Day 330b: Paro - Thimphu (ཐིམ་ཕུག)

Feb 27 - Before I get into the immense detail of our time in Bhutan, it may be of interest to describe my experience in getting here.

Like many other parts of the Big Trip, I began planning this destination long before leaving the US a year ago. Bhutan is very complicated to visit, in that the government is very restrictive about foreigners entering the country. Many years ago this used to translate into a yearly visitor quota, and then it morphed into charging a Sustainable Development Fee (SDF) per day of visit. This filtered out all of the budget travelers. Pre-pandemic, this fee was $65/day/person. In addition, all visitors were required to book with a tour operator, who would organize everything, precluding any hope of independent travel. As much as I didn’t like any of that, the draw of Bhutan as a destination was too strong, so I went ahead and researched about ten different tour operators. I developed a spreadsheet, with a long checklist of destination cities, temples, hikes, etc, to see who offered the best selection of things I thought would be interesting, and for what total price. It was all very costly, of course, considering the nearly $200/day going to the SDF as a starter.

I ended up deciding to go for it and book an 18-day excursion that hit a lot of amazing things, starting from the border with Assam, India, in the east, and ending at Paro, in the far west. This included one festival in the eastern part of the country, in an area where very few tours offered an excursion. I allowed the sticker shock of this to wear off and contacted a few operators. Only one got back to me, maybe not so surprising considering that at that moment, in 2020, Bhutan had sealed its borders and was on complete lockdown. Nonetheless, the operator, Bhutan Journeys, was very receptive and I both confirmed the estimated price and set a tentative date for the start of the tour. This of course anticipated that Bhutan would open back up by 2023, something that just logically seemed OK to assume.

I ceased to think about it again, until September 2022, when the Bhutan government announced full lifting of Covid travel restrictions. Previous to this, for some time in 2022 it was possible to visit but with 1-2 weeks quarantine in a hotel in Paro. At $200/day before our tour could even start, that certainly wasn’t going to happen.

The bad news was that along with this announcement was another, that the $65/day/person was now $200/day/person. This blew up the cost of my original plan far beyond anything remotely feasible. For a few weeks I mulled scrapping everything, then decided we would just do something short. I settled on a normal seven day tour that would end up about the same as the original plan cost. To make it less standardized, I chose the dates such that we could attend one of the major festivals. This is the advantage of having months and months to play with while creating an itinerary.

So, in late October 2022, I went ahead and paid for the tour with a bank transfer and we were set. That ended my planning work. Eventually the visas and plane tickets arrived electronically (the flights also had to be booked by the tour operator). Though I was happy to have sorted it out and could now plan out all the dates before and after, the huge expense of such a short trip stung. I don’t like pay-to-play tourism, and me partaking in it feels like a betrayal to all the people I know who have the time and enthusiasm to visit Bhutan but cannot afford it. Even the cost of Iran is minor by comparison, broken down on a day-to-day basis.

Getting back to the present, there was very little visible out the airplane window, but based on the shape of the coast, I estimated that we passed over southern Myanmar and crossed Bangladesh very close to Dhaka. The pilot announced that we would be getting close to some mountains on our descent into Paro, so ‘don’t be worried, this is the normal flight path’. I though maybe he was exaggerating, but the plane really did get down between the mountains.

Terrible photo due to reflection, but we nestled right down by the forested slopes, over 10 minutes out from Paro.

A bit closer in to the airport.

Perhaps the most soothing airport terminal I’ve seen. I feel like we are going straight to a museum.

A miniature Buddhist monastery in the middle of the baggage claim.

We are waved through customs, but I notice that many of the returning Bhutanese piled high with electronic equipment and suitcases are having to go through the whole inspection. Outside we meet up with our guide Gembo, and driver Chigmi. We are given the formal welcoming sashes and off we go down the river valley in the van we will use for the next week.

It is clearly late winter, with spring just starting to appear. The hillsides are brown except for the pine and cypress trees. A few peach trees are also present, leafless but now with pink and white flowers.

One of the first things we note is an old man on the side of the road, taking three steps and then prostrating himself before moving again. He is on the way to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Paro, taking days or weeks to get there, from whatever village he comes from. On his front he has a thick apron to keep his knees from scraping up too much.

