Growing up, a good part of my childhood consisted of walking from and to school. I’d also heard stories of children from lesser privileged backgrounds walking for hours just to get to their schools. During our grandparent’s time, it must have been far more challenging– walking for days just to reach another district. Today, it takes less than an hour (by flight) to reach Trashigang from Paro, a far east district.
By the early 2000s, major highways such as the Thimphu-Phuentsholing highway and the East-West highway had come up. However, remote temples and monasteries still didn’t have roads, or roads that were fully accessible. Therefore, while visiting temples, we hiked as a family, bonding. Once, on our way home from a temple, we used the moon’s light to guide us, while being warned about bears. But what I didn’t realize then was that walking–hiking was a part of Bhutanese culture. For a majority of their lives, our elders had walked to get from one place to another.
Recently, on a hike from Dochu La towards Punakha, I learnt that my grandparents had used that same trail for their travels. I marveled at this thought and felt appreciation for them, including when I first went to Bumthang by road. My grandfather often used that road for work and travelled even further east, before the road was expanded and developed. I also wished someone close to me had informed and educated me on the experiences of our elders. But I think these are things we’re better off discovering on our own, rather than being told about. Traveling for the older generation meant hardships, such as being at the mercy of the weather — in ways we younger Bhutanese might never have been. However, in less than a generation, things changed. The conditions that existed for them no longer existed for us, and slowly, we stopped hiking.
Hiking as a Modern Bhutanese
Towards the end of my grandfather’s life, he had diabetes, a disease I wondered might be linked to decreasing levels of exercise.
Currently, fewer and fewer Bhutanese might be hiking, let alone walking. The last time I went on a proper hike was two years ago, during a school field trip, when my nose bled from high altitude sickness. More recently, hiking groups in Thimphu have sprung up, though I have yet to be a member of one. I recently went on a short hike to Wangditse in Thimphu, taking two other friends along.
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