The Horseman

T. Dorji is an powerful man with huge, sinewy calves and a rough black beard and broad shoulders. He moves his horses over the mountains by calling to them, persuading and commanding with a horse language that only they and he understand. He wears a faded gho and torn, green, old-style Chinese army sneakers, but he is a rich man in Bhutan, and lives in a big house just below Drukyl Dzong in Paro. I’ve sat in his temple room and had a meal. He has a big family and they all live in his house. He was part of our trek to Jumolhari a few years ago. Jumolhari is the ‘Mother Mountain,’ the most sacred in Bhutan at 7341 meters. On the way up to Jumolhari base camp we stopped at Shaba the second day. He and the cooks had gone ahead of us and set up the camp. He let his horses go to graze, and then he went out after dinner to round them up. They were tiny dots way up on the mountain by the time twilight came around. They'd wandered pretty far from the camp. I saw him set off into the mountains, and watched until he was a red speck high up in the mountains. When it got dark, we sat around the fire, and I wondered if he'd come back. We got in our tents when it started raining, and fell asleep listening to the storm. It rained all night and, eating breakfast in the kitchen tent the next morning, we saw him walking toward us in the steady drizzle, leading one of the horses, a big smile on his face. It didn't seem to bother him that he was wet to the bone. The other horses were tethered together and munching on oats, their faces covered by feedbags.