirsty and tired and was dying to reach Thujidra so we can all have something
to drink. We reached Thujidra by 2.30 PM and first thing we all did was clustered
around the drupchu waiting for our turns. When we reached near the lhakhang,
the abbot prepared tea for all of us (how sweet is that?) with which we had
biscuits and puffed rice, it was such a treat for all of us.
We started walking towards
base by 3:00 pm and since we were all super tired and sore by then, it took us
longer to walk down hill, I mean my knees were trembling at times. It was almost
6:00 PM when we reached the base. Looking back at that time, it was two days of sheer joy for me, even
with all the walking and knee pains...something I plan to do again in the future.
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