Trashigang

Eastern Bhutan was for centuries a patchwork of small valley chiefdoms with their own ruling families, trading over the passes with Tibet and down into Assam. The Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal's government extended its authority here in the middle of the 17th century, and in 1659 Trashigang Dzong was built on a spur above the meeting of the Gamri Chhu and the Drangme Chhu, a site chosen so that the gorge guarded three of its sides. From it the government controlled the eastern valleys and the routes to the plains.

The dzong shaped everything that followed. Governors ruled the east from it, and the settlement above it grew as a market for the valleys around. The frontier with British India mattered too: fighting during the Duar War of 1864–65 reached Dewangiri, today's Dewathang on the road south, and the treaty that ended the war ceded territory on the plains.

Modern Trashigang was made by roads and schools. The east remained remote until the lateral road arrived from the 1960s, after which the town became the district headquarters, with offices, shops and a hospital. Sherubtse College at Kanglung, founded in 1966 on the ridge to the south, was the country's first accredited college and drew students from across Bhutan, giving the east an outsized place in Bhutan's civil service. Hydropower on the Kuri Chhu, roads to Merak and Sakteng and mobile coverage have since narrowed the distance, while emigration has thinned many of the villages.

Trashigang is the centre of Sharchop culture. Most residents speak Tshangla, often called Sharchopkha, at home, and the east has a reputation within Bhutan for directness, humour and open hospitality. Guests are pressed with tea and with ara, the home-distilled spirit, which in eastern households is often warmed with butter and egg and offered as a matter of course rather than as a treat.

Weaving is the region's great art and its main craft income. Women work at backstrap and pedal looms in villages around the town, above all at Radhi, where bura, raw silk cloth, is woven in patterns that Bhutanese recognise instantly; the finest pieces take months and command high prices in Thimphu. Religious life centres on the dzong's autumn tshechu and on pilgrimage to Gom Kora and Chorten Kora, the latter drawing Dakpa pilgrims from across the border in Arunachal Pradesh.

In the mountains east of the town live the Brokpa of Merak and Sakteng, semi-nomadic yak herders with their own dress, their own speech and their own festivals, who come down to Trashigang to trade butter, cheese and dried meat. Their presence in the bazaar, alongside students from Kanglung, officials from the dzong and traders from the Assam border, gives the town its particular mix.

Trashigang district is the country's most densely settled, but the town itself is small — around three thousand residents on a hillside — and functions as the service centre for a wide, scattered rural population. Government offices in the dzong, schools, the hospital, shops and transport provide most of the wage work, with the college at Kanglung a short way south.

Farming supports the villages. Maize is the traditional staple of the eastern hills, grown with rice, millet, potatoes and vegetables on steep terraces, with cattle kept for milk and butter and oranges and areca nut in the warmer valleys. Weaving brings cash to households through the winter, and cordyceps collection and yak herding sustain the high valleys of Merak and Sakteng.

The town's day is shaped by transport: buses and shared taxis leave early for Mongar and the border, and the square is quiet by evening. The long-standing issues here are distance and drift — roads that close in the monsoon, services concentrated far to the west, and steady migration of young people to Thimphu, Phuentsholing and abroad, which has left many eastern villages with empty houses and ageing households.

The east eats more maize than rice, and Trashigang's cooking shows it. Kharang, cracked maize cooked like rice, and maize porridge are traditional staples, served with ema datshi, chillies stewed with soft cheese, and with potato, mushroom or fern dishes. Dried beef and sikam, dried pork belly, are cooked with chillies and radish, and river fish and wild greens gathered from the valley appear in season.

Chillies are eaten in quantity and dried on roofs and balconies in autumn; ezay, a raw relish of chilli with cheese, tomato or dried fish, accompanies most meals. Buckwheat and dairy dishes come down from the high country, and the Brokpa diet of Merak and Sakteng is built on yak products — butter, fresh and dried cheese, dried meat and butter tea, sometimes taken with tsampa, roasted barley flour.

Ara is central to eastern hospitality. Distilled at home from maize, rice or millet, it is offered to guests, used in offerings on auspicious days and often served warm with butter and a beaten egg. Suja, tea churned with butter and salt, and sweet milk tea are drunk through the day, doma — areca nut with betel leaf and lime — is chewed widely, and oranges from the lower valleys are sold in the square through the winter. Eating out means the plain restaurants around the bazaar.