Our tour bus -- typical of the small buses that travel through the country.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the country of Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon (as the Bhutanese refer to themselves….), as part of a Stanford University Study Group. Our trip was described as a ’suitcase seminar’ meaning that a professor traveled along with us who lectured about the history, economics and culture of the country. It also meant that our accommodations would be booked in the ‘best available’ — that was ‘code’ for expect-some-less-than-western-standard hotels. That was okay with me as I subscribe to the theory that it is the ‘journey’ that is important plus I have some funny stories to now share about some of the places we stayed.

I had always wanted to visit Bhutan, a mountain culture which I expected to find somewhat similar to my own mountain community of Telluride, Colorado. Indeed there are some similarities: life at high altitude (although the central region of Bhutan is not as high as Telluride), reverence of nature, a pace of life that is quieter and simpler than life in larger, busier communities. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that I would never catch even a glimpse of the high Himalayas during my visit. The highway infrastructure is so undeveloped that there are simply no roads that lead to the northern third of the country. The only way to access the high Himalayas is by trekking. There is a famous trek in Bhutan called ‘the Snowman Trek’ which takes visitors north into the mountains, into regions inhabited only by a small percentage of Bhutanese nomads. These people move around with their herds of yaks and sheep, much like the Mongolian nomads. It sounds like more of a ‘young man’s adventure’ to me — strictly camping, living outside in extreme temperatures, hiking up and down valleys, limited food.

I learned that most of the Bhutanese people live in the central region of Bhutan where the largest cities of Thimphu and Paro are located. There is a major two-lane highway that travels east and west through the central region, and this is the main artery for traffic back and forth. The roads are narrow, twisty, and not in very good repair. They are used by trucks and cars alike. Most vehicles are small buses, like the two that we were traveling in, that could wind their way up and down through the mountain valleys on the narrow roads even if dancing precariously close to the edges. I found myself leaning to the inside on more than one occasion!

The 'Main Artery' road through the mountains. We are are meeting on-coming delivery trucks.

The southern part of Bhutan is mostly a farming region and is populated by Nepalese people who have settled across their borders from Nepal.  Historically, the Bhutanese and the Nepalese are very different people originating from different Asian roots. The Bhutanese are most closely related to Tibetans and Burmese people; the Nepalese are more closely related to the people in India and they are Hindu. Bhutan is the only country in the world that claims Buddhism as its official religion. The people practice Tantric Buddhism which dominates every aspect of life in Bhutan.

Many of us who are U3b may or may not know that mtdna haplogroup U3b is often found in the Romany populations of Europe. 55% of Romany are U3b. The fact is, many of us with the U3b dna have origins in Eastern Europe. Don Locke, the administrator of the Romany DNA Project wants to remind us, however, that U3b is NOT South Asian in origin — it was introduced into the Romany population during their migration to Europe.

U3b, found in many Roma clans of Europe, is a good hint to a possible Romany connection in our family trees. There is a reason however, for much more admixture on the female side of the Romany family trees than on the Romany male side: the Romany are more willing to accept European females into the clan than they would be likely to accept European men. Typically, when a European male marries a Roma female, they are banished from the clan whereas when Romany males marry European females, the European females are typically more accepted. Most European men were not willing to conform to Romany customs and traditions so Romany women who married outside of the clan were usually banished whereas European women who married Romany men usually adapted to Romany customs and traditions. So….the U3b admixture found among the Romany typically comes from European females marrying into the Romany clans.

Autosomal testing could be an important factor in determining Romany roots. While U3b can be a good clue to a possible Roma connection in one’s family tree because it is found among multiple Roma populations, autosomal testing should point up some South Asian origins from the male lineage. Y-Haplogroup H is dominant in males among the populations of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan. Because of their South Asian roots, haplogroup H1a-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for some 60% of the total males. Also, a variation of H1 is also reported in one-third of the males from traditional Romany populations living in Bulgaria, Spain, and Lithuania. This high prevalence of Asian-specific Y chromosome haplogroup H1 supports the theory of Indian origin in Romany clans and a hypothesis of a small number of founders diverging from a single ethnic group in India.

