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The Tiger's Nest
Today was the day we were looking forward to as the final event of the trip, the hike up to the Tiger's Nest Monastery.
It is a 2.5 mile hike (each way) with an altitude gain of 2000 feet. That gain doesn't sound like much, but when you figure we are going from 8,000 to 10,000 feet it is a bit more trying. The monastery hugs a sheer cliff, if you were to fall off the thing it would be about a 3,000 foot ride down before you meet the earth.
The temple was built here in 1692, I have no idea how. When a fire destroyed much of it in the early 1990s they had to build a cable car line to haul up supplies and tools to rebuild it. How the heck they did that 300 years prior is beyond us.
Now the temple was actually founded in the 800s on the site where the Buddhist master who brought Buddhism to Bhutan from Nepal meditated in a cave for three years, three months, three weeks, and three days. This is the coolest part, he found the cave when his consort (you can
also call her a mistress) allowed herself to be turned into a flying tigress and she flew him here from Nepal!
The cave where the master meditated (I am not going to bother with names, look it up on wikipedia if you are really interested) is part of one of the three temples at the site and we saw where it is. It is only opened one day a year for pilgrims to come and pay tribute.
The first part of the hike was on a wide dirt path, climbing through forest. Half way up was a cafeteria where we stopped for tea and chocolate.
Things really got interesting once we climbed above the monastery on the mountain separated from the buildings by a stream and waterfall. Then we walked some 700 steps down into the valley until we came to a bridge that crossed the stream. At that point we met the, according to the travel guides, 200 steps that took us back up to the actual monastery. In fact, I counted the steps and there were 304!
Once at the site we were toured through the temples and allowed just to sit and catch
Half way up
At the cafeteriaour breath looking out over the valley below. While looking around we also saw a mountain goat and on the way down grey langur monkeys frolicking in the trees.
There are no pictures from inside the temple or monastery because we were not allowed to take in any cameras or electronics.
On the walk down we again stopped at the cafeteria, this time for a lunch of rice and a variety of steamed and stewed vegetables. After the meal we finished our climb, and, with a bit of sadness as this will be our last great adventure in Bhutan, we met the bus and returned to the hotel.
This will be the last edition of this blog until we reach home. We depart from Bhutan tomorrow for a day in Nepal and then fly home--taking both Thursday and Friday to make the trip.
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Andrew
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Amazing
What an amazing journey. Thanks for sharing!!!