Bhutan Snowman Trek – America's Finest Ambassador

Intro

: The Snowman Trek in Bhutan took our group 24 days to complete and is something around 200 miles in distance, the majority of which takes place at an altitude between four and five-thousand meters. Here’s a map showing roughly the route we took from west to east. The Western company I went through was called Canadian Himalayan Expeditions, but you could easily cut out the middle man and hire their local partners at Bhutan Travel Service for the same great experience at a cheaper price.

: Bishnu was our guide and I found him to be an authentic, knowledgeable, patient and caring leader that paid close attention to the needs and wants of the group – and did whatever he could to satisfy them – as we made our way through the mountains on this epic 24-day hike. This was his 8th Snowman Trek, the 5th of which he’d be walking as head guide.

: Pictured here again is Bishnu, this time with two other members of the local team – Safal in the middle and Ricky on the right. Out of all the local team, aside from Bishnu, we interacted with those two guys the most. They were responsible for serving us meals and working as assistant guides while we walked from point A to point B. Both of them were a delight to be around and provided lots of laughs for our group.

: Although we didn’t have much personal interaction with him, the chef Tsheten (pictured here, photo courtesy of Brett Watson) also played a huge role in the success of our group, rationing food and planning three meals a day and an afternoon snack for 9 hungry trekkers to keep our spirits high as we braved whatever soaking rain, punishing ice pellets or blinding sunshine the Snowman Trail had in store for us each day.

: Biden (not like Sleepy Joe, but pronounced BEE-den or bee-DEN, I can’t remember which) had the job of camp organizer and was responsible for getting the tents set up and taken down each day. And although I won’t mention the rest of the local trekking team by name here, all those guys were also very friendly, hard-working and helpful and we couldn’t have done it without them. The Snowman Trek is a big monetary commitment and possibly a scary undertaking if you haven’t done any big treks like this before, but I’d just like to say that there wasn’t a moment during our 24 days out there that I didn’t feel safe and secure and confident in the decisions of our guide Bishnu and Bhutan Travel Service’s operation of this huge logistical endeavor involving more than a dozen mules carrying supplies and tents hundreds of kilometers across the Bhutanese Himalayas at elevation.

: And how could I forget our driver Tenzin? Some of the roads we had to drive on to get to the trek starting point and from the end of the trek back to civilization were treacherous to say the very least, but this man’s unbreakable concentration and steady hands kept us safe as we cut through the fog and the darkness over sheer precipices that’d make a lesser man weak in the knees.

: Sign in the parking lot outside of Punakha Dzong, with a portrait of the Bhutanese Royal family in the background

: Some young dudes wearing the national dress (gho for men, kira for women) in front of a place formally known as Paro Taktsang, but colloquially known as the Tiger’s Nest

: Prayer flags on a motorbike in the lot from where you start the hike up to Paro Taktsang. Traditionally, the colors of the prayer flags are always in the same order and represent the five elements. Blue is the sky, white is the air, red is fire, green is water, and yellow is the earth.

: The half-oval thing hanging down from the top of this window at Rinpung Dzong in Paro is a big-ass honeycomb with bees all over it. I saw similar nests hanging at Punakha Dzong as well. Not sure exactly why they pick these places to build their home.

: The lock on the door to my room at Rema Resort in Paro

: Not sure if this bus ad was for a specific restaurant or product, or if it was there just because

: Speaking of food, here’s what I ate before the hike at a place called Momo Corner in Paro. Momos are dumplings containing meat and/or vegetables that can either be steamed or fried. In the middle there I had a plate of steamed ones and on the right I had some fried ones served in a spicy soup called jhol.

: People in Bhutan like their food extremely spicy and all over the parts of the country we visited, seeing a bunch of hot peppers left out on people’s roofs to dry was a common occurrence. I think I remember Bishnu saying that they last longer when they’re dried-out.

