Here, separating chaff from the rice grains with the help of the breeze ...
The sheaves are beaten on a tarp to catch the grains of rice.
All those cast away stalks will provide animal fodder over the winter.
We were told that, for all this labor, Bhutan is not self-sufficient in rice; they must import from India.
4 comments:
If they can't sell the rice and must import, what is the main source of income in Bhutan?
The two main sources of income (foreign exchange) for Bhutan are 1) exporting hydro-electric power to India and 2) tourism. For all its beauty (and fresh air and clean water and hardscrabble people) this is a resource-poor little country. Bhutan can't afford the accoutrements of modernity. How people deal with that over time will probably determine how well it remains a cohesive society. After all, they see all the stuff on their ubiquitous TVs every day; they have electricity, so they see the rest of the world ...
Do they then have a wealthy class who suck up what income there is? Their lifestyle, as you photographed it, reminds me of the Mongolians with the way parts of modern life have come but not enough income in their traditional raising of animals to support anything but minimal living. The beauty of such is great but hard to imagine living that way.
I loved seeing these pictures and thinking about the lives of these people.
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