Himalayan Honeymoon: Intro

Before you delve too deeply into our blog, here are a couple of maps to help you get your bearings. In Bhutan, we flew into Paro and covered most of the ground noted by the red squiggly line to Jakar, with stops in Thimphu, Punakha, Wangdue, Phobjikha Valley, and Trongsa, as well as a side trip to the Tang Valley (all in the west-central and central part of the country). Click on any of the photos to embiggen them. 

Bhutan is a little bit larger (about 15,000 square miles) than the size of Maryland, although it seems larger than that because it's so difficult to drive from place to place. It has roughly the same population as North Dakota (about 700,000). It's a primarily Buddhist country. It became a monarchy in the early 1900s, and they are currently on their fifth king. Bhutan was never colonized by another country. Bhutan has stronger economic and diplomatic ties with India than with China. 

In Nepal, we were only in Kathmandu. 

Nepal is roughly the size of Iowa, with a population roughly equivalent to Texas' (about 27 million). Kathmandu has a population of 1.5 million in the city, and 5 million in the greater Kathmandu Valley. It's a primarily Hindu country. Its political history has been more fraught, especially recently, but it was never colonized, either. It became a republic in 2008, after a civil war which resulted in the end of its monarchy. 

OK, that should give you some background. If you want to just look at the full photo album from the trip, here's the link for that.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Friday, January 27

We flew from MSP to LAX at 5:45 p.m. When we got to LAX, the monitors said that our flight to Guangzhou, China, would leave from TBT. I thought that meant that our gate was To Be Determined, but after asking a few people who assumed that we should know what that meant, we were able to ascertain that TBT is the Tom Bradley Terminal, LAX’s name for the international terminal. That was roughly a mile’s walk from our arrival gate, and the signage was terrible to guide us there, but the international terminal is blingin’ once you get there.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Saturday, January 28

This day did not exist, since we left LAX on late Friday night and arrived after a 15-hour flight in Guangzhou on Sunday morning. Flying across the international dateline is weird. We left in the dark, it was dark the entire flight, and we arrived in the dark, but we were never on the ground on Saturday. /whoa

Himalayan Honeymoon: Sunday, January 29

Our flight was delayed out of Guangzhou by 1 hour because of air traffic control? We got 3 different opinions on what time it would be in Kathmandu when we landed. We ran out of the shuttle bus to the terminal and stopped at the “transit desk.” The dude took our passports and flight receipt and came back with them 20 minutes later. The Kathmandu airport is a dead ringer for the Sioux Falls Greyhound station. We can barely make out the mountains through the haze, but it’s lovely in every direction. The building looks like a Wes Anderson movie. Views flying into the airport were amazing.

We passed through a series of smaller and smaller locked rooms to pass from the transit desk to security. There were separate security lines for men and women. The Paro, Bhutan airport is so beautiful.

We saw a cock & balls painting on a house as we were exiting town.

Trucks are decorated very awesomely.

 There were prayer wheels at the stupa that we visited.

You are supposed to circumambulate them in a clockwise direction. The old iron suspension bridge was out of order, but we could use the newer one adjacent to it.

Identifying past/present/future Buddha depends on hand position. There are four animals on flags called the four friends.

Everything is modest but nothing is crummy, and our hotel in Thimphu is amazing.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Monday, January 30

We rented bikes and realized that riding to the monastery was too ambitious. We rode around Thimphu instead. Had to dodge around three cows on the main street through town. We rode through cow shit and Molly rubbed some on her nose on accident.

The postal museum had lots of dick sculptures.

We had lunch at Cousin Restaurant Cum Bar.

Drank Druk Lager.

Went to tallest Meditating Buddha sculpture in the world.

The inside isn’t open yet - there will be 25,000 smaller Buddhas inside. We went to the Takin preserve - saw some little guys. Then we went to the Tango Monastery. Molly got carsick and was wobbly but made the summit like a champ. It was a beautiful old monastery getting ready to begin renovation.

We saw monkeys, a large grey squirrel, mountain goats, and a pheasant. Photos not allowed in temple, but it was lovely.

Clockwise around all obstacles. Saw a water-powered prayer wheel on a mountain stream on the way back from the monastery, which was great.

There are little fitness parks located around the city. We bought a blanket at the craft fair. We ate at the Bhutan Orchid for dinner.

Walked around a bit on the way back to the hotel, and passed out at 9 p.m. Dogs barked from 4 a.m. to dawn.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Tuesday, January 31

I took a quick walk to 24/7 to get snacks. About 50 cents for 2 packages of nice cookies. Drove from Thimphu to Dochula Pass, where there are 128 stupas commemorating when the king drove out Indian militants from the south. On a clear day you can see most of the Himalayan peaks, but this was not a clear day. We walked to the temple at the top and around the stupas.

India is better to Bhutan than China. Bhutanese import a lot of their manual labor from India. We went to the Divine Madman Temple. Walked through rice paddies and other terraced fields.

Saw potatoes, coriander, and onions growing. Anyone can buy dryland but government controls irrigated land (“wetlands”). Divine Madman had many consorts. He subdued demons with his phallus, which he referred to as his flaming thunderbolt.

The stupa at his temple was black because that’s where something was subdued. There are 18-19 dialects of Dzongka. Choki speaks his from the east, and others from the west can’t understand him. We went to a nunnery which was established by the mothers of the 4 queens of the 4th king.

There were 8-10 young nuns chanting different Sanskrit words in a circle. The stupa is patterned after those in Nepal. The temple had scalloped floor pattern. The descriptions of different deities and auspicious persons run together after awhile. There was a young boy hanging around whose father had died. Orphans are often left at the monastery/nunnery for the monks or nuns to raise. There was a book of photographs of non-Bhutanese people at the Divine Madman Temple who’d gotten the fertility blessing and conceived. Also can get a Bhutanese name given to you there. We ate at Divine Madman Cafeteria, which was very good. Local sausage & pork belly was not great, but radishes were good. Took photos at confluence of Male (blue) and Female (blue-green) rivers to form Punakha River.