: While shopping at a store in Thimphu, the capital city, at first glance I thought this was some kind of packet containing spices you’d add to water to make tomato SOUP. But then I looked more closely and saw that it was tomato-scented SOAP which sounds kinda gross to me. Maybe it’s good for putting on after you’ve been sprayed by a skunk or something, I dunno.

: A silly hoodie I saw some guy wearing in Paro

: Rice terraces in the former capital of Punakha

: Khamsum Yulley Namgyal Chorten also in Punakha

: A stern warning outside a souvenir shop in Thimphu. Never seen anything like that before. I think most places of business in the US would probably just get rid of the wasp nest

Dong Central

: Alright so…before I go ahead and starting talking about the hike, I gotta mention the penises. This was something I didn’t know anything about prior to my arrival in Bhutan. And that’s fine, because I don’t think there’s anything that could’ve really prepared me for the reality of being surrounded by dicks. These phalluses are said to be a symbol of good luck and fertility that also ward off evil spirits, and it’s not unusual to see them on the sides of buildings spouting semen like the one pictured here that my buddy Martin is contemplating out the window of Mr. Tenzin’s tour bus.

: Speaking of Mr. Tenzin and penises, in addition to the Buddha he keeps there just above him in the driver seat, there’s also that little dangling wooden willy that swings back and forth with every bump in the road we hit along the way.

: Bishnu also kept a lil lucky wooden wiener on the strap of his backpack from start to finish of our Snowman Trek. Forgot who, but one of the group members was disappointed that it wasn’t a weenie whistle.

: Bunch of big colorful dicks for sale at a souvenir shop in Paro

: Local woman I caught exiting from the souvenir shop mentioned in the previous caption

: Little heart cutout where you can stick your face through for a photo

: Those ones got cock rings on

: Where this restaurant makes their special sauce

: A place of business in Thimphu

: A truck made specifically for hauling wangs around the country

: Some stamps that my buddy Brett got me from the Bhutanese post office

: I tried my best to get into the spirit of things by decorating the salt and pepper shakers with phallic caricatures. Pep is the big strong black one and Sal is the wimpy white one.

First Half of the Snowman Trek

: Looking out on our muddy campsite on what I believe had been our second night on the trail. Apparently the window to do this trek is very small between the time the rainy season ends but before all the heavy winter snow gets dumped on all the passes, making it impossible to get through until the following spring. Even though the local people had just celebrated Thri-Bab (a day that officially marks the end of the monsoon season), we got pretty wet the first 3-4 days of hiking. In fact, the night before leaving to start the trek while we were staying at Pema Resort in Paro there’d been a really violent thunderstorm right above us that knocked out the electricity. Not gonna lie, it kept me up and made me scared of leaving the next day to go sleep in a tent where I wouldn’t have adequate protection from such terrifyingly close lightning strikes.

: Interesting butterfly seen while passing through a heavily forested area during the first couple days on the trek

: The local team referred to these as mountain babies. It’s just one of those rubber hot water bags secured inside a cozy, fluffy case. Every night they filled the bags for us with water they’d boiled in the kitchen tent and we were to take our mountain babies with us into the sleeping bag at night to stay warm, then they’d recollect them from us in the morning before we all set out that day.

: No estoy aVERGONzado

: In addition to penises like the one you saw in the last photo, many people have the Four Directional Dignities – a tiger, a snow lion, a garuda, and a dragon – painted on their house to help ward off evil spirits

: I forgot this guy’s name, but he owned this small shop and made tea for a handful of us who he’d invited to crowd around his stove there for warmth. Nice guy

: Bishnu making a mustache out of some Spanish moss he’d taken off a tree. I don’t know what the actual word is in the local language, but every morning when we’d start walking Bishnu would say something that to me sounded like “Joe-gay Joe-gay” which I took to mean “Let’s go”

: “Kuzu zangpo la” is how you say hello in Bhutan and was very useful when meeting people out on the trail, people such as this local mom and her child that’d been walking alongside us for a while in the rain

: Standing at the window of the building there is Bishnu who’d been registering our group with the local police/forest rangers or whatever those guys call themselves around there

: At another one of those checkpoints we’d end up visiting a week or so later, here’s Brett taking a photo of what’s probably the biggest collection of empty beer bottles I’ve ever seen. So…now we know how those guys pass the time out there in the middle of nowhere.

