'The Dragon Run', a Travel Memoir of Bhutan with Critical
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THE DRAGON RUN, A TRAVEL MEMOIR OF BHUTAN WITH CRITICAL COMMENTARY EXAMINING REPRESENTATION OF THE SELF IN MODERN TRAVEL WRITING TONY ROBINSON-SMITH A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2015 Copyright Statement This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. 1 THE DRAGON RUN, A TRAVEL MEMOIR OF BHUTAN WITH CRITICAL COMMENTARY EXAMINING REPRESENTATION OF THE SELF IN MODERN TRAVEL WRITING TONY ROBINSON-SMITH Doctor of Philosophy Thesis Abstract The creative component of this dissertation is excerpts from The Dragon Run, a travel memoir recounting the author’s experiences living in and running across Bhutan (2006-2008). Aligning itself with the accounts of contemplative travel writers from the West who have spent extended periods in the Himalayan Kingdom, the memoir is as revealing psychologically and temperamentally of the narrator as it is descriptive of the nature and culture of the host country. However, it differs from these accounts in that a distinction is made between the naive newcomer to the country and the more discerning sojourner. It also contrasts thematically in that the narrator’s reflections engage with themes associated with the Kingdom’s drive to modernise before its first parliamentary election: Gross National Happiness, the ‘Last Shangri-La,’ Buddhist ethics, the value of wilderness and the virtue of raising funds to send village children to school. The critical commentary that follows the creative element examines self- revelation in contemporary travel writing, the argument being that a travel book has greater appeal when an interior voyage runs parallel to the outer one. Part I argues that the fictional techniques travel writers commandeer to represent their journeying selves, such as the articulation of thoughts, mingling of dramatic scenes 2 with personal reflection and tracing of a path of learning, endow their protagonists with psychological depth. Part II finds that the ways in which authors have their travelling selves respond to wilderness give insight into their personalities: their spiritual connection with nature, their sadness at its destruction, the solace they draw from close contact. Part III considers the legacy of Orientalism in modern travel writing and argues that balanced treatment of people belonging to other cultures and greater understanding of the self depend on the sensitivity of the traveller to his or her own culture. Provided that the travel writer does not mythologise too freely, self-disclosure enriches the book through arousing readers’ interest as much in the traveller as his or her travels. The narrative strategies that travel writers use to represent the inner lives of their voyaging personas manufacture the interior journey. Study of them informs the decisions the author has made in writing The Dragon Run. 3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my team of supervisors at the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, who gave their insightful and timely advice while overseeing this thesis: Dr Anna Ball, Dr Rory Waterman, Professor Gregory Woods, Dr Sarah Jackson (the Independent Assessor) and, especially, Professor Tim Youngs, my Director of Studies. I would also like to thank Dr Tenzin, Mr Namgay and the members of Team Tara- thon for the information they supplied on Bhutan and on themselves while I was writing this thesis, and, of course, my wife for her astute comments. 4 Table of Contents Preface 6 The Dragon Run Prologue 9 Part I: The Dragon Kingdom Chapter 2: Fire Male Dog Year 18 Chapter 3: Peak of Learning 35 Chapter 4: All for One 50 Chapter 5: Suja with Mr Namgay 71 Part II: Tara-thon Chapter 3: The Longest Climb 87 Chapter 4: Death of a Runner 105 Chapter 5: Yalama! 123 Chapter 7: Bumpy Road to Wangdi 141 Chapter 8: Tea with Her Majesty 164 Epilogue 184 Glossary 192 Critical Commentary 195 Appendix 289 Bibliography 293 5 Preface This thesis is approximately two-thirds creative and one-third critical. The creative part comprises chapters from a non-fiction travel memoir called The Dragon Run. The critical commentary that follows it investigates the representation of the self in modern travel writing (readers wishing to begin with the commentary should turn to page 195). Reconstructed from the journals I kept during my two-year stay in Bhutan (2006-2008), the first part of the memoir tells of life in the remote eastern village of Kandisor and my tenure as a lecturer in English at Sherading College. The second describes a 578-kilometre marathon across the ‘Dragon Kingdom,’ a sponsored run my wife Nadya and I organised and performed with ten of our students to raise money for a