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International GCSE English Language (Specification A) - Paper 1 Section A Non-fiction textsFrom Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan, Jamie Zeppa
When Zeppa was 24 years old she left Canada to teach in Bhutan. This memoir
grew out of an essay she wrote about her early days in the country.
Mountains all around, climbing up to peaks, rolling into valleys, again and again. Bhutan
is all and only mountains. I know the technical explanation for the landscape, landmass
meeting landmass, the Indian subcontinent colliding into Asia thirty or forty million years
ago, but I cannot imagine it. It is easier to picture a giant child gathering earth in great
5 armfuls, piling up rock, pinching mud into ridges and sharp peaks, knuckling out little
valleys and gorges, poking holes for water to fall through.
It is my first night in Thimphu, the capital, a ninety-minute drive from the airport in
Paro. It took five different flights over four days to get here, from Toronto to Montreal to
Amsterdam to New Delhi to Calcutta to Paro. I am exhausted, but I cannot sleep.
10 From my simple, pine-paneled room at the Druk Sherig hotel, I watch mountains rise to
meet the moon. I used to wonder what was on the other side of mountains, how the
landscape resolved itself beyond the immediate wall in front of you. Flying in from the
baked-brown plains of India this morning, I found out: on the other side of mountains
are mountains, more mountains and mountains again. The entire earth below us
15 was a convulsion of crests and gorges and wind-sharpened pinnacles. Just past Everest,
I caught a glimpse of the Tibetan plateau, the edge of a frozen desert 4,500 meters
above sea level. Thimphu's altitude is about half of that but even here, the winter air
is thin and dry and very cold.
The next morning, I share breakfast of instant coffee, powdered milk, plasticky white
20 bread and flavorless 1 red jam in the hotel with two other Canadians who have signed on
to teach in Bhutan for two years. Lorna has golden brown hair, freckles and a no non
sense, home-on-the-farm demeanor 2 that is frequently shattered by her ringing laughter
and stories of the wild characters that populate her life in Saskatchewan. Sasha from
British Columbia is slight and dark, with an impish smile. After breakfast, we have a brief
25 meeting with Gordon, the field director of the WUSC program in Bhutan, and then walk
along the main road of Thimphu. Both Lorna and Sasha have t raveled 3 extensively;
Lorna trekked all over Europe and northern Africa and Sasha worked for a year in an
orphanage in Bombay. They are both ecstatic about Bhutan so far, and I stay close to
them, hoping to pick up some of their enthusiasm.
30 Although Thimphu's official population is 20,000, it seems even smaller. It doesn't even
have traffic lights. Blue-suited policemen stationed at two intersections along the main
street direct the occasional truck or landcruiser using incomprehensible but graceful
hand gestures. The buildings all have the same pitched roof, trefoil windows and heavy
beams painted with lotus flowers, jewels and clouds. One-storied shops with wooden-
35 shuttered windows open onto the street. They seem to be selling the same things:
onions, rice, tea, milk powder, dried fish, plastic buckets and metal plates, quilts and
packages of stale, soft cookies from India-Bourbon Biscuits, Coconut Crunchies and the
hideously colored 4 Orange Cream Biscuits. There are more signs of the outside world
than I had expected: teenagers in acid washed jeans, Willie Nelson's greatest hits after
40 the news in English on the Bhutan Broadcasting Service, a Rambo poster in a bar.
Overall, these signs of cultural infiltration are few, but they are startling against the
Bhutanese-ness of everything else.
1 flavorless: American spelling of flavourless
2 demeanor: American spelling of demeanour
3
traveled: American spelling of travelled
4
colored: American spelling of coloured
Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Anthology 17
Issue 4 - April 2020 © Pearson Education Limited 2020
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