: A nomadic woman who’d been churning butter in the blue tent behind her when we happened upon them

: The husband/man-friend of the woman in the previous photo

: Beef, veg, and rice for dinner

: There was writing all over the walls of this one shelter in which we ate our meals at Jangothang Base Camp and it was here that the rest of the group commissioned me to come up with a mascot to represent our collective that’d come to be known as Team Phallus. This is the result.

: I liked the earrings that some people would put on their yaks

: Snow day on the way up to a pass known as Nyile La (4877m)

: Bishnu and Ricky chillin at the pass

: Yakkity yak, don’t talk back

: Depiction of a classic Buddhist folktale known as the Four Harmonious Friends, as seen at Lingzhi Dzong

: At the bottom of the valley there you can see a prison colony that we’d camped not too far away from the night before. Bishnu told us that the prisoners who lived there were used to help reconstruct and maintain Lingzhi Dzong which’d been previously damaged by earthquakes

: Brief intro to prayer wheels: Prayer wheels are big upright rotating cylinders that have prayers written on them and each time the wheel spins around in a clockwise manner, Buddhists believe that prayers promoting good will towards all sentient beings are released into the surrounding area. While I saw many water-powered prayer wheels in streams and rivers during the first half of the Snowman Trek, I’m pretty sure that this structure to which the local team tied our mules during our lunch break was the only wind-powered prayer wheel I saw out there.

: Little kid in a SpiderMan costume in Chebisa Village

: While we were in Chebisa Village, there was an archery competition taking place between men from the villages of Laya and Lingzhi. There was no shortage of song, dance and drunken merrymaking amongst the archers and their female spectators.

: Here’s Brett as he’d been taking photos of spectators at the aforementioned archery competition. When Brett travels, he carries a mini printer from which he can immediately print photos and give them to the people he’d just captured. If he doesn’t feel like printing a photo of someone for whatever reason, he also carries trinkets like buttons or even little sewing kits that he gives to the people instead.

: One of the archers from the competition with a cheek full of some sort of tobacco product, either doma or baba – I forget the difference between the two

: A lucky piss-dripping penis on the building in which our local team cooked and served us meals during our time in Chebisa Village

: Another dinner. I think that’s chicken at the bottom served with rice, broccoli, carrots, okra and a spring roll.

: Woman milking a yak on the outskirts of Chebisa Village

: Some muleteer we’d crossed paths with on our way up to a pass called Gombu La (4350m). In the local language “La” means “pass” so it’d be redundant for me to say Gombu La Pass because it’s like I’m saying Gombu Pass Pass. So, that’s why I presented it “a pass called Gombu La.”

: On this hike was the only time I’ve ever seen blue pinecones

: Bishnu taking a group photo of us up at Gombu La while holding up a stuffed cloth penis he wanted to get in the picture with us

: The chef made pizza for us a couple nights while at camp

: The most prevalent brand of matches I’d seen in Bhutan

: Here’s Bishnu carrying this one type of high elevation plant he’d uprooted on our way up to a pass called Shinge La (5005m). It was to be his sacrifice that he’d leave at the top. In his own words, “The name of the flower is rheum nobile. Usually things like food, stones, money, plants or flowers are offered to the local deity of that particular province and when we reach up to the pass we always yell ‘Lha gyalho’. Lha means god/deity and gyalho means victory. So it’s kinda like you have conquered the pass and are saying that you did it or made it. And we put our offering on the pass and make a wish that they bless us while travelling through that route for upcoming days.”

: This flower reminded me of fireworks exploding in the night sky on 4th of July

: At one point while we were hiking I had to sneak away from the group to go for what Bishnu referred to as “a long one” (“a short one” being just a pee). This was the result. Those latte-heartmaking baristas ain’t got shit on me!