Bhutanese charity foundation, headed by the eldest of the four queens. The names of the principal characters have been altered for ethical reasons. A prologue, set in Canada, explains how the trip came about, and an epilogue, set partly in England, offers speculation on Bhutan’s impetus to modernise and a reflection on the personal growth of the narrator. The memoir is intended to appeal to teachers, planning to take up posts in developing countries; to distance runners or charity groups, wishing for insight into a project organised by Westerners overseas; to travellers, curious about Buddhist rituals, a happiness index, corybantic performances or folk tales; to naturalists, keen to learn of the plant and bird life belonging to an ‘ecological hotspot’ in the Himalayas; and to those interested in learning more about a transformative period in the history of a tiny Himalayan Kingdom, until recently sheltered from the world. A glossary lists foreign words (mainly Dzongkha), italicised only on first mention in the text. The sections of The Dragon Run included in this submission (prologue, Chapters 2, 3, 4 6 and 5 of Part I, Chapters 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 of Part II, and epilogue) are those that best reflect my themes of critical inquiry in that they are the most revealing of the narrator. As expanded on in the introduction to my critical commentary, the nature of the destination, a secluded, ecologically abundant, sparsely populated region in the Himalayas, invited the telling of a narrative as much contemplative as descriptive. The commentary explores how recent introspective travel writers reconstruct their journeying selves in their books and relates their practice to my own, with particular focus on three themes: the autobiographical self, self-awareness in wilderness settings and the self in relation to the ‘foreign other.’ The creative decisions I made stimulated critical analysis, and growing familiarity with the stylistic techniques used by other travel writers influenced the ways I chose to represent my travelling self. As I had difficulty early in the narrative presenting my more naive persona (I cast him as too composed and knowing), I consider, for example, thoughts on how to articulate raw emotions,1 and Jamie Zeppa’s practice in so doing in her Bhutanese travelogue. Peter Matthiessen’s Zen Buddhist projections of self in the vertiginous interior of Nepal have propelled me to explore other literary responses to wilderness together with criticism in an effort to articulate imaginatively my own traveller’s strong feelings for and in nature.2 Short 1 William L. Howarth, ‘Some Principles of Autobiography,’ in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical & Critical, ed. by James Olney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1980), pp. 84-114; William R. Siebenschuh, Fictional Techniques and Factual Works (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 1983; Hélène Cixous, ‘Without End, No, State of Drawingness, No, Rather: The Executioner’s Taking Off,’ in Stigmata (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 16-27 2 Scott Slovic, Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992); Mark Tredinnick, The Land’s Wild Music: Encounters with Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, & James Galvin (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University, 2005); David D. Joplin, ‘Searching for God or Medusa through Allusion in Abbey’s Desert Solitaire,’ Western American Literature, 43, 2 (2008) 103-27 7 extracts from early drafts of my creative work may be found in the appendix to this thesis. 8 THE DRAGON RUN A Journey across Bhutan Prologue We stand in a line at the college gate, caps off, heads bowed, facing the Lam Neten of Trashigang Dzong. Shaven-headed and dressed in orange robes, the lama chants words of Choekey into the sky just over our heads. A teenage monk comes with a mirror and a bumpo, a bronze jug with a peacock feather sticking out the top, and pours a thin, wavy line of holy water at our feet. Then another and another. It seems he is drawing a diagram of the mountains we will cross. Next, the lama takes a handful of rice from a bowl and throws it over us. He does this with his right hand while sounding a little wooden drum with string clappers in his left. Bhutan Broadcasting Service films the ceremony. A journalist from Kuensel takes photographs. “Holy water is offering to good spirits for success of our mission,” Mr Namgay whispers in my ear. “Mirror send our prayer back to us. Rice purify our bad deeds.” “And what do the words mean?” “All beings should support as a whole, universal.” I look at him, puzzled. “If good luck come to Mr Tony, then this good luck will go from him to other beings.