something different

I had pig's head for lunch today.

Phuntsholing

Last weekend Rachel and I went to Southern Bhutan, which more or less means lower elevation Bhutan. It was a nice change to not need a room heater at night and to be able to cruise around in a t-shirt in the afternoon. Phuntsholing is only about a 100 mile drive from Thimphu, but it takes about 5 hours, as the road gets continually worse as you get further from either town. Mostly its due to the fact that the roads have to be build on 80+ degree slopes and mudslides happen during the monsoon season, washing out the road in various places. Its an incredible engineering hurdle, if you think about it. So for a good third of the trip the road is beset with small boulders that have fallen onto the road and is down to one lane of dirt while construction crews try to repair the damage before the next monsoon season. Not the most relaxing drive I've ever done.

But the town itself was super fun. I had thought that Phuntsholing was fairly well visited by western tourists, but Rachel and I were a bit of a spectacle, with many more stares and random shouts of "HELLO!" than we get in Thimphu. At one point when we sat down to play a game of cards during a break at an archery tournament we became the new spectator sport, with a crowd of no less than a dozen kids and half as many adults. My nepali language skills never fail to amuse/astound people, but they remain very rusty.

We also got to see crocodiles, which was a highlight for me. They didn't do much, but they were fairly huge. We saw both Muggar and Gharail crocodiles some of the largest freshwater crocs in the world. The Gharails are the ones with the skinny snouts, which they evolved for quick movement to eat small fish at the expense of strength. The bulb on the tip of the nose is found only in males and is apparently used for mating calls/displays, which is where the old saying comes from "the bigger the wierd nose growth the bigger the ..."


All in all it was a good trip, definitely beat a day in the office.

Seattle thinking about GNH

Exciting news I came across the other day, it looks like Seattle is interested in converting GNH to their city governance. Check out the newsclip:



exciting times. If you want to take their happiness survey, it can be found here:
http://www.sustainableseattle.org/survey/GNH/en/
I'd be very interested to see your wellbeing score, if you're willing to share.

P.S. I promise my next blog will be something from me, I've just been hunkered down working on grants and publications the last week. But I think we're heading to S. Bhutan tomorrow!

The Prime Minister on Educating for GNH

I stumbled upon this video today. I'm thinking I'll show it to my students on the first day of class. There are some really enlightened people out here

Yeti sighting... almost

Our New Ride

Things are pretty quiet up at the college, we're in the midst of a 2 month break, and so all of the students and most of the faculty have gone to warmer regions. Since much of my research will be in different parts of the country, we decided to buy a car. We we're really in much of a rush, and mentioned it in passing to the administrative manager Tshering (who is quickly becoming our "fixer"), and a couple of hours later she called to let us know that she had found the car, talked down the price, and that they would arrive on Monday so we could check it out. Here it is!



Please note the awesome decals. This is a major selling point.


One thing to note about cars in S. Asia, they are generally smaller, the big cars are mid sized suvs, and only super-important people drive those. As you can see, we have a pretty small car, more like a go-cart than a than anything. If you think I'm joking, then check out this photo of me driving:


Actually, maybe its more like bumpercars. Since you don't really go faster than 25mph here (the roads aren't exactly straight) and every time I've hit someone they just think it's hilarious.