Digitally Exploring the world

Paro After couple of days at Thimpu, started the last leg of the journey towards 'Paro' .  It takes about 2hrs from Thimpu in a share taxi. Lovely freshly laid Tarmac.  After checking into a hotel and lunch , walked around town . Paro, is a small town compared to Thimpu. Houses at Paro are just two storied and spare traffic unlike Thimpu. Most people who travel to Bhutan fly into Paro and then move on.  On the way back of exploring the place , I found a gathering and school children and it turned out to be an evening where students were dancing to various tunes - some old traditional songs, some new ones.  I had by then gotten familiar with most of the songs , from my long journey to bumthang. Some had nice catchy pop tunes. After that it was just reading and rest. Next day was a buffer day at Paro , kept for any travel related delays like land slides etc.  Basically a day to just rest , eat , walk around and that's what I did. Walked...

Back to Thimpu After spending two nights at Bumthang, it was time to move on and the next pitstop was Thimpu.  Was a the bus stand at 5:30a.m. in freezing cold to start the 12 hour long bumpy ride to Thimpu. It was just my luck that Tshechu (festival ) was scheduled at Thimpu and I wanted to take part in the festivities. Its a 3day annual festival that attracts tourists from around Bhutan and other countries. I had called up a hotel the previous night ,to book an accommodation since I had heard it would be tough to find a room during this time.  After a long journey over the evergreen mountains reached Thimpu in the evening and went to the hotel but was told nothing was there on my name, I hadn't called etc etc. I showed them my mobile call list but nothing they could do at that moment. So I walked across the street to the hotel, where I had spent my first night at Bhutan. Had called them earlier but even they had told me nothing was free. However, found that they had an ...

Bumthang After having spent two nights at calm and serene Punakha , it was time to move on to central Bhutan.  The next destination in mind was Jakar or if that wasn't possible Trongsa . Wokeup early to a cloudy rainy morning. I walked to the taxi stand in the drizzle and found a share taxi to Lobesa. It was cold , misty and lovely outside and the taxi passed through some yellow and green paddy fields with the mountains fading away with the clouds. If only had a camera handy but alas !! There is only one bus from Thimpu that passes through Lobesa and onto Bumthang everyday and its usually difficult to find a seat even from Thimpu if not booked in advance, since these coaster buses have just 15 seats. Taxi was out of question since I was told it would cost 8-9k one way ,just to get there. So I prayed for some divine intervention :) and was at the Bus Stop at 7a.m., would need to figure out Plan B/another destination if this didn't workout. I waited at the bus sto...

Punakha After collecting the special permit from the Thimpu Immigration office, I headed to the Share taxi stand to get a ride to Punakha. Waited a bit and found the remaining passengers for the Wagon-R.  Most of the share taxis there are Wagon-R though there are few Altos around. It had been only 2 days and I had seen quite a few Private SUVs Hyundai Tuscon, Santa-Fe, Toyota Prada and maybe just one Scorpio or Bolero that time. If one has read about the history of the forbidden kingdom or any of the books (written before 2000) you would have had a different picture of Bhutan. I was surprised at the roads, basic goods available everywhere and of-course share taxis and bus(few) everywhere. Having been to more remote parts of India, was also expecting Bhutan to be similar but was a bit of a surprise. Out of the three co passengers in the share taxi , two were young chaps , new graduates , who were heading out to camp. Both were speaking English and Hindi. My first ...