National Memorial Chorten, Thimphu

...with their religious surroundings. The National Memorial Chorten was one big exception to this pattern

We arrived in Thimphu, the country's capital city, after dark and so had no idea what to expect when we opened the curtains of our hotel room the next morning. Directly in front of us was a river and then beyond the river lay a pristine city with the streets laid out in neat rows. One building caught my eye for its glistening golden ...
...of Thimphu. It was the National Memorial Chorten or as I'll refer to it for this review, the NMC.

In major cities there's often a particular church, mosque or other place of worship that serves as a magnet to the worship and devotion of the locals. In the case of Thimphu, it's the NMC that attracts worshippers more than any of the many temples. You see the problem with Bhutanese temples is they are all too often stuck way up on top ... more

During our tour of Bhutan last November we visited many different temples and monasteries but it was relatively rare to actual see real people (i.e. not monks) interacting with their religious surroundings. The National Memorial Chorten was one big exception to this pattern

We arrived in Thimphu, the country's capital city, after dark and so had no idea what to expect when we opened the curtains of our hotel room the next morning. Directly in front of us was a river and then beyond the river lay a pristine city with the streets laid out in neat rows. One building caught my eye for its glistening golden spire and this turned out to be our first destination on our tour of Thimphu. It was the National Memorial Chorten or as I'll refer to it for this review, the NMC.

In major cities there's often a particular church, mosque or other place of worship that serves as a magnet to the worship and devotion of the locals. In the case of Thimphu, it's the NMC that attracts worshippers more than any of the many temples. You see the problem with Bhutanese temples is they are all too often stuck way up on top of hills with a long climb to get to them. It's not as if you could just pop in for a couple of prayers and a blessing in your lunch break if it's going to take you an hour of sweat and toil to get to the temple and a similar time to get back down again. By contrast the NMC is right in the city center and is easy for people to drop in and visit as part of their daily life and rituals.

It's a routine for many people, particularly the older locals, to go to the NMC every morning with their prayer wheels and their rosaries, meet their friends to chat and pray, and to walk repeatedly round the building in a clockwise direction chanting their daily prayers. It's a place full of atmosphere that can move even the most cynical atheist.

The true purpose and identity of chortens is something I still struggle with. Also known as stupas in other Buddhist countries, they are built for many different reasons such as to mark a particularly auspicious place or commemorate a great event, or maybe in a position where they can ward off bad luck, such as at the point where two rivers meet or where a tragedy has occurred. In the case of the NMC, it was commissioned in 1974 as a memorial to the life and work of the late third king Jigme Dorji Wangchuk by his mother.

Normally chortens are receptacles for 'offerings' and in Bhutan they always contain some kind of religious relics. I'm led to believe they originated as the burial places of small bits of the remains of the Buddha – tiny pieces of bone from his cremation for example. We've lately been exposed to a lot of media coverage of the excitement caused in Catholic circles by the 'tour' of the remains of St Therese of Lisieux and the belief in the almost magical powers possessed by the remains of holy people seems to be something that crosses country and religious boundaries. By now there must be far too many chortens and stupas for the Buddha to have been spread far too thinly and some contain things like written prayers and particularly nice stones or pieces of turquoise for example. The NMC is different from the other chortens we saw in being big enough to go inside – most were just small structures to walk around.

The NMC is built in the Tibetan style with a golden spire atop a mostly white dome. There is a chapel with three shrines and lots of paintings of tantric Buddhist iconography which I assume are inside the structure although we were kept outside and I didn't actually see anyone going into the chorten.

We parked outside the entrance and saw the only beggar of our entire time in Bhutan sitting on the ground just outside the door. Once through the archway we saw a large bank of prayer wheels off to the left-hand side, a statue on a covered plinth directly in front and behind that the Chorten itself. It's an impressive and sparkling structure with stepped profile and a spire of sinuous curves and it does look unusual in a country where the straight line is much more common than the wavy one. Together with our guide we walked around the chorten three times before sitting down to watch the locals. The joy of a familiar habit shone through on the faces of many as they circumambulated the building, chanting and swinging their wheels. Many of the older ladies were sitting in small groups enjoying the sunshine and chatting to their friends. The older ladies all had fine examples of the 'National Haircut' - a pudding bowl construction that would have pleased my mother when I was at primary school. We sat and watched for about 15 minutes then got up again to complete another three circuits of the chorten before we headed back to the car.

Would I say it's a life-changing and moving experience to go to the National Memorial Chorten? In all honesty, no I couldn't say it's all that memorable but it is a pleasant way to see the locals engaging in something that clearly means a lot to them and is deserving of respect. And for once it was rather nice to go somewhere in Bhutan that didn't require a major hike to get there. 

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