Don Locke presents this metaphor as an explanation of the relation of U3b to Romany populations:  “If we look at the Romany as a wheel, the hub of the wheel or the cog as it is known, is the Founder Romany population i.e. the direct Indian descendants. From that cog are spokes branching out for those who are related to that founder population which in turn forms the wheel or family tree of the Romany. There are direct Asian Indian Romany, and then there is everyone else who forms the spokes of the wheel. Everything revolves around the cog of the wheel, and everyone directly related to the cog form the many spokes which are Romany or part-Romany in origin.”

Although many U haplogroups are found in India, U3b is NOT. It is not South Asian in origin. The conclusion is that mtU3b is NOT part of the cog but instead a spoke of that wheel that appears to have been introduced during the migration of the Romany into Europe.

I have just returned from a three-week trip in Asia, starting from Bangkok and continuing with a comprehensive tour through Bhutan, the land of the ‘Thunder Dragon’. I went with a study group from Stanford University so this excursion was like taking a multi-discipline condensed course in two week’s time! More about that next week…..first we have to finish the saga of the trip down the Grand Canyon.

Last Post from the Grand Canyon

Early morning view of Diamond Peak, on the last few miles out of the Grand Canyon.

Our string of bad weather unfortunately continued. Our mornings would start out promising, with sunshine and clear skies; by lunchtime, we would be checking out the sky, trying to predict when the rains would start. When it rained, it POURED! I regularly sat next to Irv, one of our guides, who I knew would toss me a tarp from his supply box which I used to wrap around me. In short, the rain made things pretty miserable. We had to forgo a number of side hikes up the canyon because of the danger of flash flooding.

By late afternoon when we stopped to set up camp, it was usually dry again. It is amazing how the water dries up in the dry heat of a desert climate. After about an hour, it seemed that the ground was dry. After the camp was set up for the evening and all of us were gathered in a circle enjoying a cocktail or two, the rain seemed like a distant memory.

One evening we played an interesting parlor game introduced by Victoria. Each of us had to tell something about ourselves that the others probably didn’t know. Victoria started the game and set a standard that none of us could compare to by announcing that she had once gone out with Robert Redford! That caught the attention of people who were not even sitting in the circle! But wait….hasn’t he been married for years and years? I think there is more to that story than came out. I made claim to being an amazing small animal trapper and told stories of capturing guinea pigs who had escaped in my basement, scaring wild squirrels out of the house with my cat, and rescuing trapped skunks from window wells. Irv surprised us all by sharing with us that he was a competitive sky diver who had won a number of international competitions.

On our last evening of camping out, we had a dance party on the beach. We were beyond our wet days and enjoying the driest end of the canyon so everyone was feeling very happy and some of us were counting the minutes until we were on our way to hotel rooms in Las Vegas. After dinner, we rigged up a tiny stereo with some portable equipment supplied by one of the guides, and we got together some music between a number of us who had brought I-pods. We danced under the starts to both new and old music, which made a fun end to seven days’ excursion down the Colorado River. All of us survived intact, with stories to tell and experiences to share.

Our arrival in Las Vegas, surrounded by bags of dirty clothes!

I personally will never go down the Grand Canyon again — too much camping for me — but most of our group had a wonderful time and could probably be encouraged to take a longer trip. I appreciated it for the historical value however, and greatly enjoyed hearing the stories about all the river runners who traveled the Colorado River before us.

Our first night in camp was such a beautiful evening that I was lulled into a state of confidence. We were told to put up our tents, but I was tempted to ignore that advice with the thought that I would be completely happy to sleep outside under the stars. In fact, if my sons had not put up our tent, I probably would have made a big mistake.

As dusk was setting in, I started to notice all the spiders crawling around in the sand. Suddenly the thought of sleeping on the ground, snuggling up to all the creepy-crawlies, didn’t seem so inviting. I went right into the tent, zipping up the screened door and window securely. At this point, my husband was still intent on sleeping under the stars but when he began to see the bats dive-bombing his sleeping bag, he changed his mind and joined me inside the tent. There we were — two adults squeezed onto the floor of a small tent.

Heidi wearing her boyfriend's trousers as her wet pants blew away in the windstorm!

