Blogs from Bhutan, Asia

I started a Kickstarter campaign to present some previously unpublished photos from this trip. I hope you'll help support the project by contributing or passing on the info. Thanks! Be sure to go to the link and watch the short video. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064172001/crossroads-in-the-himalaya Contributing to this Kickstarter campaign will allow me to print and frame a series of photos that I shot in Bhutan and Ladakh in 2007-08. I will seek out gallery space to present this exhibition and host an opening. I want to present them to the public as a gallery opening because gallery exhibitions are a way to create a focused space. The public can meet at a destination to explore what these photos mean in a new context. In essence, I want to bring people together in similar... read more

I have been looking at photos and videos. Been reading travelers' accounts about their trek up the Taktshang Monastery.This is Bhutan's most famoust monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the valley of Paro. My mind was set that I would at least hike up to the Halfway Station where the Cafeteria is, and where one is able to look at the pilgrims' site at eye level, but for the deep abyss separating the Cafeteria site and the cliff-hugging Monastery on the other side. From the base up to the Halfway Station, the trail crossing a pine forest is basically a copper-colored dirt path following a stream for some time , then winding up the mountain. After that it's stone steps down the side of a hill and back up to the temple. About 900 meters above ... read more

The Himalayas. Shangrila. Gross National Happiness. The Mystique of Tibetan Buddhism in Bhutan. Young and Newly-Married Monarch... A young King at 27. Prime Minister Thinley looking more like a Dalai Lama to me, speaking of a country's collective pursuit of HAPPINESS. Monasteries which also house state offices and serving as fortresses, called Dzongs. Church and State ruling under one roof. Houses painted with phalluses, in memory of the Divine Madman, one of its revered saints. The same phallic symbols turned into hanging ornaments decorating both village houses and urban buildings. Mini-monks, bald chanting nuns and local folks --- so pious, so polite and so amazingly trusting. Where and how do I begin my story about my week in Bhutan?<br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969);" /... read more

My second Bhutan adventure was born over a long and well-oiled lunch Café Español in London’s Soho. The starting point was the wish of my companion, Allyson, to go to Bhutan, a country that this most-widely travelled of my friends had not yet visited. But I didn’t take much persuading. I’d loved my first trip there in 2009, and now wanted to “do a coast-to-coast” of the country – in other words, to cross into Bhutan at one of the two land borders open to tourists (one is in the south-west corner of the country, the other in the south-east) and come out of the other, after traversing the country. Over the next eighteen months, we collected a few other folks to join our adventure, all of whom I had met on my travels at some ... read more

There aren’t many places in the world where you can gaze upon sights that few, whether local or visitor, have seen – or will ever see. The route up Mount Kilimanjaro seems to be a well-beaten highway; the path to Everest Base Camp in Nepal is apparently strewn with litter; crossing the Gobi there are very few moments when the view is not dotted with at least a couple of gers. Even two years’ ago, I’d walked paths in Bhutan that, if not in the guidebooks, nevertheless saw the regular footfall of local people, with their horses and yaks, going about their daily lives. This year was different. For three days we didn’t see another person. Tshetem himself hadn’t walked this route in five years, and had only ever brought two groups of tourists here before ... read more