: A numbskull holding a yak skull

: Bishnu explaining to us that this Nickelodeon-orange stuff on the rocks here is some kind of algae

: We only saw the orange algae for one day. It was only in this area, but it definitely covered a good amount of the area.

: We saw these ladies gathering something out on a mountainside in the rain a couple days’ walk from Laya. According to Bishnu, “Usually nomads collect this kind of plant known as Rhododendron anthopogon and rhododendron setosum, as it has strong fragrance. And it is used for making local incense. What nomads do is they will collect in large amount, dry it up and chop it into small pieces and sell it at the marketplace. Basically it’s one of the small income source for nomads living in high altitude.”

: Ricky preparing our lunch just outside Laya village. Ricky spoke really good English and from start to finish of the trek – at all hours of the day and night – was always singing. He’d sing anything from Backstreet Boys and Green Day to Willie Nelson and John Denver. Always singing.

: The village of Laya as seen while entering. Here we’d have a rest day while the local team changed horses and horsemen for the second half of the trek.

: On a stroll through Laya

: Another Laya house

: A look back behind the counter in one of the tiny shops they have in Laya

: A wood-burning stove inside the same shop as the previous photo

: A girl and her baby inside a house we visited in Laya

: Mule boner!

: One of the village people – Y-M-C-A!

: The Cum Bar in Laya – excellent place to wet your whistle

: You’re not allowed to spit tobacco products or betel nut on the floor at the Cum Bar

: Didn’t see any table saws out in the mountains. The trees are felled out there and then the pieces of lumber are formed and cut to size using chainsaws.

: During our rest day in Laya, I asked Ricky what types of things they did as kids in Bhutan. Did they have snowball fights? He said they did. I asked if kids would give each other wedgies. He didn’t know what that was so I explained it. He said he’d never heard of that before, but one thing he said they would do that’s similar is “chil-chop” (I’m sure the spelling is way off, but I think one of the words means chili pepper) each other. And the way he described it is that you’d sneak up behind one of your friends and put your hands just like he’s got ‘em in the picture there, and then you’d poke your friend real hard right in the asshole, giving ‘em a real good scare.

: Some perverts from our group left a stuffed animal orgy in this house where we’d spent our couple nights in Laya

Second Half

: The most notable addition to our group for the second half of the hike was this here dog that followed us out of Laya all the way until the end of the trek. She was incredibly independent and would run off to go do her own thing but then always eventually made it back to the group. For about 3-4 days, none of us knew that she belonged to one of the horsemen – a young guy named Karma – and that she’d already had the name of Mento (nothing to do, as far as I know, with The Freshmaking mints from the 90s). By that time, we’d all started calling her Kiki and that’s what we ended up calling her until the end.

: By this point in the trek, it was pretty clear that some of the members of our 9-person group liked to walk faster than others. Bishnu handled this by sending this one guy Safal (pictured here) ahead and saying, “Whoever wants to walk fast, go ahead with Mr. Safal and I will stay in back with the rest of the group.” Safal, although he was quite short, was an incredibly fast walker in the mountains and it was always a challenge to try and keep up with him.

: Tiny little nook we found to have lunch at off the side of an otherwise narrow and heavily-forested trail

: Hey, do you think that bridge has passed all its government safety inspections?

: The warm welcoming glow of our meal tent on a cold moonless night

: That smartass Martin bought some gag eyeballs from one of the shops back in Laya and one of ‘em ended up in my bowl of soup one night

: View of a campsite called Rodufu (4160m)

: View from a pass called Tsemo La (4950m)

: Every day, we’d leave camp while most of the guys from the local team were still breaking down tents and packing up the mules for the day. Then sometime during the day, all those guys and the mule caravan would pass us up so they could get to the campsite an hour or two before us and ideally have everyone’s tent set up by the time we arrive there. They’d also have a couple of bathroom tents set up as well as the kitchen tent where the chef works his magic and the meal tent where we’d be served a snack to tide us over until dinner time. And I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how cush this is, but every day after hiking the guys would bring a hot bowl of washing water to each of our tents so we could clean ourselves up before we put on our (relatively) clean camp clothes. Anyway, this is the photo of a campsite called Narethang (4900m)

