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Under the Holy Lake: A Memoir of Eastern Bhutan
A child's face, a forgotten scent, or a distinctive flavour engages memory and inspires longing. Ken Haigh brings us tantalizingly close to his own vision of longing for a place, a people, a time, as he revisits those all-too-fleeting years as a young school teacher in the remote Himalayan village of Khaling, Bhutan. These experiences in an exotic country will leave you yearning for ancient Buddhist temples, winding mountain trails, and a simpler way of life. This memoir will captivate the vicarious traveller in each of us.
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 1, 2013
Story Description:
The University of Alberta Press|June 4, 2008|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 0-88864-492-2
Inaccessible for most of its history, the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has long fascinated the West. Today, wealthy travelers are admitted in small groups, but in 1987, when Ken Haigh arrived as a volunteer to teach in a small high school, foreign travelers were as hard to find in the kingdom as telephones or toilet paper. Under the Holy Lake describes a two-year sojourn in the valley of Khaling in eastern Bhutan. Ken learns to cope with leeches, rabid dogs, and culture shock, and in return finds his life transformed. He rents a small cottage next to a Buddhist monastery and quickly settles into a pattern of existence that is hundreds of years removed from the world he’d known in Canada. He finds his students are polite and eager to learn, his neighbours warm and welcoming. Under the Holy Lake is a love song to a mountain valley and its people, a story of youth, and discovery, and, ultimately, of loss.
My Review:
A most compelling read! Ken Haigh’s memoir had me from the first page until the very last. Each page brought new scenery, new people, new things to learn and see. The descriptions were so clearly laid out that I felt as though I was truly trudging along with Ken as he climbed the steep embankments through the thick jungle. I could feel and see the giant leeches as they clung to my clothing searching for spaces in my clothing to gain access to skin where they could attach themselves for a few hours of blood sucking. The rabid dogs with their foaming mouths seemed especially frightening as did the giant rats that Ken was forced to live with.
The students were so well-mannered and polite for a culture so far removed from where we are here in the west. I don’t honestly know how Mr. Haigh managed to stay for two years living in this dilapidated place that seemed like something out of a horror movie. The students he and others taught there were fortunate to have volunteers such as Ken and the others to come and impart their knowledge.
I took my time reading this as I didn’t want to miss a single word of this memoir. This would make for a great book club read. There are so many aspects to this memoir and so many things to discuss. I wish I knew someone else who had already read this so I could discuss it with them.
Thank you, Mr. Haigh for sharing your adventure, it was the most entertaining, informative, and educational piece of reading I’ve done in a long while.
The University of Alberta Press|June 4, 2008|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 0-88864-492-2
Inaccessible for most of its history, the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has long fascinated the West. Today, wealthy travelers are admitted in small groups, but in 1987, when Ken Haigh arrived as a volunteer to teach in a small high school, foreign travelers were as hard to find in the kingdom as telephones or toilet paper. Under the Holy Lake describes a two-year sojourn in the valley of Khaling in eastern Bhutan. Ken learns to cope with leeches, rabid dogs, and culture shock, and in return finds his life transformed. He rents a small cottage next to a Buddhist monastery and quickly settles into a pattern of existence that is hundreds of years removed from the world he’d known in Canada. He finds his students are polite and eager to learn, his neighbours warm and welcoming. Under the Holy Lake is a love song to a mountain valley and its people, a story of youth, and discovery, and, ultimately, of loss.
My Review:
A most compelling read! Ken Haigh’s memoir had me from the first page until the very last. Each page brought new scenery, new people, new things to learn and see. The descriptions were so clearly laid out that I felt as though I was truly trudging along with Ken as he climbed the steep embankments through the thick jungle. I could feel and see the giant leeches as they clung to my clothing searching for spaces in my clothing to gain access to skin where they could attach themselves for a few hours of blood sucking. The rabid dogs with their foaming mouths seemed especially frightening as did the giant rats that Ken was forced to live with.
The students were so well-mannered and polite for a culture so far removed from where we are here in the west. I don’t honestly know how Mr. Haigh managed to stay for two years living in this dilapidated place that seemed like something out of a horror movie. The students he and others taught there were fortunate to have volunteers such as Ken and the others to come and impart their knowledge.
I took my time reading this as I didn’t want to miss a single word of this memoir. This would make for a great book club read. There are so many aspects to this memoir and so many things to discuss. I wish I knew someone else who had already read this so I could discuss it with them.
Thank you, Mr. Haigh for sharing your adventure, it was the most entertaining, informative, and educational piece of reading I’ve done in a long while.
January 15, 2014
The author spent two years teaching English composition at a mission school in eastern Bhutan in the 1980s. Bhutan is a primitive place now; it was even less developed back then. The school was dilapidated, the bureaucracy cumbersome, the principal a tyrant, and the standards of instruction antiquated, mostly rote memorization. Haigh's residence was besieged by rats and other vermin, he came down with dysentery, and he was nearly killed in a bus accident on the mountain roads. But he fell in love with Bhutan and its people nonetheless.
