The Other Story

This is the fourth time I met Lama Shenphen Zangpo in Thimphu. He is the source of hope and inspiration to many. A philanthropic and generous by nature, he is a person who is living his life for the well being of others. He visits clubs and bars every night in a hope to search and rescue the drugs and alcohol addicts. Drugs and alcohol related diseases and deaths are projected as the one of the highest causes that has led to death in the country.He has the mission to find the drug and alcohols addicts and awake them into the real world, which is free of drugs and alcohol. He has been successful in transforming many addicts into sober lives, for which some of them are peer counselors now. 

Thimphu now faces increasing number of drugs and alcohol related diseases and problems, thereto the rate of depression and anxiety are increasing drastically. Happiness is slowly drifting apart. World recognizes Bhutan as one of happiest country in the world.

Lama now has helped many youths and still he walks the same path. On the fourth meet, he gifted me a book “A Cry of the Heart”, which is a collection of stories by the recovered addicts. It was after going through the book that I am aware of the darkness in the lives the drugs and alcohol has brought in Bhutan. Most of the addicts writes how misery and hopeless their lives were when they were into drugs and alcohol. Most of the youths are led to addiction due to various root causes such as poor family background, peer pressure, family problems, etc.

In fact they find the life without drugs and alcohol far better than the lives with drugs and alcohol. After the recovery, their lives have changed and they are free, they are not scared of police anymore, they are socially accepted and they are regaining the trusts of their parents and relatives. For most of them it all happened because of the persistent help of Her Royal Highness Ashi Kezang and Lama Shenphen and their selfless actions in rehabilitation.

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Poppy Pictures - Yellow and Blue

Poppy (Meconopsis paniculata)

Blue Poppy (Meconopsis simplicifolia)

Local made bridge

Blue Poppy (Meconopsis simplicifolia)

Hunting Poppies in the Summer of '13

We started off the journey late. It was fairly visible. A thought provoked me to postpone the trip but I had the determination to never give up, no matter what. Well, we were trekking to the High mountains of Paro, Bhutan, popularly known as Yaktsa Trek to the localities and the tourism industry. We had the trip planned in the perfect flowering season of the Poppies, the summer of 2013.

Hunting the flowers are real challenges but when we discover what we want, the feelings are blissful. So, everyone had sown seeds of Poppies in their minds and everyone looked so determined to feel the excitement. This is a brief experience of the nature adventurers and flower enthusiasts. 

It started to drizzle and after a while it started to rain, so we took our first step towards Yaktsa Trek in the rain, where the footpaths absorbed the rain waters. An hour a walk, rain stopped for a while and all of a sudden it started to rain heavily. We were making ways in the muddy and marsh footpaths, we could feel the sun though.

We got higher and higher meter by meter and got dirtier and dirtier! It started to drizzling! We came across hundreds of flowers big and small, large and tiny, long and short, imparted with many different colors and shapes. The excitements were already in us, in fact we were excited. Some of us started to photograph the flowers in the rain despite having the difficulty to photograph in rains and wet paths. The higher we climbed, the higher were our anxieties. Rain stopped and we have reached our campsite. We could find many beautiful flowers but no Poppies. It was the first day of our trek, we took photographs and collected some interesting flowers.

From the next day, we trekked some hundreds of meters higher up into the alpine peaks. To our astonishment, we came across tens of Yellow Poppies! Everyone rushed towards the flowers and got busy with their own tolls to take. The weather was perfect. A few minutes of walk later and we encountered Blue Poppies!  Some of the eyes just got wet upon sighting the Blue Poppies, where the seeds of Poppies were sown in their mind at the start of the trek. Everyone started to shoot the Poppies and we ended up killing some of the Poppies and put them inside a bag and their memories inside our camera memory cards. 

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Blue Poppy

               

View at Jomolhari Base, Bhutan High Himalaya

Highland Boy

Meadow

Snow capped mountain

Rheum nobile

Eagle

29th June, 2013. Jomolhari Base (Yaktsa)

Horses in High Himalayas