Bhutan — Sneak Peek

November 8th, 2007  |  Published in Adventure, Living, Nature & Wildlife, Photography, Travel  |  28 Comments

I was talk­ing to Ravi when he sug­gested that I do a teaser on my Bhutan trip to start off with. I was telling him that since I’d taken loads of pic­tures (as usual!) it would take me some time to upload every­thing and write my trav­el­ogues. So here it is, just a lit­tle sneak peek into the lovely and exotic king­dom of Bhutan.

We started our Bhutan trip from the bor­der town of Phuntshol­ing and trav­elled to the lit­tle but charm­ing town of Paro, where there are more street dogs than people.

The scenic approach road to Paro

We got acquainted with red and green hot spicy chillis gar­nish­ing every dish. In fact, chillis are a dish in itself. 

We walked up to the incred­i­bly majes­tic Tiger’s Nest monastery (Tak­t­shang Goemba), perched on a cliff edge. I puffed and panted, but just stand­ing oppo­site this awe­some struc­ture (the mind bog­gles when you think of how it was built at that loca­tion!) was worth the climb. 

Walked around the one street town many times each time dis­cov­er­ing some­thing new! 

The town square of Paro

The air­port is def­i­nitely unique. The run­away mean­ders across the val­ley floor and a river runs par­al­lel to it and in between the two is the air­port build­ing, built in the Bhutanese style archi­tec­ture, like all buildings. 

From Paro, we jour­neyed to Thimpu, the cap­i­tal but I had been spoiled by Paro’s quaint beauty. To start with, hotel rooms are hard to find with­out prior book­ing. Sec­ondly, the main town area wasn’t that clean. At least in Paro, each shop had a waste bin in front that was duly col­lected the next morn­ing by the garbage truck. In Thimpu, many of the drains were filled with garbage and lit­ter. The Trashi Chhoe Dzong was a scenic spot a few kilo­me­tres away from the town but it houses offices dur­ing the day and was not acces­si­ble to the gen­eral public.

I was impa­tient to get mov­ing. From there, we crossed into the Punakha val­ley, an expanse of beau­ti­ful green and yel­low fields dot­ted with houses and a cou­ple of strate­gi­cally placed monas­ter­ies and dzongs. The Punakha Dzong is located at a mem­o­rable spot indeed — right on the water­front. Inside we met a monk called Kaka inside who treated us to guavas.

The road that leads to Punakha

We crossed via the town of Wang­due Pho­drang, which has a lovely view across the river as you ascend the slopes towards the Wandgue Dzong (but we didn’t stop and just admired from the dis­tance). The river is a strange green in colour here and looks rather pretty. 

The river runs through it at Wangdue

From Wandgue, we went in search of the black necked cranes in Phob­jikha Val­ley. They come there every year, or so I’d heard. Unfor­tu­nately, they must have known I was com­ing because they didn’t appear. The locals said the bad weather might have delayed their arrival. We walked around the peace­ful and serene rice bowl shaped val­ley (with less humans and more ani­mals) and mar­veled at the beauty around. There are sev­eral trails in this region and you can eas­ily spend about 3 days just walk­ing around the plains and moun­tain side.

The Phob­jikha val­ley is great for walk­ing around

We trav­elled fur­ther into the geo­graph­i­cal cen­tre of the coun­try : Trongsa : a very small town again with one inter­sec­tion where most of the activ­ity is cen­tred. The Trongsa Dzong is located right in the mid­dle of the moun­tains, just below the town. From the oppo­site moun­tain is the van­tage point that looks straight at this impos­ing struc­ture that has a water­fall just beside it. A view not to be missed. From the van­tage point there is also a walk­ing trail that goes down and up the moun­tain and takes about 2 hours to reach the monastery. Not for the faint hearted. 

Monks at the Trongsa Dzong

From Trongsa, we decided to get started on our return jour­ney since the fur­ther we trav­elled, the longer it would take to get back. And we were also unable to cover more than 20 kms an hour on the curvy and hilly roads. The scenery was how­ever prob­a­bly some of the best we’d seen : high moun­tains, steep val­leys, mus­tard fields, and trees that had turned yel­low, cop­per, deep red as the leaves changed colours. 

Fields of gold

The main dis­ad­van­tage was find­ing hotel rooms in Bhutan. Every­thing decent or avail­able is booked for enor­mous con­tin­gents of for­eign tourists in blocks so every­where we get the same response, “No book­ing, no room”. Inde­pen­dent trav­el­ers, be warned : it’s bet­ter to get all the hotel book­ings done through a tour oper­a­tor in Thimpu to avoid this hassle. 