: Karchung La (5240m) – arguably the most beautiful pass on the entirety of the Snowman Trek

: Me chillin near Karchung La (photo courtesy of Brett Watson)

: Bishnu near Karchung La

: Incredible lunch spot

: While we were on the trail, in preparation for the impending winter, there’d been a lot of local people with mule caravans of their own as they made their way to and from their remote villages to stock up on all the essentials. Based on the many muleteers we’d seen walking along with beers in their hands and all the empty cans of Druk on the side of the trail, I’d say a lot of those guys enjoyed a drink.

: In the last caption I mentioned the word druk. In Dzongkha, the national language, druk means thunder dragon. The Bhutanese don’t refer to their homeland as Bhutan, but as Druk Yul meaning Land of the Thunder Dragon. I unfortunately don’t have a photo of the national flag, but if you google it you’ll see there’s a druk on it.

: Here we are walking through this valley on our way to a campsite called Tarina (4020m). We eventually got to Tarina and spent the night. It wasn’t until after we’d spent the night that Bishnu told us the place was haunted by a headless horseman and that none of the locals would ever dare sleep there. He explained, “It’s because people believe that on some nights a deity of the Lunana region called Lobzang Drap walks along that trail and if you are sleeping on the main trail, you might see him riding a horse without a head. And out of fear you might lose your soul and die. On top of that, some people have lost their lives in that place because of altitude sickness and all. So even the nearest village people skip that place to sleep.”

: Just before arriving at Tarina, it was necessary to hop across a bunch of small stones to cross a wide stream. Martin here ended up slipping off one of the stones and losing his balance which he fought desperately to get back as he stumbled towards the side of the stream, eventually crashing into a bush. Needless to say, some of his attire got pretty saturated. Here he is at the campsite toasting one of his DarnTough socks over the fire.

: A lake just before the pass called Keche La (4580m)

: Another very scenic spot to stop and have lunch

: What a typical house in the area looked like

: Old lady who was asking our group to give her our trekking poles as we walked past her house. Bishnu ended up giving her his one pole that he carried. One of our group members felt bad that he was now pole-less and he replied, “Don’t worry, I don’t need it anyway.”

: A house in Chozo village

: A staircase up and over one of the stone walls that divide the properties

: The Chozo Dzong

: Prior to the hike, Michael from Canadian Himalayan Expeditions recommended I watch this movie called Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom about some young teacher from Thimphu who held his own culture in disdain and longed to get a visa to go live in Australia. Before getting that visa, however, he was reassigned from his current teaching post in the capital to this remote school out in the middle of nowhere where he eventually grew an appreciation for where he comes from. It was a cute movie, I liked it. And here along The Snowman Trail is the school where the movie was filmed. All us foreigners barged into the classroom and interrupted the learning process to say what’s up and snap our few crappy photos of the place.

: This is Thanza Village (4080m) where we had our final rest day of the trip

: Chef Tsheten and some of his helpers taking inventory and separating the rotten shit from the usable shit before we set off from Thanza on the home stretch of the trek

: I think people had been cutting strips of this grass outta the ground and using it as insulation on their houses.

: All around Thanza there were mostly old women toiling in the dirt trying to dig up what is known in Dzongkha as “dem.” The way Bishnu explained it, “It is the root of the medicinal herb plant call dem. This plant is mostly found in high altitude only. Once the root is dried they can sell it in the market. This root is used in food during the ritual specially given to the priest/lama(monk).”

: Kids that’d been sitting in the field watching their mother dig up “dem”

: Spooky doll head we stumbled upon in Thanza

: Thanza man

: Genius-flavored biscuits at a shop in Thanza. We were told that since Thanza is such a remote place, the goods sold in this shop all have to be helicoptered in.

