Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon (1/4)

Oh, how our spring break changed from our earliest planning.  We originally planned to just spend a few days in Fujairah which is only a three-hour drive from Abu Dhabi for some beach time, hiking and boating.  Then we thought we would go to Nepal but after getting a little bogged down on our itinerary, someone Jake worked with suggested we look into Bhutan.  All I knew about Bhutan was two things:  1) It's known for being a very happy place (they prefer to measure Gross National Happiness rather than GDP) and 2)  It is/ was (at least used to be) difficult to get into due to severe restrictions on tourism (I think they don't want too many tourist to spoil their happiness).

After a little looking into it, we quickly found out that tourism restrictions have been lifted quite a bit.  It's still very regulated but there are no longer long wait lists for visas.  The way the country regulates the tourism industry is very interesting.  Basically everyone has to use a tour group and buy an all-inclusive tour.  The *very* high visa fee ($250/ day per adult) is wired to the government prior to the visa being issued and this fee includes everything (hotels, 3 meals/ day, all entrance fees, a driver, a tour guide and a private vehicle).  The visa fee is the same whether you are staying in a hotel or if you are doing a trek and are staying in tents (we opted for the hotels!).  Because pretty much all tourists pay the same rate, it's a bit of a gamble as to which hotel you get since most people pretty much want the same ones.  We hit the jackpot with one, felt like one was just okay and the other was supposedly the best of the bunch in the area where we were but it, too, was just okay.  You definitely don't go to Bhutan for the food or for the hotels.  One exception to the rates is that there are now a few new luxury hotels in Bhutan but those you pretty much pay for on top of the already really expensive visa fees (and those hotels are about $1000/ night) - so we definitely didn't go that route.

So, not only is the visa process complicated and expensive, it's also a bit difficult to actually get to Bhutan.  Unless you have an Indian passport, you must fly into and/ or out of their main airport on the only airline that flies there (their national airline called Druk Air - Druk means "dragon" and Bhutan is the "Land of the Thunder Dragon").  Druk Air only has three airplanes and they only fly into Bhutan from a few cities (Kathmandu, New Delhi, Bangkok and I think one or two others - they will start flying there from Singapore later this year).  You can only fly in/ out of Bhutan when the weather is clear as there is no instrument landing - the plane weaves through the mountains descending to the valley where the landing strip is.  I don't think they want inexperienced pilots attempting that landing which may be why they restrict it to their own airline.  I did ask and at least the answer I received was that they have not had a plane crash in/ out on Druk Air (but that a chartered flight to Kathmandu once crashed but I didn't get whether it crashed in Bhutan or in Nepal).

In the weeks leading up to our trip we found we received two different reactions when people asked us about our spring break plans.  We either got an excited, "Wow!" or a puzzled, "Where in the world is Bhutan?  And why would you want to go *there*?"  It's a pretty tiny country tucked in the Himalaya mountain range between Tibet and India.  The population is only 700,000 people making it less than 1/3 the size of my home state of Arkansas.  After very much restricting the number of tourists, they have decided that they will eventually let in up to 100,000 tourists a year (I think they are at about 60,000 right now).  To put that in perspective, France gets over 75 million tourists and even Malaysia (the 2nd most visited country in Asia) had almost 25 million - so 60-100K is a real drop in the tourism bucket.  It seemed like a good time for us to go - while they are still ramping up tourism and it is still a relatively unvisited place.  Plus kids 5 and under are free (kids 6-12 are 1/2 price) - so we saved quite a bit by getting in while both Meredith and Anna were still free!  :-)

So that's a bit about Bhutan and why we decided to go.  Let's get down to how our trip went and show some pictures!  Overall it was a really amazing place to visit.  Not the easiest destination with small kids but we figured out our rhythm and ended on a really great note.  These pictures are of our flight in and our time in Thimpu which is the capital of Bhutan.

View of the Himalayas on our way from Nepal to Bhutan

One of the three Druk Air planes that fly into Bhutan

On the flight into Bhutan.  We were winding through the hills
in and out along a cut into the valley of Paro.

That hill on the left felt *really* close as we wound our way
through the hills.  There was another just as big one on the
other side of the plane.

The Paro, Bhutan airport - very traditional Bhutanese architecture.
Most houses also have this similar architecture.

