After a somewhat later start, we drive up a steep mountain road to Nalanda Monastery Institute, basically a training school for Buddhist monks, with several of the initiates only 6 years of age. It’s ironic that these boys are entering a lifetime of study and meditation, and we have them working as models… However they are very welcoming, and the results are excellent in photographic terms.

The visit gives me an opportunity to reflect on another surprising dimension of Bhutan. Most of the older students and teachers speak excellent English. Bhutan seems to have decided that if it is going to have a successful high-value tourism industry, and also act as a “thought leader” in areas such as environmentalism despite its tiny population, it needs to operate in a globally-understood language. Unlike, say, the tourist coasts of southern Europe this runs a lot deeper than just the point of contact with tourists. Children take most of their school lessons in English, and it is rapidly becoming the primary “public language”. Most road-side signs are either bilingual, or English-only. Businesses have signs in English, even those with an “internal” focus. Behind the bar in a cafe all the health & safety notices are in English, except for maybe a couple of lines of preamble. All this despite never being part of the British Empire or Commonwealth.

It’s a fascinating contrast to Bhutan’s much larger southern neighbour, who while exploiting their skill with English for commerce, seem to be equally determined to drop English as an official language, with its colonial connotations.

Back to the photography, the second site of the day is a beautiful mountain village with the splendid name of Nobgang! From here we can get views with the village in the foreground and very high Himalayan peaks behind.

We are expecting to take lunch at a hotel back in the valley, but half way down the bus turns into a delightful picnic area under the pines, and we’re treated to another elegant al fresco meal.

After a couple of free hours in the afternoon, we gather for our guide, Yishi’s, “surprise activity”. This turns out to be an archery competition, in the dark, with alcohol! Great fun and fortunately no-one loses anything except pride. I am happy to report that thanks to a last minute bulls-eye by the most short-sighted member of the team, England beat the Rest of the World (Wales, Ireland, Australia, Germany and Bhutan) on aggregate, despite some outrageous cheating (such as having done it before) by Bhutan! 🙂

Long drive tomorrow, into the colder and wetter areas, so maybe some of the other gear will get a bit of use.

After a very meagre breakfast (breakfasts are getting steadily worse while the other meals may be improving slightly), we have a short drive and then start off by walking up to a temple which nestles on a hilltop below some larger mountains. The temple is the relatively new Kahmsum Chorten, which is dedicated to a Buddhist tantric guru portrayed as a monster simultaneously killing multiple evil spirits with daggers, and also enjoying sexual congress with his female half! Busy chap…

It’s unfortunate you can’t take pictures inside the temple, as the decoration is truly wonderful. However you can get up to the roof, and take pictures from there, so I get some great panoramas of the valley and the very pretty temple grounds. It’s a wonderful location, and I spend a couple of hours there. Interestingly only about 5 of the group go up the whole way – the rest stay down in the fields and take pictures of farmers. I don’t know whether that pattern is going to repeat.

We have another sit-down outdoor lunch, complete with little marquees and a "restroom tent". The shrapnel chicken has been rendered completely inedible for westerners by the addition of significant quantities of chillies. However when we are finished it’s enthusiastically demolished by the Bhutanese staff. I suspect a conspiracy.

After lunch we move to the local Dzong, which is very impressive. Some more great photo opportunities, but a bit hard on my knees after the morning. When they shut up at 5pm they switch on floodlights and we take photos from the other side of the river.

Punakha is in the high twenties, and I spend most of the day in a T-shirt with slight trepidation about being too hot when I have to put on long sleeves for the Dzong. I invested in some very expensive waterproof Paramo trousers for the trip, and so far they, and the other cold/wet gear may be going back unused!

We leave Thimphu via a small mountain road which climbs rapidly our of the city towards the north-east. We are treated to great views of the Buddha, which although below the summit is brilliantly positioned and visible from all over the valley.

The drive up to the Drochula Pass is pretty, but quite hair raising. Apart from hugging the side of a steep valley, the Bhutanese seem to have decided to simultaneously rebuild most of the length of most of their roads, which means near constant construction conditions.