: Now, I’ve heard of gummy worms before obviously, but gummy snakes? Look how thick those things are. Who needs that much gummy?

: Kiki was too scared to cross this bridge on her own so, after quite a bit of running away, she finally let Martin carry her across the thing

: Chef made this impressive pie for dessert on one of those gas stoves

: View back down onto Thanza Village as we made our way up to a campsite called Danji (4600m)

: View from our campsite at Tso Chena (4800m)

: Looking back on Tso Chena on our way to a campsite called Jichu Dramo (4880m)

: Another glacial lake

: Post-lunch hike to Jichu Dramo

: That snow wasn’t there when we went to bed the night before, but this is how things looked when we woke up at Jichu Dramo

: The last group roll of toilet paper didn’t make it through the night. Luckily I still had half a roll from my private stash left to get me through the next couple days

: Ricky decided to personalize everyone’s teacups and drew a cape-wearing penis superhero on mine

: Making our way up to Rinchen Zoe La (5290m) which is the highest pass on the Snowman Trek

: Near the top

: No idea what this thing was. Thought it was a cocoon of some weird-ass creature like the ones from Ernest Scared Stupid or Gremlins or some shit like that. I dunno.

: A snowdong at Rinchen Zoe La

: After going over that freezing-cold snowy pass the day before and then waking up to pure sunshine on a morning like this, this is the happiest I’ve ever seen a mule look in my entire life. No Eeyore shit today, no sir.

: Nomadic dude we came across in this here valley. On the tarp on the left he had some chili peppers drying out. On the tarp to the right of that, he had some of that “dem” stuff that we saw the old women digging up in Thanza. To the right of that, Bishnu said it’s something called puty shing/picrorhiza, adding, “This is also a root medicinal plant and it’s called puty shing in Dzongkha. They are drying it too and later it will be sold in the market if they have collected more. Local people usually use this root to put in warm water overnight and drink early in the morning when you have a cough and cold. But it does have other medical value.” And on the final tarp on the far right, is hard cheese. As Bishnu explained, “In Bhutan hard cheese can be made from cow milk or yak milk. The hard cheese made from yak is a bit more expensive than from cow milk. It’s like a chewing gum for the people in Bhutan.” One other thing we saw people collecting that I don’t have any photos of is cordyceps, which is a fungi that is also said to have medicinal purposes.

: This mule belonging to a woman we came across on our way up to a campsite called Thampe Tso (4200m) had managed to buck its load and here Brett and Martin are trying to help her strap it back on. Thankfully, none of her winter supplies had fallen off the trail down the side of the mountain – or worse yet, her animal itself. During the trek we encountered a local traveler whose yak went tumbling down the side of a mountain, and another who lost a mule. Heck, even our own team lost a mule early in the trek. It was the one that’d been carrying our lunch that day. Apparently it lost its footing, went down the hillside, splashed into the raging river and was brutally smashed against rocks as it drowned. A couple of the guys went back and found it along the edge of the river near the place we’d camped the night before.

: Safal leading the way to Thampe Tso (tso meaning lake) which would be our final campsite on the trek

: We ate dinner together with the entire local team on our final night (photo courtesy of Brett Watson)

: For the occasion, Chef prepared this cake with mountains and a penis on it. And “Tashi Delek” is a greeting that means like “good luck” or “may all good things come to you”

: Before setting off hiking the next morning, Bishnu collected from us 9 hikers whatever used gear we’d be willing to donate to the local team and…

: …held a raffle for all the guys.

: Making our way down this massive valley back towards civilization

: Strange rock that looked very different from all the others in the area

: One last beautiful lake before…

: …we reached this road where the guys unloaded all the stuff off the backs of the mules and piled it onto a couple trucks we’d be riding in until we met back up with Mr. Tenzin and his tourist bus a couple hours later. As for the mules, a few of the guys were going to walk them back to Laya from here. This is where we said goodbye to our mascot Kiki. This was the official end of the Snowman Trek.