There were 2 or three pots of chiles: for the curries, and for the emma (chile) datse (cheese). They made a special shamu datse (mushroom cheese curry) for me, with less chiles. It seared my mouth.
More chiles. There were 2 types - Large red and green, which are the same chiles at different stages of ripening. They are milder than the tiny chiles that were used for the curries.
They are soaking the lentils for dal. They were then fried, then put into soup and cooked for a long time.
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| Garlic, being cut with giant knives on a log. The eggs were boiled, then peeled and made into a sort of curry. I used a couple of eggs for egg and spoon relay and egg toss. Good thing I did not use raw eggs as they could throw the eggs a long distance and catch easily. |
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| Beef being cut into chunks. I call these papadams, they are called pappas or pappars here. |
The finished products- in this photo there is (left to right) beef curry, chicken curry and eggs.
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| I was pretty sure they could not eat the amount of rice they cooked. The pigs did get more than half of this pot, although the volume of rice eaten by each student is humungous. |
I am not sure how many water brigades there were, but they had buckets for washing food, buckets for cooking, buckets for washing hands and buckets for washing dishes. The water was about 500 meters uphill from our site.
Smiles.
The day was fantastic, the food great, with one small glitch. A bunch of us (at least a third of the class) had exciting gastric moments afterwards. Mine occurred half way to Thimphu later that day. I spent an hour in the bush feeling a bit like a local cow depositing cow pies everywhere, puked. Then went to Thimphu starving and ate pad thai at the Thai restaurant. Another gastric adventure in the land of the Thunder Dragon :)
Robertson Sir, thanks for bringing the memories of Bhutan with words.
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