In the middle of the night, we heard thunder! How could this be when the evening was so clear when we went to bed? Fortunately our tent had a rain tarp over the roof. The wind began to blow ferociously and we could hear the cracking of branches all around us. We had left a lot of clothes drying on the trees and I began to worry that nothing would be there in the morning. Needless to say, none of it would be dry.

The morning dawned dry and clear, much to our surprise, and everyone talked about the wind and rain storm over morning coffee. We broke camp, loaded the boats and were off to enjoy a lovely morning of floating down the river. But the rainstorm was a warning of things to come: that afternoon we were drenched in pounding rain, making it very hard to enjoy a float down the river. Despite wearing a wet suit, I need to wrap up in a tarp to keep the rain from penetrating.

Huddling under hats and dressed in wet suits, trying to withstand the rain.

As we worked our way down the Colorado River, we had three days of rain. The guides admitted to us that it was the worst weather they had experienced all summer! Unfortunately, the rain prevented us from taking some of the side hikes off the river for fear of flash floods.It seemed that our effort to take the last launch of the summer to avoid scorching temperatures backfired in that we hit maximum rain.

NOTE:  The author of RedTambourine is setting off for an adventure traveling through Bhutan so posts will be suspended until after November 6th due to sketchy WI-FI service.

Les and Victoria contemplating their tent....

If we did not understand it before, it was clear to us when we stopped for our first night of camping that this was NOT a luxury trip. First, we were expected to help the guides unload the rafts. This included not only our wet bags and ammo cans, but also a bed pack for each person on the trip. Inside the bed pack was a sleeping bag, a tarp and a foam cushion. In addition to off-loading the 20-plus bed packs, we had ten tents to unload, twenty-four camp chairs, food tables, pots and pans for cooking, coolers of food, and the ‘groover’. The ‘groover’ is basically a portable potty, communal in use. Its contents traveled with us, along with any other garbage we created on the river trip. Fortunately, the guides handled the un-loading and re-loading of the ‘groover; which was basically a heavy metal box to which a toilet seat was added. Many of us women proved to be ‘delicate flowers’ when it came to using the ‘groover’; by the end of the trip, most of us had succumbed.

Once we off-loaded all the gear, we were responsible for putting up our own tent, unpacking our own bed sacks, and settling our own personal items around the campsite. Each couple traveling together had to coordinate efforts. As it was a beautiful evening that first night, I was tempted not to go to the trouble to put the tent up thinking that I would sleep outside. As dusk moved in, so did bats and spiders! I was very happy to get inside our tent, erected for us by two of our sons. (we older folks had a little help from the younger folks….) Then in the middle of the night, we had a rain and wind storm! I was happy to have the roof over the tent which protected us from the elements. Heidi, my older son’s girlfriend, lost her rain pants off a tree where they had been left to dry! She ended up wearing my older son’s pants throughout the rest of the trip — a tiny girl in over-sized hip-hop style pants!  That was the last night that I had any thought about NOT putting up the tent…especially as weather during the next couple of days became even worse.

Rog and Lynn with their completed camp.

So you can imagine….putting the tents up and settling the camp was a lot of work. Likewise, breaking camp and putting everything back into sacks and loading it back onto the rafts was also a long process. Despite the fact that we were usually up by 6:00 a.m., it took hours to get the group moving and the rafts loaded. We were usually afloat on the river by 8:30 a.m. This whole process of unloading the camp, and re-loading to embark the next morning, was a big job but one that we got used to after seven nights on the river. I cannot say I was sorry to arrive at the end of our trip as I could only imagine a clean hotel room waiting for us in Las Vegas with no need to unpack and re-pack!

My wet bag and ammo can as I was packing, hoping to fit everything in!

Our departure point was Las Vegas, Nevada. We were cautioned to pack just a minimal amount of things, as space would be limited on the rafts. A suggested packing list went out: two pairs of pants or shorts, a couple of shirts (including a sun repellent shirt), a bathing suit, a ‘wet suit’ for keeping dry as the rafts went through the rapids, a sun hat, limited underwear, water shoes for the day and a pair of slip-on camp shoes for the evening. I took long underwear to sleep in, and of course, all of us had a small collection of personal hygiene items to carry with us. I probably packed twice as many items than suggested but the true baggage test came when we were told to pack our items into one wet bag approximately the size of a brown paper grocery bag! Whatever we could stuff into the wet bag, we were allowed to take so in the end it was up to each person to edit their personal packing list.

