SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
In the afternoon, while wandering round the camp, which was very well laid out, I watched the curious Bhutanese custom of feeding mules with eggs, which I had never come across elsewhere. All our mules, as well as those belonging to Ugyen Kazi and to the Penlops, each had a ration of two or three raw eggs. The eggs were broken into a horn, the mule’s head held up, and the contents of the horn poured down the animal’s throat, and, strange to say, they seemed to like the unnatural food. The Bhutanese always give this to their animals when they have any extra hard work to do, and say it keeps them in excellent condition; and certainly all their mules were in first-rate condition.
The next morning the Paro Penlop, accompanied by his young son, paid me a formal visit, at which we exchanged ordinary compliments. The Penlop was then about fifty-six years of age, a fair man, with a weak, discontented, though not unhandsome face. His first and lawful wife, Ugyen Zangmo, was a relative of the Tongsa Penlop, but as she was childless he married his present consort, a woman called Rinchen Dolma, from a village near Paro, who bore him a son, at the time of our visit about twelve years of age, and a most ill-mannered young cub, who would have been all the better for a good thrashing. His mother, Rinchen Dolma, though elderly and crippled with chronic rheumatism, is a pleasant, clever woman, who completely rules the Penlop. In order to preserve her influence as she grew older, and to prevent him bringing a stranger into the house, she gave him her own daughter, Tayi (by her first husband), as his junior wife, and they both lived amicably in a pretty house across the valley. The wives have a dwelling outside the Jong, on account of the strict regulation that no female is allowed to remain in the fort after dark. The gates of the fort, as well as those of the bridge across the Pa-chhu, are regularly closed at sunset, and, as in China, are not opened until morning on any pretext whatever; even the Penlop himself is not admitted, and consequently, if he wishes to
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