So, just quickly on the Bhutan flag, because it is super cool. The yellow part above the diagonal symbolizes the secular government, and the orange below the diagonal is for the religious component of governance (equal in power to the secular). The dragon illustrates Bhutan as the ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon’, a name it has held since its inception. In the dragon’s claws are pearls, symbolizing the wealth of the nation.

First stop along way at the Tachogang Monastery, originally built in the 14th century by Thangthong Gyalpo. The river below is the Pa Chu.

Thangthong originally came to this area to build a bridge. He collected iron and made a chain link bridge, shown above covered in prayer flags. It was repaired many times but now has been closed for safety reasons.

An idyllic family scene, placed somewhat randomly on the hillside. It is of the royal family of Bhutan. The current king is Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk. He is married with two young boys. The reverence the people here have to the king is really strong, possibly the most I’ve ever seen. It is common to see people wearing pins with his likeness, and referring to him as ‘His Majesty’.

We spin some prayer wheels at a small stupa. The writing on the wheels is not the local script Dzongkha, but Sanskrit.

At the stupa there is a big concentration of tsa tsas. These painted conical objects are made of clay mixed with ashes of the dead. Families have them made after the funeral and they distribute them around in memory of the deceased. They can be found at religious sites, and often in any cave, large or small.

This small cave behind the iron chain link bridge was full of tsa tsas. Supposedly this was one of the places Thangthong excavated the raw material to make the iron bridge. However, it didn’t impress me as any real source of iron, as it was just a colluvial deposit formed from silicious metamorphic rocks up the hill.

To get across the river safely, a new bridge was made. It is also covered in prayer flags. There are different types of flags, but most of the ones above are the series that come in five colors. They must be places in spots that are in view of human habitation, water, and mountains. This is so that they can help cleanse (bring positive energy and dispel negative) to the five elements in those places simultaneously.

A detail of the flag (a white one). They are normally shown with a horse in the center (meaning strength), and four animals at the corners: Garuda, a snow lion, a tiger, and a dragon. The five colors and their elemental meanings are as such: Red=fire, yellow=earth, white=water, blue=air, and green=vegetation.

The confluence of the Po Chu and Thim Chu rivers. A hydroelectric project, built with help from India, is downstream. The opposite side of the rivers is the old walking trail between Paro and Thimphu. There are three stupas there, in Nepali style (left), Tibetan style (center) and Bhutanese style (right).

Arrive in the capital city of Thimphu, nestled in a deep valley. Compared with the towns we’ve been in recently, it seems really small. Stop at the archery grounds.

Archery is the national sport of Bhutan, and their claim to fame at the Olympic Games. The targets are placed about 125 meters away. The bows being used by the above players are homemade from bamboo.

On to the vegetable market. Most of the products are cold-weather vegetables, cabbages, carrots, turnips, etc. Also ‘seaweed’ (actually river-weed), tea leaves, many types of peppers, young fern shoots. Also tangerines, surgar cane, and other imports from lower elevations in India. We eat some candies, just cubes of yak butter, not as bitter or hard as those we ate in Mongolia.

A woman peels garlic.

This is the best time of year to find fern shoots.

Many types of peppers. The national dish is called chili cheese, made with green chili peppers.

Herbs and spices.

Not your standard under-the-bridge graffiti, seen in downtown Thimpu.

This particular style of window moulding is standardized in Bhutan, and in fact is required by the government for all buildings. The lobed top portion is meant to resemble a lotus.

A store selling, among other things, masks of the ‘four guardians’ or ‘four auspicious beasts’. They are meant to help those seeking enlightenment overcome the four sufferings of birth, illness, old age, and death. The beasts are, from top to bottom, the dragon, garuda, snow lion, and tiger.

Downtown Thimphu.

Many buildings are painted with auspicious symbols. In Tibetan/Bhutanese Buddhism, there are eight.

The view from our hotel room.

Today’s route (in Bhutan): (A) Paro, (B) Tachogang Monastery, (C) Thimphu.

Eat dinner in the downstairs restaurant, a selection of noodles, rice, chicken, vegetables, and chili cheese.

Thailand I Bhutan