We drive to Trashigang today. But I begin the day with another cooking lesson! Fried rice and sauteed asparagus with onion. The lesson begins in the garden, pulling a small green onion that is planted / grows in bunches (I have since determined these are non-bulbing green onions such as Kyoto Kujo Negi), green onions, the last few stalks of asparagus and cilantro. A green that is a flat, long leaf (10″) and about 1/4″ wide has already been picked. (These turn out to be garlic chives.) We wash and trim everything at the outside sink. Then in the kitchen I cut and slice and chop everything, to be ready to make the rice and asparagus. (Tshering my teacher is a great teacher!)
A lovely breakfast and then packing up. As with the chayote squash I have been making these both at home, and especially like the way the asparagus is cut and sauteed. (See recipe separately.) While I was cooking with Tshering she asks me if she may call me ‘sister’? Yes indeed!
Tshering and I have a tearful goodbye. I give her my glass bead necklace (Anda’s leftovers) and she gives me a scarf her daughter made (age 7) during COVID – one of her first ones! It is beautiful. Lots of pictures, I ask her if I could send her something from Canada. Much back and worth (with Jamyang’s help) but I insist it must be something she really wants and needs. I really don’t want to send some frivolous thing. She says that it is cold in the winter and she is not able to buy warm jackets. So, MEC it is. I’ll buy 3 (her, daughter, and son).
I’m crying as we walk to the car. I take her hand. We hug. She says – don’t cry – but how to explain the word ‘sister’. My lost sisters. I really hope I will have the long term staying power to look after this sister.
Off we go to Trashigang – it will take the day. We stop in Mongar at the Wangchuk hotel for lunch, and off we go. We arrive in Trashigang about 4PM. The hotel road is dirt, very, very steep, rocky, a bit even slippery in spots! Crazy place – but this high the views!
I am hoping to have dinner with Frank & Judy, but our location so far from town, at the end of a long day, won’t work. Some talk of changing itineraries for tomorrow to meet up, but again won’t work out. Oh well!
Laundry turned in. Dinner. Early night.
Oh yes – the bathroom! HUGE. Pink tiles up to the ceiling and all the walls. I think plastic not tile. And one of those crazy rain showers with no glass enclosure! But with the room so big at least I won’t have mop the floor with a towel to have dry feet going to the toilet – most especially in the middle of the night! But who the heck designs these? It can not possibly be someone that actually uses them. Having a shower there is no place to put soap, shampoo etc. And after drying off there is no place to hang the wet towel, except on the door, without getting your feet wet! And a gripe for the hotels even if you’re not cleaning the room daily, which I don’t need, could you put a spare roll of toilet paper in the room and replenish the bottled water. I am so tired of asking for both – especially the TP. Ah, we pampered North Americans. (Hey just had a though – maybe there is no spare roll of TP as it would just get wet as no place to safely put it away from the dreaded shower!)