The return jour­ney took us 3 days. On the way back we stopped at Punakha and then Paro again : the place that had become our favourite. From there, it was another day’s ride back to Phuntshol­ing, the bor­der town. And back to India. Back to the Indian hills, we chilled out in Kalimpong for a few days not doing much except tak­ing walks into the town cen­tre, win­dow shop­ping and eat­ing. And then it was back to come back to civilization. 

Like they say, all good things must come to and end.

– Bhutan: Sneak Peek — The Album

Responses

1. CK Go Places says:
   

   November 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am (#)

   Nice pics and write-up of a stun­ning coun­try. Thanks for sharing. :)

2. Seeji says:
   

   November 8th, 2007 at 10:06 am (#)

   Awe­some post n pics.…. 

   “The main dis­ad­van­tage was find­ing hotel rooms in Bhutan. Every­thing decent or avail­able is booked for enor­mous con­tin­gents of for­eign tourists in blocks” … 

   How expen­sive is Bhutan for tourists. And is it very much crowded by tourists???

3. Prashanth M says:
   

   November 8th, 2007 at 11:07 am (#)

   Amaz­ing photos…

4. Anita says:
   

   November 8th, 2007 at 11:30 am (#)

   @ ck: thanks! def­i­nitely stunning.

   @ seeji: it’s not very expen­sive for indi­ans as we don’t need to spend 200 dol­lars a day(which is com­pul­sory for for­eign­ers). there are rea­son­able and decent hotels but the only catch is that they need to be booked well before­hand. didn’t see any indi­ans beyond thimpu! lots of for­eign tourists. 

   @ prashant: thanks!

5. Bhutan | DesiPundit says:
   

   November 9th, 2007 at 1:11 am (#)

   […] Ash | Pho­tog­ra­phy, Travel […]

6. Vinod Sharma says:
   

   November 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm (#)

   Mem­o­ries refreshed. I was there many years back and have some great pho­tographs, not dig­i­tal. That monas­try at Wangdi Phu­drong is a must see. I don’t know how you missed that. Now they do not allow pho­tog­ra­phy inside it. But I have fan­tas­tic pic­tures of the inte­ri­ors and the deities too! May be I will post them at some point of time

7. sirensongs says:
   

   November 9th, 2007 at 1:47 pm (#)

   It’s actu­ally now $250 a day for foreigners…which means, effec­tively, a ban on all but the wealth­i­est (includ­ing me!). Thanks for beau­ti­ful pic­tures of a land I’ll never get to see.

8. Neel says:
   

   November 9th, 2007 at 10:04 pm (#)

   was here for sev­eral years as a kid .… glad to revisit the old places through your eyes!(or tech­ni­cally your cam­era lens!)

9. prasoon says:
   

   November 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am (#)

   superb pics. loved each of these.
   wait­ing for more pics to come and the detailed travelogue :)

10. Born a libran says:
    

    November 10th, 2007 at 5:52 am (#)

    Great Com­po­si­tion… Beau­ti­ful col­ors… All good pics.. :)

11. Pranjal says:
    

    November 10th, 2007 at 11:00 am (#)

    Wow!! Beau­ti­ful place. Might just con­vince fam­ily on a vaca­tion there this December. 

    Awe­some pictures!

12. Srikanth says:
    

    November 11th, 2007 at 10:12 am (#)

    Stum­bled upon your blog and, after see­ing see­ing the pic­tures of Bhutan, I just HAD to leave a com­ment here: Awe­some pic­tures!! And a very nice blog! :)

13. Rakesh says:
    

    November 11th, 2007 at 6:17 pm (#)

    Hi Anita, I stop by blog at reg­u­lar inter­vals and was quite sur­prised to know bout ur Bhutan trip…I and four oth­ers are head­ing to Bhutan the com­ing week­end for a 9 day trip…I sent you an email to your yahoo id anitab­ora AT yahoo dot com, for some inputs. I would highly appre­ci­ate your reply.

14. Radman says:
    

    November 11th, 2007 at 9:27 pm (#)

    Anita,
    can you give us a fla­vor of the cui­sine to be had as well as the restau­rants and bars them­selves? thanks.

15. Anita says:
    

    November 12th, 2007 at 1:22 pm (#)

    @ Vinod: glad to refresh your mem­o­ries. unfor­tu­nately, we were pass­ing through and did not get the time as we were run­ning late. but we did check out most of the other dzongs! do post the link if you man­age to put up yours!

    @ siren­songs: wow, then it’s even more effec­tive. but we still came across heaps of for­eign tourists! more pics coming!

    @ Neel: glad you could do that!