The Drochula Pass is at 3050m, or about 10,000′, and is home to the prettiest temple yet, brand new in 2003, a field of 108 stupas, and yet more acres of prayer flags. It’s being developed both because of its position on the road to Punakha, but also in commemoration of a short war in which India and Bhutan were allied to drive out some terrorists hiding in southern Bhutan.

It turns out the drive up to the pass is nothing compared to the drive down, which takes over two hours on almost completely unsurfaced roads. However we do get a couple of good photo opportunities, and lunch near the bottom at the Divine Cafe is both delicious and very welcome.

In the afternoon we trek over to the Chime Lhakhang. This means “no dog temple” which is singularly inappropriate since like most other locations in Bhutan there are vast numbers of mutts roaming about. The founder of the temple was Lam Drukpa Kuenley , my kind of Buddhist, fond of wine, women, song and meat! Given that one of the other areas in which Lam Drukpa Kuenley exceeded normal clerical expectations was in siring children, the temple has a reputation for enabling fertility, and the people of Punakha have an obsession with, shall I say, knobs. There are phalli everywhere, painted by every door, welcoming you to the cafes. Obsession doesn’t quite cover it.

The base of the Punakha Valley is at about 4,000′, and it’s warm enough that the jacket I have worn elsewhere is too warm, and I’m fine in just a T-shirt. Not bad for the Himalayan foothills in November.

The Pema Karpo Hotel is an odd mix with, for example, multiple very nice easy chairs in each room, but no power socket or light anywhere near the desk. Investigations continue…

Self explanatory, I hope!

We’ve had another good day. We start at the National Memorial Chorten (a sort of shrine), which is very busy but I get some good shots of old ladies cleaning all the brass lamps, and then the brass lamps burning. After that we were supposed to go to the craft school, but it was shut. However we do get half an hour in the craft shop, and I managed to get two embroidered T shirts, so at least I’m not going to smell my way around Bhutan.

We then had a look around the national library, followed by an excellent lunch at a Chinese restaurant. It makes a welcome change to have real recognisable meat. In Paro most of the food was vegetarian, with an Indian flavour – tasty, but not what my body is used to. Occasionally we were offered "chicken curry", but this appears to consist of chopping the entire, scrawny bird into uniform cubes most of which are shattered bone, and then nuking it to ensure there is no animal DNA left. In Thimpu there seems to be a bit more of a Chinese influence on the food, including meat which may still have some relationship to the original animal.

After lunch we go up to see the Golden Bhudda, a massive (51m high) golden statue they have just finished building on the mountain ridge over Thimpu (very much in the style of the Christ statue in Rio). This is a great photo location which I really enjoy. I got some great shots, especially several which I think should work well in 3D on the TV.

The Bhudda is very obviously a work in progress, with construction still underway on the supporting facilities, outdoor meeting area and other bits and pieces, such as additional Bhudda statues waiting to be installed, or railings which have not yet had their coat of gold paint. The reason for this state is fairly obviously, Bhutan has just had a major festival, celebrating the 60th birthday of the "old king", and obviously the Bhudda needed to be officially "open" for it. The regal arrangements are interesting: basically the fourth king in the Wangchuck dynasty reigned for 40 years from a relatively young age, and retired in his late 50s to let his son take over, so Bhutan currently have a king, and an "old king". One can only speculate how this arrangement has been discussed in the Windsor household!

This evening is “culture night”. We all go to a restaurant at the other end of Thimpu, are dressed in Bhutanese costume, and then listen to and watch “culture” (a lot of banging on drums and some dancing). Unfortunately this is done mainly in near darkness, which somewhat stymies attempts to capture great images. I go prepared to shoot video with my second camera, and that works quite well. We have another nice meal (fine except for “cauliflower cheese” which was about 90% chilli :(). Afterwards we go up to a view point and photographed the Dzong where I had the problems yesterday. Ironically I am known as the guy who never uses his tripod, but because I had brought it to video the dancing, I was almost the only person to have one for the night photography. Excellent.

Tomorrow we move on again, to the even warmer bit of Bhutan.

