30th of May
Fantastic flight along the Himalayas and difficult but great landing in Paro.
Not a very pleasant night in the Tibet International Hotel since it was noisy outside all night long. We meet Captain Sonam Choeda of Royal Bhutan Airlines for breakfast. He will be our navigator guiding us through the mountains during the landing in Paros. This is one of the most difficult ones in the world and only a few pilots are allowed to fly it. Mr. Choeda is a very experienced pilot flying over 20 years.
Handling at Kathmandu airport is easy and the flight over the city is already impressive. But what follows is just spectacular: flying along the Himalaya! We see the world’s tallest mountains and they are unbelievable! The Mount Everest we see clearly and it looks like it has a cloud. But we get told that this is snow getting blown away on the top! With Captain Choeda we have a very knowledgable guide.
The landing in Paros is done by 3 captains is smooth and Captain Frey has done another very difficult one. The building looks great and people are here in no time. Filling it up, going through immigration in no time and outside our guide, Chimmi Dorji is waiting for us. He wears, like most all men in Bhutan, a Gho, the traditional dress. They look just great and must be very practical! Chimmi is a nice, quiet and gentle man; does not talk too much and not too little. What a relieve from the Tatyana’s we had before!! The hotel is great and we have a quick bite: Yak Burger! Then we drive one hour to Timphu, Bhutan’s capital. It grew dramatically over the last 10 years, but still no comparison to Kathmandu. Everything is quiet here and people are gentle. First we visit the Changlimithang Archery Ground. Archery is Bhutan’s national sport and there is a tournament going on right now. The two teams compete with high-tech carbon-fibre bows and the targets are 145m away. People are standing right next to it and seem not concerned that they might get hit. Obviously there are some occasional accidents… The skills, camaraderie and good-humored ribbing are entertaining. They perform also traditional songs and victory dances. Can it get more Bhutanese? Next we visit a Stupa. It is full with life people worshiping. We drive up to a newly built golden Buddha with a great view over Timphu. At the vegetable market we see that local people must like chillies!! Timphu is apparently the world’s only capital without traffic lights. A set was installed a few years back but residents complained in classic Bhutanese fashion that it was too impersonal, which is why the beloved white-gloved police continue to direct the increasing traffic with the balletic grace of someone doing a 1980s robot dance.
Since it starts to rain, we had back to Paro, see an accident on the way (car in the river – not pretty) and have a great dinner at the wonderful hotel. Sleeping at night is a bit difficult; we feel that we are at 2’200m altitude!
31st of May
Some light trekking today. The Tiger’s nest is one of the highlights of our journey.
Chimmi picks us up after breakfast and we drive around half hour where the treck to the Tiger’s Nest starts. It takes us an hour up to the tea house and from there another 45 minutes to Taktshang Goemba, which translates Tiger’s Nest Monastery. It is Bhutan’s most famous monastery, miraculously perched on the side of a sheer cliff 900m above the floor of Paro valley. It is said that Guru Rimpoche flew to the site of the monastery on the back of a tigress (a manifestation of his consort Yeshe Tsogyal) to subdue the local demon, Singrey Samdrup. He then meditated in a cave here for three months. On 19th April 1998 a fire destroyed the main structure o Taktshang and all its contents. Reconstruction started in April 2000 at a cost of 130 million ngultrum and the re-built site was reconsecrated in the presence of the king.
While we are there, a group of monks perform a special celebration. They do it only once a month; so we are really lucky. On the way back we run into the group of Indian tourists that were riding up on horses. Now they have to walk too and there is this typical smell in the air. Lunch back at the tea house and back down to the car. We visit the Paro Dzon, one of Bhutan’s most impressive and well-known dzongs. It was built in 1644 and was used on numerous to defend the Paro valley from invasions by Tibet. In 1995 the film „Little Buddha“ was shot here. We stroll through downtown Paro, not really something to write home about and go back to the hotel for some relaxation.
The Kingdom of Bhutan is a small, land-locked mountainous nation in Asia, located in the eastern Himalaya Mountains north of India and south of China. It is slightly smaller than Switzerland. It is a country with a strong ancient Buddhist culture and almost completely cut off for centuries to avoid foreign influences.
Bhutan began to open up very slowly to outsiders in the 1970s. Tourism today is privatised by the Royal Government of Bhutan in 1991 but still restricted; travel is only possible as part of a pre-arranged package or guided tour.