On the drive from the airport to Thimpu (capital)

Anna (wearing her "welcome scarf") crashed out from the long
day of traveling to get to Bhutan

One of our first on the ground glimpses of the Himalayas

Sitting room of our first (and definitely the nicest!) hotels.  The woodwork
on a lot of the furniture and on most of the buildings is quite beautiful).  Also
the walls - that's not wallpaper.  ALL of the walls of this hotel in the rooms
were hand painted with a beautiful pattern.  No mass-produced stuff here!

Bedroom.  Jake got one bed and Jane and Regan shared the other.
Anna, Meredith and I shared a bigger bed in another room.

Anna found a shelf in the closet that she thought
made a great bed.

The girls loved dessert our first night there.  They got a little tired of
the food by day 3 but we definitely had a few good meals interspersed

In front of a Buddist temple.  All those people behind us are walking
around it in a clockwise direction.  And they only walk around it
in odd numbered circles.  And they go around a lot.  Around.  And around.

Prayer wheels in the building.  They are on pretty well-oiled axles
and spin around for a long time pretty easily.  They ring a bell
each time they go around.

Our hotel was only a block from a local park.  The big
girls and I walked down one afternoon while Jake
and Anna were napping.  Meredith is checking out the
slide and trying to decide whether to go down.

She went for it but said the concrete was bumpy and
hurt her bottom at the bottom of the slide so she
didn't do it again.

Our hotel in Thimpu - our favorite one of our stay.

We found a lovely, modern and very new playground in Thimpu
right along the river.  The kids loved this little break and we
loved the nice views of the river and mountains from it.

Not sure who the red lady is at the top of the slide!

Visiting a takin (the national animal of Bhutan - it looks
like a strange cow)

Anna with our guide Dorji (Anna is clearly trying to not make eye
contact with him so she can get away!).  She warmed up to him
as the week progressed.

There was a girl not much older than Regan who lived in the house
behind.  She was winding yarn and making pashminas for sale.  Anna
loved the rooster in their yard.

Fun climbing a blooming peach (?) tree.  Lots of apple
trees but they weren't quite blooming yet.

Bumper sticker on the back of our van

Prayer flags could be found on most windy hillsides.
They don't take them down so there are some very
ragged ones all over the country.

Main government building down below

Vegetable market with chilis, chilis, chilis (the national dish
which is *very* spicy)

Even though it was the vegetable market, the kids managed
to find some bright pink cotton candy - yum!

Mere with a basket of fiddlehead ferns which are grown in the wild
in only a few places in the world (if I remember correctly - the first
time I heard of fiddlehead ferns was at Charlie Trotters - a famous
restaurant in Chicago)

I could never manage to get a good picture of this guy as I would always
forget until we were right on top of him.  This the busiest intersection
in all of Bhutan.  They put up a stoplight here once but the people
didn't like it - too impersonal (and clearly not "happy" enough!)

Big Bhudha unders construction on hill overlooking Thimpu

Overlooking largest city/ town in Bhutan - Thimpu the newish
capital (I think the capital was moved here in the '50s)

Looking up from the 1st floor of our first hotel - these
beautiful painted/ carved balconies on the four
floors of room.

Rock hard yak cheese for sale on a roadside market.  You
put it in your mouth for 20 minutes or so to soften it up
before it is soft enough to chew.  Jake gamely tried it right away.
I tried it but didn't have the patience to wait the 20 minutes
before it was chewable (and it *never* got "soft"!).

Local apples from a roadside stand.  We saw a lot of bare apple trees -
I think the apple blossoms were *just* about to peek out but
we missed them.

We visited a well-known art school where they teach
the 13 arts of Bhutan (I never got the full list but they
include woodcarving, embroidery, a special kind of
religious painting, sculpture and several others).

Jane next to a foot-pedeled Singer sewing machine in the embroidery class

I think this was the 4th year painting class finishing up a mural

Not part of the art school but a hand-made paper
making place.  They make paper from the bark of a
local tree - so they don't have to cut down trees
to make it!  I bought some but so wish I would
have bought a whole lot more.

Our hotel in Thimpu.  It was right next to a high
school and we were able to watch a girls' volleyball
match outside of our bedroom window!