    @ pra­soon: thanks! will get to the detailed one soon! 

    @ Born a libran: thanks!

    @ Pran­jal: super idea but decèmber will be very cold! 

    @ Srikanth: thank you for the com­ment, much appre­ci­ated! glad you liked them!

    @ Rakesh: hope you have a great time! details sent via email.

    @ Rad­man: i will write about the cui­sine and places we ate in com­ing trav­el­ogues. mean­while, the lonely planet is the per­fect guide for bars and restaurants!

16. Shree says:
    

    November 16th, 2007 at 12:27 pm (#)

    Reached ur blog by acci­dent… and am glad it hap­pened. Lovely blog.. & lovely pics.

    Book­marked u… will b a fre­quent vis­i­tor to ur work here…

    Keep it goin gal..

17. ugyen says:
    

    November 16th, 2007 at 4:45 pm (#)

    Awe­some Write Up!! couldn’t help Going thru your Post, Thanks for Shar­ing with us

18. sampath says:
    

    November 16th, 2007 at 8:27 pm (#)

    Ter­rific pics– very col­or­ful!
    And while you were at bhutan, one of my friends and i’d gone to nepal. very iden­ti­cal things i saw there.
    Have put a few pics at http://www.flickr.com/gp/14008905@N00/dgd462
    your com­ments welcome

19. Bhavna says:
    

    November 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm (#)

    Stum­bled to your blog Anita..and am glad I did! I loved going through this post…I am fas­ci­nated with Bhutan. I did a post on Bhutan a some weeks back on my blog…http://anindiansummer-design.blogspot.com/2007/10/kingdom-in-himalayas.html

    :-)

20. Drukstylz says:
    

    November 26th, 2007 at 4:50 am (#)

    Won­der­ful pic­tures. Look­ing for­ward to your updates on Bhutanese food.

21. Anita says:
    

    November 26th, 2007 at 10:43 am (#)

    @ Shree: thanks so much, hope to see you again!

    @ ugyen: thanks for then nice words!

    @ sam­path: thanks! yes, very sim­i­lar scenery…

    @ Bhavna: glad you stum­bled upon it! will def­i­nitely check out yours!

    @ Druk­stylz: stay tuned!

22. Shantanu says:
    

    November 27th, 2007 at 6:58 pm (#)

    OMG! The pic­tures are bewitch­ing. Great job on the writeup too. Did you fig­ure out which are the best hotels if you did make book­ings in advance? I am par­tial to hotels that are built with local materials/architecture/etc., so you get a feel of the place indoors too, rather than the mod­ern ones.

23. Ravi says:
    

    November 29th, 2007 at 9:50 am (#)

    Yo Anita,
    Thanks for the name drop­ping bit! Sorry, though, that I’m see­ing it after a long time. The pho­tos are top qual­ity and show­case your skill very well. They keep alive my deter­mi­na­tion to get myself a NIKON!
    Cheers,
    Ravi

24. Anita says:
    

    December 4th, 2007 at 10:15 am (#)

    @ shan­tanu: thanks! we used the lonely planet for find­ing hotels. in the peak sea­son, it’s best to book before hand. the nice thing about bhutan is that ALL build­ings have to be made in the tra­di­tional style! they can be mod­ern inside, but out­side they all look the same :)

    @ ravi: no prob­lems, bet­ter late than never ;) a nikon is very much in order i think!

25. Sonali says:
    

    December 12th, 2007 at 5:31 pm (#)

    Hi Anita,
    Thanks for this lovely expe­ri­ence. Have been plan­ning to visit Bhutan for some time now … Now the itch grows stronger…

    Beau­ti­ful

26. Aroha says:
    

    August 8th, 2008 at 6:13 pm (#)

    I’ve stum­bled across your blog and I think its sim­ply fantab­u­lous!! You have a way with words and pics are sim­ply beau­ti­ful!! Do you use some kind of fil­ter in your photos?

27. Smitha Gopalkrishnan says:
    

    September 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm (#)

    Hi Anita,

    I am a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor of your blog espe­ciall your travel sto­ries. I was deeply inspired by your write up on your trip to Bhutan and wanted to a make a trip there. Its just that my plan­ning is very last minute, i plan to go early next month! I live in Ban­ga­lore, could you tell me how you went about book­ing your travel, did you go through an agent or a par­tic­u­lar web­site and get your book­ings done? If you have the time, please do drop in a line at my email id — smite13@yahoo.com. Thanks!

28. Anita says:
    

    September 18th, 2008 at 9:58 pm (#)

    @ aroha: no filters! 

    @ smitha: will send you an email…

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