6am:

I’ve just woken up and we have to repack and get out early, and there are no lights, so while I can see to type (and the Wifi is working, oddly), I can’t see a bloody thing otherwise. This is going to be a challenge…

Later

After reviewing the age of the participants (I’m the baby, by a couple of months), our shapes and a somewhat light breakfast, we decide that this is now officially the "Saga Weightwatchers Bhutan Photo Experience" 🙂

First stop of the day is the beautiful Tacho Gang Dzhong above a river, with two prayer flag-draped foot bridges over the river, and ladies picking ripe chillies in the field just below the main building. What the military call a "target-rich environment" 🙂 However it’s an interesting challenge to take photos on a swinging rope bridge with two Bhutanese carpenters carrying large planks behind you.

We drive into the capital Thimphu (pronounced "tim poo") up a long winding river valley. I can see why they didn’t put the airport there.

Late morning is taken up by a visit to Bhutan’s largest farmers market. Interesting, but there’s a limit to how many pictures of chillies I can take.

After lunch, we visit the Thimpu Dzhong. It’s an enormous complex, next to the Royal Palace and parliament buildings. The trouble is it’s so big, it’s almost impossible to photograph cleanly, especially as there’s no way to get up high. The temple interior is impressive, but feels like a large official church, contrasted sharply with the obviously loved place of worship we visited in Paro. There are also lots of rules about where you can and can’t go, what you can and cannot photograph, but no signs to explain these. We all pick up multiple tickings off from the police manning the courtyard and entrances – I think I get the record at 5, but only because it’s also getting cold and I put my hat on, forgetting that unless you’re an official you have to be bare-headed in the confines of a Dzhong. Whoops!

The River View Hotel in Thimpu is clean and efficient, but lacks the charm of the Tiger Nest Resort, and has nowhere to sit socially. I think I’m going to enjoy the mountain resorts more.

On Saturday we do a long loop drive via the Chelela Pass, which links the Paro Valley to the one which borders Tibet, and then back round the end of the valley. The pass is at 13,000 feet, and the total distance about 100km, but takes about 8 hours driving!!

However the views from the top of the pass are worth it. We can see the second highest mountain in Bhutan, which makes for great scenery, and then the area at the top of the pass is completely covered in prayer flags – acres of them.

I was a bit concerned before this trip about my fitness, so as things seemed to be going well I decide to walk up to the top of the little mountain above the pass. I didn’t quite finish because I ran out of time, but not puff, so that augers well for the climb to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery at the end of the trip.

We drive down from the top of the pass, and near the bottom we spot the pick-up from our hotel in a small lay-by, where they had put out tables, with tablecloths, and chairs, and serve us a sit-down hot lunch! (I suppose you could call it a packed lunch – packed into a Toyota pick-up :))

The afternoon is mainly about the long drive back, although we do get a couple of photo opportunities, with back-lit trees and a rather charming hillside village.

Bhutanese mountain roads are single lane, with a wide verge on both sides as often as space allows. Drivers stick to the middle except to pass. This works as traffic is very light, speeds low and most drivers considerate, but it does slow progress. The problem is that they seem to adopt a similar approach on more major two lane roads, and that’s not going to scale!

We get back late, but with dinner waiting. Tomorrow we move off to the capital, Thimphu.

While I rather liked the detail shot from yesterday, I realised that I should really post something showing the grand buildings, so here is a view of the Rinpung Zhong from the nearby river. The interesting thing is that the bus journey to the Zhong’s car park takes about 20 minutes and feels like you’re gaining several hundred metres. Then you see it from this angle, and realise it’s not much above the level of the Paro valley floor. Everything’s relative…

It turns out that the descent into Kathmandu was just a warm-up act. The flight from Kathmandu to Paro is only about and hour and a quarter, in a 50-seat propeller plane, but I can’t think of any short, scheduled flight between two capital cities which takes in better scenery. You should recognise the above, even without the caption.

The last few minutes are also fairly dramatic, as the plan descends into and then threads its way up the Paro valley, sometimes with the valley sides seemingly in touching distance and, at one point, a monastery higher than the plane. Apparently there are only about 8 commercial pilots licenced to do the run, total.

After the chaos of Kathmandu, especially the baggage collection area, Paro airport is absolutely deserted, with only a handful of visitors apart from our party. First impressions of Bhutan are of a very alpine feel, in architecture as well as environment, but with a distinct Asian twist.