In addition to the wet bag, we were issued an ‘ammo can’ which was a rectangular metal box. We could put anything that we thought we might want access to during the day in that box. In most cases, this was cameras, sun screen, prescription medicines, sunglasses and reading glasses — in addition to being accessible, the ammo box provided excellent storage for any valuables that anyone felt necessary to bring on the trip.

We left Las Vegas very early in the morning, 5:00 a.m. We were loaded onto a tour bus and headed for Lee’s Ferry, the disembarking point for the raft trip located just south of the Utah border but north of the Grand Canyon National Park. We were en route for several hours in the dark,  stopping only once when it was finally daybreak at trading post called the Jacob Lake Inn, elevation 7925 feet.

The Jacob Lake Inn -- a 'trading post' on the way to Lee's Ferry. Elevation 7925 feet.

When we arrived at Lee’s Ferry, the rafts were already loaded with the sleeping bags, tents, food and other camping equipment that we would need for seven days. We only had to add our wet bags and our ammo cans. The wet bags were tagged with our names, and the ammo cans were likewise identified by a written name on the handle. We were instructed to form a line, with one person facing the next alternately so no one had to twist their back when passing freight. We loaded our wet bags and ammo cans in this manner, passing them down to each raft where the guides took care of securing them with ropes. The ammo cans were very cleverly roped onto the floor of the raft so that each one could be opened during the day trip, providing easy access to personal items.

We divided our group into two, each voyager being careful to board the raft carrying his ammo can. We shoved off before lunch on blue water with only mellow cliff walls beside us. The weather was good and the mood was festive. The water that flows in the Colorado River is ALWAYS COLD!

Our two motorized rafts, waiting for us to board at Lee's Ferry.

Last week I returned from an eight-day trip down the Colorado on river rafts through the Grand Canyon. It was a trip that I had always wanted to take but I have to say that the canyon view from the top of the South Rim is much more impressive and more beautiful than the voyage down the Colorado River. I am not saying it was not beautiful, but the scenery was more similar throughout the trip than I had been expecting. Nontheless, we were traveling in the historic footsteps of some early explorers.

Archeologic evidence suggests that parts of the Grand Canyon have been occupied by Native Americans for more than 10,000 years. An early Spanish explorer, Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, arrived at the South Rim with Hopi guides in 1540 as part of the search for the Seven Cities of Gold. Until 1869, the Canyon appeared on maps of the West as a mysterious netherland.

Major John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, and his men led the first voyage to explore the Grand Canyon in 1869. Powell and his men had the scientific curiousity and courage to follow the Colorado River into the Canyon and they set out on their expedition on May 24th. In the midst of the trip, three of his men bailed out, climbing to the rim in the hopes of finding a Mormon outpost. Perhaps the trip down the river through its rapids was too arduous for them. They were never seen again after leaving the expedition; Powell concluded that they were killed by Indians. Powell and the remainder of his crew rowed out of the Grand Canyon in the end of August 1869, having survived rapids and rocks and squeezing between canyon walls. Powell is considered the great explorer of the Colorado River.

Some early Grand Canyon scenery (when the water was still blue and we were not yet in the National Park).

Interestingly enough, Powell’s feat did not trigger a burst of activity in the Grand Canyon. A determined few followed from time to time — prospectors, trappers, geologists and mapmakers.

Today there are a host of expedition outfitters who offer river trips of varying lengths in a variety of boats. These outfitters are regulated by the National Park Service. There are also many private voyagers who travel down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon who obtain permits through a lottery system.

I organized our group trip through a company called Grand Canyon Expeditions and we reserved the last launch date of the summer season with the hope of missing the really hot sun and heat of the northern Arizona summer. I put together a group of twenty people — friends and family — and we were enough to fill two motorized rafts. The motorized raft trip is only seven days and nights in duration, the shortest trip possible through the Grand Canyon.