Motorbiking across Bhutan for a bowl of chilled buckwheat noodles
A soba-lover discovers how buckwheat breathes life into Bumthang’s chilled, chilli-laden noodles on a 10-day motorcycling trip across Bhutan
When outsiders talk about Bhutan, there’s praise aplenty—blue skies, green vales and cliff-hanging monasteries. But the good words rarely seem to extend to its food. The superlatives suddenly switch to unapproving adverbs, the food of the “happiest, most beautiful land" is met with “too spicy, too cheesy, too limited". Luckily for me, Royal Enfield’s recent 10-day Tour of Bhutan was an opportunity to journey beyond tourist hot spots and explore Bhutan’s buckwheat noodles, puta.
While the name is a head-turner for a Spanish-speaker like myself (because it is a pejorative), my curiosity was fuelled by its lore: a delicacy eaten on Bhutan’s day of nine evils to ward off the spirits by devouring what look like “bowls full of worms". I enjoy buckwheat noodles to the extent I’ve taken soba-making classes in Japan. The idea that the fertile fields of the first carbon-neutral country could be the source of buckwheat noodles as prized as those of the Nagano Prefecture was one I had to chase on the road. And after a week on the tour, rumbling through the mountain passes of Paro, Thimpu and Phobjikha, feasting on views of misty valleys and steaming bowlfuls of red rice and pork, I had arrived for my bowl of worms in Bumthang, Bhutan’s buckwheat cradle.
On my first morning there, I chugged my sapphire 650 Classic across a river, up a hay-stacked hillock, into the orchard-lined entrance of Swiss House, a guest house surrounded by buckwheat fields. Here, chef Sonam (who goes by her first name) explained the region’s buckwheat comes in two main varieties, sweet and bitter, as she gave the former a cold water bath after boiling, telling me they are traditionally served cold. The noodles were mixed with tingey, a variety of Sichuan pepper, red chilli powder, and salt—along with scrambled eggs and buttermilk-like yogurt.
The nutty noodles featured a slow simmer of spice rounded out by the tingey’s tongue-numbing, lemony notes. Even better were the buckwheat pancakes, khur-le, which I brightened up with local honey. It added a malty molasses quality—a full-circle pairing considering the local bees are prime pollinators of Bumthang’s buckwheat fields.
At Cafe Perk in the town centre, I partook in the same “sweet" noodles, but this time tossed with toasted perilla seeds. Here, I met with Lhatso Sangay, the senior curator of Wangduechhoeling Palace Museum, who took me to the nearby palace grounds, spanning the first seat of the kingdom.
Beyond Wangduechhoeling’s royal pear tree lay a traditional water mill, where the best of Bumthang’s buckwheat was ground and then kept in the granary next to the first king’s chambers during his reign from 1907-26. I also learned the region’s famed Yathra wool textiles were traditionally dyed with buckwheat, and the pillows of yore stuffed with its husks.
But finding the bitter variety of the noodles was proving to be hard. The biggest breakthrough at the museum was bumping into Tsheten Dorji, a contractor refurbishing Wangduechhoeling’s temple. Upon overhearing Sangay bemoan the fact we hadn’t been able to taste the bitter variety of buckwheat—its tough husks are difficult to hull, and it tends to ripen unevenly, contributing to a lower yield—he proceeded to lay out a plan, wherein we’d all be feasting in two hours.
In his cousin’s kitchen stood a water-pump-like wooden instrument, in which his relative Ugyen Dema stuffed buckwheat dough and levered out noodles through a grate into a bamboo bowl. Dorji asked, “How about a glass of the local?" One enthusiastic nod later, a bottle of ara appeared. “This was made by Dema, with her wheat," he said, and then wiggled the bottle until Sangay exclaimed, “Oh my god, we’re really getting spoiled, she distilled the ara with cordyceps," gesturing to the prized, floating tequila-worm-like caterpillar fungus Dema had foraged in high-altitude meadows over the summer.
“Everything she is using is local," said Dorji. As if on cue, Dema produced Sichuan pepper and dried Chinese chives—all from her garden—which she tempered before adding to the noodles. Even the buckwheat was hers, ground at the water mill down the road.
As we noshed on the noodles with a revelatory Oolong aftertaste, made of sernye or gold-and-silver buckwheat, we learned Ugyen hailed from Dhur, a village of 40 households who are the last to speak Brokat. I could tell from Sangay’s face that Dema’s knowledge of buckwheat was akin to speaking a dying language as she referenced a flatbread that watermill workers make from river water and freshly ground buckwheat, cooked in ashes; boiled and pan-fried donuts; and gentu, a variety traditionally harvested every three years to allow the soil to rest.
As I stepped into her garden, somehow already nursing a lightning fast hangover, I realised I’d been looking at Bumthang’s culinary heritage like someone trying to understand the floor plan of a monastery by peering through its archery slits—staring at a flash of something pretty, without having a clue about the labyrinth of laddered inner chambers. Seeing the look on my face, Dorji said, “Come back and we will ride bikes… go looking for the gentu fields?"
Riding motorcycles on a culinary treasure hunt in Bhutan had opened my eyes like Ugyen’s ara. And I wasn’t about to say no to another round.
Julian Manning is a Mumbai-based travel writer.
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