Haigh does not romanticize Bhutan and he notes the poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, disease and other problems he observed there. But his great affection for the country is evident in his delightful descriptions of the polite, kind, generous people he encountered everywhere and the beautiful landscape and the "villages strung along the river like pearls on a thread of silver."
Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, this book is sure to please anyone interested in Bhutan or travel narratives in general.
Haigh does not romanticize Bhutan and he notes the poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, disease and other problems he observed there. But his great affection for the country is evident in his delightful descriptions of the polite, kind, generous people he encountered everywhere and the beautiful landscape and the "villages strung along the river like pearls on a thread of silver."
Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, this book is sure to please anyone interested in Bhutan or travel narratives in general.
May 28, 2017
The sad part about this book is that it ended. Beautiful writing and a compelling story of the author's two years teaching in eastern Bhutan written after twenty years.
A brilliant writer with a wonderful heart. I loved every page of the book.
The author loved his two plus years in BHUTAN and shared it with his fortunate readers. My heart sang as I read Under the Holy Lake.
Perfectly beautiful metaphors and similes which make a book special. We fortunate readers were there with him.
Pure quality.
A brilliant writer with a wonderful heart. I loved every page of the book.
The author loved his two plus years in BHUTAN and shared it with his fortunate readers. My heart sang as I read Under the Holy Lake.
Perfectly beautiful metaphors and similes which make a book special. We fortunate readers were there with him.
Pure quality.
February 11, 2017
Lovely, straightforward account of living and working in Bhutan. I have spent over a year in the country as well and Ken captures the culture and people in a unique and enticing manner. Kudos to a job well done - I hope you are still writing!
February 3, 2022
In the late 80s, Haigh set off for Bhutan: he didn't really know where Bhutan was, or necessarily what he was doing there, but he knew he was in for an adventure. A teacher with something akin to the Peace Corps, it would be two years like no others.
Haigh taught at a boarding school in Bhutan—boarding school because there were so few options for rural students, and for upper school in particular students had to go to a few established centres. Haigh, meanwhile, was there to teach English (the official language of instruction because there are too many local languages to provide standardised education in all of them) and to learn himself.
It's an engrossing story, not least because Haigh is curious about the culture and the little details. I don't expect to ever go to Bhutan, so it's one of those places that I'll just have to keep reading about.
Haigh taught at a boarding school in Bhutan—boarding school because there were so few options for rural students, and for upper school in particular students had to go to a few established centres. Haigh, meanwhile, was there to teach English (the official language of instruction because there are too many local languages to provide standardised education in all of them) and to learn himself.
It's an engrossing story, not least because Haigh is curious about the culture and the little details. I don't expect to ever go to Bhutan, so it's one of those places that I'll just have to keep reading about.
November 4, 2019
Under The Holy Lake presents a captivating memoir of two years in Bhutan. It’s immediately engaging. The prose is polished and whip-sharp. The author, Ken Haigh, is thoughtful and learned without being pedantic. The memoir is entertaining, at times light and effusive, yet also profound and intensely satisfying. What does it say?
Go to Bhutan. (Or, if not Bhutan, any place off-the-beaten track.) Live there, work there. If you can go when you’re young, all the better. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. Approach the new land slowly. Accept it warts et al; in the case of Bhutan, torrential rain, foot-long poisonous centipedes, and confusing social mores, to name a few.
Haigh certainly accepted it. His time as a teacher in Khaling, Eastern Bhutan, is a study in cultural adaptation, always a long and arduous road, and not always successfully traversed. He came to cherish Khaling—the valley under the holy lake—and the Bhutanese people. I won’t elaborate on the book’s narrative trajectory. I rarely do. Instead, I’ll say: “Read for yourself.” Experience the real Bhutan, from a to z: ara (corn-mash whisky) to zhugcho (please, sit).
PS: Haigh tells of two years in the late 1980s. Of course, places never stay the same. Bhutan is still 12,000 km from central Canada, but it is no longer distant in time. No place is.
Go to Bhutan. (Or, if not Bhutan, any place off-the-beaten track.) Live there, work there. If you can go when you’re young, all the better. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. Approach the new land slowly. Accept it warts et al; in the case of Bhutan, torrential rain, foot-long poisonous centipedes, and confusing social mores, to name a few.
Haigh certainly accepted it. His time as a teacher in Khaling, Eastern Bhutan, is a study in cultural adaptation, always a long and arduous road, and not always successfully traversed. He came to cherish Khaling—the valley under the holy lake—and the Bhutanese people. I won’t elaborate on the book’s narrative trajectory. I rarely do. Instead, I’ll say: “Read for yourself.” Experience the real Bhutan, from a to z: ara (corn-mash whisky) to zhugcho (please, sit).
PS: Haigh tells of two years in the late 1980s. Of course, places never stay the same. Bhutan is still 12,000 km from central Canada, but it is no longer distant in time. No place is.
July 22, 2013
Memoir of a Canadian who taught in Bhutan
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews