Land of the Thunder Dragon

The trip to Bhutan was at first the ridiculous brainchild of my grad school bestie, Nara. In December or so she called me and said, "How about we go to Bhutan for the King's birthday." and I said "Yeah, sure." and then suddenly in April I had a visa and a tentative itinerary.

Although the visa itself only costs $40, the government requires that all visitors book with an established tour company that, in turn, enforces a $250 per day package. No before you say "That's highway robbery!" it includes a minimum of 3 star accommodations, food, guide and transportation as well as a $65 per day royalty that goes towards the government of Bhutan's free education, free healthcare and poverty alleviation programs. So it's merely a slight mugging. The idea is that tourism will be limited to people with the means to make the trip in keeping with Bhutan's "High Value, Low Impact Tourism.” This naturally translates into a lot of rich adventurers and/or retirees who have saved for this. Nara and I got away without paying the package cost as guests of our Bhutanese friends (who happen to work for government agencies). This is the only way I could have afforded the trip and I count myself lucky to be one of the only poor non-Chinese tourists under the age of 40 even though I didn't appreciate the magnitude of that until I arrived.

After waking up ridiculously early (thank you jetlag), taking a ridiculously cold shower, and packing up my belongings (now somewhat lighter without my gifts for Ambi's family) I hopped over to the airport for my flight to Bhutan. I arrived so early that the check-in desk wasn't even open yet. And I completely forgot to request a window seat for our flight through the Himalayas! But don't worry folks, arriving so early basically guaranteed me the bulkhead window seat. One full hour of mountain views!

The Bhutan airport in Paro is sparkly clean and pretty but not necessarily equipped to handle those tourists who need to withdraw or change too much money. Travel tip: American dollars are not accepted to pay for your visa and ATMs are pretty much nonexistent throughout the country. I used the opportunity in the airport to get some money and it involved a woman with an actual dial-up connection and about 20 minutes. My friend Phuntsho of the spectacular Kuentshok Tours met me at the airport and drove me the hour to Thimpu to meet up with his wife Kunzang and my bestie Nara and her father Papa Lee. Our first order of business after all the hugging was to eat Bhutanese momos and compare their quality with Nepali ones. Momos, by the way, are boiled dumplings and Bhutanese momos feature cheeeese. However my joy was lessened when Nara and I noticed that my apple juice was served in a still-wet glass which meant that I would ingest some tap water. Nara looked at me and said "Oooh. You're gonna die."

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around, visiting the largest sitting Buddha that overlooks the city, and making our rounds around the Memorial Chorten before I died that night.