Toured Punakha Dzong - original capital of Bhutan.

Saw procession of monks after evening prayers. Was larger, more ornate version of other temples we’d seen. Was security check and armed guard on exit. Bangladeshis were there without guide (on a SAARC visa) and wearing Muslim head covering. Choki asked them to remove it in the temple. Senior monks cracked whips on exit, signifying discipline. We walked to the longest suspension bridge in Bhutan. It was beautiful, but we were worn out by that point.

We drove to the farmhouse and had a nap, then dinner. Food was OK and they made us eat more than we would have otherwise. Rice, pumpkin soup, carrots/potatoes, drive pepper, sausage, pork belly, radishes. Had ara with egg boiled in it, which was actually OK.

Talked politics for a bit and turned in at 8-ish. Only one doggo outbreak at 4 a.m. Mattresses were thin, but quantity over quality on sleep.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Wednesday, February 1

Happy 4-month-iversary to us! Had eggs, red rice, milk tea, and butter tea for breakfast at the farmhouse. Then we drove along the Female River to hike to Khamsum Yuelley Namgyal Lhakhang. Hiked across paddy fields, across suspension bridge, and up a switchbacked trail to the temple.

I knocked a guava fruit from a tree with a stick and we ate it.

There were 360-degree views from the top, hope the pictures do it justice.

There were several low hoophouse greenhouses in several paddies.

Nomads were selling jewelry on the way out.

The drive from Punakha to Phobjikha Valley was like nothing we’d ever experienced. Imagine the worst one-lane temporary path through your local gravel pit; now tether it precariously to the side of a mountain and throw in random piles of rock to every once in a while to make things interesting.

Dorji, our driver, has the mischievous smile of a ⅔-scale De Stijl-era Jack White. Choki, our guide, has a fairly charming way of casually lying to keep spirits up. If we’re going to get to the lunch place to eat at 1:30, he’ll claim that we’ll be there no later than 1. Almost there! Trongsa Dzong: Another fortress of never-changing country and everlasting dharma. Saw yaks at Chochula Pass.

Stayed at a farmhouse in the Phobjikha valley. We had a four-pack of Druk 11000 650s for dinner, plus beef jerky in a stir-fry with dried peppers, peas with potatoes, local cheese, and a pepper paste mixture. It was all very good. We sat around the woodstove in their living room for awhile and then crashed.

They had one washroom with a squat toilet and one with a western toilet: both indoors! We both slept under four comforters. I had some digestive distress at 4 a.m.; unsure of cause. Our hosts were nice and put a space heater in our room, but we’re not sure if it did anything. Central heating is not a thing in Bhutan, so the houses are as cold inside as it is outside this time of year.

Houses are gigantic since they don’t have to worry about heating them.

Traditionally, livestock lived on the first floor and people on the second floor, but that wasn’t the case in any of the houses we stayed in.

Himalayan Honeymoon: Thursday, February 2

We had eggs and fried rice for breakfast at the Phobjikha farmhouse, which was very good. The crane visitor center was closed, but we saw tons of black-necked cranes on a 4-km nature walk. The terrain was pretty gentle. Choki got some good pictures, which he sent to me. Cranes were plentiful, and the path was level and beautiful.

500 of these cranes migrate from Tibet to the Phobjikha Valley each winter. Cows and horses also graze in the marshy valley.

We took a steep walk up to Gangtey Goenpa, which is one of Bhutan’s oldest monasteries. There were many stray dogs (SO MANY DOGGOS AND PUPPERS!), and Choki bought some cookies from a convenience store to feed them.

We toured the temple at Gangtey. The temple had seven big Buddhas and 1,000 small figurines of Guru Rimpoche. We circumambulated three times around a stupa with the remains of one of the previous gurus of the monastery. When visiting a temple, usually the monk in residence will pour some holy water with saffron into your hand. You are supposed to slurp some of it, and pour the rest of it on your head. We’re fairly nervous about getting sick from any non-bottled water, so we generally haven’t been drinking much of it. On the other hand, it was sooo cold in the temple, and dumping a handful of water onto my head didn’t help the situation much. We drove to Trongsa. There was a hydroelectric dam construction project in progress, but it was too far down in the ravine to see anything. We stopped for lunch at a perfectly nice place that served several kinds of buttery vegetables. We’re both having a hard time getting and staying warm at this point. We were the only people in the restaurant, and it wouldn’t have been heated even if there were more people. The Black Mountains are located on the opposite side of the river, and they’re super dense with foreboding-looking trees. Lovely and intimidating; looks like a good place to disappear. We got to within sight of Trongsa Dzong (it was no more than a couple hundred yards away as the crow flies), but in order to get to it, we had to drive another hour to cross the river on a bridge, which was kind of discouraging to your road-weary travelers.

We stayed at the Yangkhil Resort, which was lovely. We asked Choki whether we could stay in a hotel rather than a farmhouse for one of our two nights in Bumthang, and he worked that out, which was great. The view from our room’s balcony is tremendous. Trongsa is a very small town; there’s very little land that isn’t a sheer cliff. It’s strategically important, but nowhere for a significant number of people to live. We had dinner at the hotel; the chili cheese curry was super spicy, but the rest of the meal was very nice. I requested something to read, since I had run through my library book ahead of schedule, and one of the porters brought a bunch of his personal books to the room. I also got a two-week-old newspaper from the lobby. I read about the succession of Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, which was some low-grade Game of Thrones stuff. The room was very nice and I slept well (and I think Molly did, too).