Blogs from Bhutan, Asia - page 26

24/09/06 Punakha Leaving Thimphu after breakfast we headed East over the Dochu La Pass climbing to 3000 and a few meters and finally back down to 1300m into the almost tropical valley. With such varying altitudes, Bhutan has an abundance of wildlife, flora and fauna and is a paradise for ‘twitchers’. The vegetation had changed form blue pines to chir pines and plentiful fruit trees and lush green stepped rice fields. We stopped to try and feed some wild monkeys but they ran from our apples thinking that we were throwing stones at them. (OK - this is supposition - I don’t actually know what the monkeys were thinking). They peered at us from the roadside but then ran as soon as we approached. It was a Sunday, and also a festival day - Bless-ed (pronounce ... read more

22/09/06 Taktstang - The Tiger's Nest Taktsang Temple monastry is probably the most famous site in Bhutan and revered as a holy place built on the spot where Guru Rimpochey, the Great Buddhist Master landed on his Tigress after flying from India in the 8th Century and meditated in a cave high up on the cliff side. The shrine in the cave was slowly added to with additional buildings until the monastic temple was formed. Destroyed by fire in the 1990's, the temple was completely re-built and only finished and re-ordained in recent years. Legend has it that the gold statue of Guru Rimpochey was just too heavy for the men carrying it up the mountainside (When hiking up the steep steps from 2200m - 3100m you can really appreciate that it would have been hard ... read more

Bhutan is like the land where time stood still! Mobile phones have just hit the streets here and TV’s are barely out of their boxes in this Himalayan paradise. Bhutan although shunning the western thirst for gadgets and commercialization does have great ambition and is a sort of trendsetter in its own right - one of the few countries to completely ban tobacco and the proud owner of the largest book in the world (just a whisker taller than me!). Also we soon noticed in our luxury hotel that the restaurants were keen to set a world record for the fastest time to serve a 3 course meal, the 7 staff serving us managed an impressive 33 minutes on our second night!! The service is extraordinary at breakfast I was offered tea countless times by numerous ... read more

Amazingly, for the first time on this trip I wake up on time and manage to go outside before Tshering arrives. We head directly to the festival grounds and notice that the traffic situation is a lot worse this morning and the crowd is gigantic. Security is stricter and I have to surrender my small umbrella before being allowed inside the dzong premises. The crowd is so overwhelming that it is impossible to find a good spot, so after some hapless wandering around we decide to give up for the moment and go sightseeing the city and return to try our luck again in the afternoon. Instead we drive to the nearby BBS Telecom tower hill for a grand view of Thimphu. Next stop is also nearby, the small compound that used to be the Thimphu ... read more

8 am. I am tired, my vision is blurred and I want to lie down. But it is a fantastic sunny day, perfectly suited for our trip to Taktshang Goemba, one of the highlights of this trip for sure. Legend has it that when Guru Rinpoche was out flying on his tigress he saw this really nice spot for some meditation and landed on this steep cliffside some 800 meters above the Paro Valley and sat down to cleanse his mind of all thoughts. Like most places where the holy persons have meditated, it became revered and later the place for a chorten, filled with relics and artefacts. In this particular case a monastery was erected around this very chorten and it now clings to the side of the mountain like an outstanding piece of architechture. ... read more