~ U is for umbrellas ~We didn't get so much as a sniff of rain but we saw lots of umbrellas - all carried by ladies shielding themselves from the sun. Lest you are tempted to insist that these are parasols and should be under…Read More

~ U is for umbrellas ~

We didn't get so much as a sniff of rain but we saw lots of umbrellas - all carried by ladies shielding themselves from the sun. Lest you are tempted to insist that these are parasols and should be under "P is for..." I'll defend myself by saying there was nothing particularly elegant and lacy about these. They were proper brollies.

~ V is for Villages ~

Bhutanese life is village life. The capital city has a population of around 30,000 and the second city around 10,000. In each case the figures include the villages around the city. Neither would get city status in the UK. The rest of the population is spread throughout the country in villages. Life is mostly agrarian - Bhutan is lucky in having good soil, lots of water and plenty of sunshine. The extent of the isolation and the hard life of villagers in Bhutan is hard to imagine. Compared to places like India they can seem quite privileged since almost every family seems to have a large house. Keep in mind though that the 'house' may be home to a lot of animals and storage for all the crops and foodstuffs. In the areas we visited, almost everyone had electricity (thanks to cheap and readily available hydro-power) but in the east of the country there are barely even roads and you can forget most of the staples of normal life like telephones and reliable power supply. On the plus side everywhere is unremittingly gorgeous – but you can't eat gorgeous and gorgeous won't keep you warm in the winter.

~ W is for Water ~

Two aspects to this one. Water - don't drink it! That maxim applies in Bhutan as in every other country in the region. Bottled water is probably pretty cheap - I'm not entirely sure as our guide and driver kept us plied with plenty of it as part of our tour fees.

Where water comes into its own is in the generation of electricity. Bhutan is a major exporter of hydroelectric power to India. Unlike other places I've visited in the region, they aren't short of water or power so you won't have to feel guilty about taking a long shower or leaving the immersion heater on in your hotel room. And since it's 'green' energy, you doubly don't need to feel bad. However, despite having loads of energy, you'll still experience power cuts and in one particular valley we visited, there's only solar energy. This is not because they can't put power into the valley - it's because a rare bird makes its home there for a couple of months each year and they don't want the buzz of power lines to upset the birds. That's very typical of the Bhutanese approach to life – do you want 24 hours a day electricity or would you like to make sure the birds don’t get confused or disoriented?

~ X is for eXtremely eXpensive ~

Here's the rub. There's no way of hiding the fact that Bhutan is bloody expensive. If you go with a group of more than three people, you will have to pay a minimum of $200 per night. For two people - as in our case - it rises to $230 per night and for a single traveller it's $250 per night. In 2009 these costs were set to go up by an additional and eye-watering $50 per night but commonsense and a recognition that the economic factors weren't right for an increase in charges led to second thoughts and a postponement of the increase. You might say that it doesn't sound too unreasonable - people regularly pay that sort of money to stay in swanky resorts but Bhutan doesn't work like that. For your $230 per person per night, you get hotels that probably cost about $10-15 per head, food that runs at about a fiver per day, plus the excellent services of a driver and guide and the use - in our case - of a very nice vehicle. It's not too bad really but when you compare it with what you can get for the money in neighbouring countries, it's a bit steep. $75 of your daily fee goes to the government.

On top of the daily fees, you have to pay for the exhorbitant Druk Air flights (I think ours were about $350 per person ONE-WAY), visa fees, and 10% on top to your tour company. Now you can understand why it's been 12 years since I first fell in love with the idea of visiting Bhutan - this is a place you have to save up to visit.

What's a holiday without shopping though? In this case, a very good idea. Souvenirs and handicrafts are stupidly expensive. Want to buy a length of hand woven fabric? That's going to set you back $2000. OK, it took months to make but sorry, it's ridiculous. Adding insult to injury, an awful lot of the over-priced tourist tat isn't local. Fortunately, having been to Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, we recognised that a lot of the gear wasn't authentic and would be available over the border when we reached Darjeeling. So our only souvenirs were a couple of cheap T-shirts and some stamps.

~ Y is for Yak ~

Y is always for Yak for me. I love these big hairy beasts. Yaks are high altitude beasts generally found above 5000 m. They are some kind of weird sub-species of cow from what I could make out. They are exceptionally hardy but they don't really like the lowlands - maybe too much oxygen gets them light-headed. Yaks can breed with regular cattle and the offspring are called Zho (if they are boys) and Zhoma (if they are girls). The Zho are infertile but the Zhoma are capable of having little yakky-zholets. Zho(ma) are very hardy so the farmers drag the yaks down to lower altitudes to have their way with their cows and produce hardy little furry critters that are well suited to the cold weather.

~ Z is for Zeppe ~

This is the first holiday I've had that came with a reading list and top of the list of suggested tomes was Jamie Zeppe's book 'Beyond the Sky and the Earth'. Zeppe was one of the early western volunteer teachers, attracted in to Bhutan by the idea of doing 'something different'. Her book is a beautiful story of falling in love with an alien culture (and an alian chap along the way of course). Highly recommended for a taste of what to expect when you visit the country.
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~ P is for Permits ~Another reason you'll need to have a guide is that your local tour company is responsible for getting your permits. Almost everything worth seeing in Bhutan is barred to tourists unless they have a permit. You'll notice your guide fumbling…Read More

~ P is for Permits ~

Another reason you'll need to have a guide is that your local tour company is responsible for getting your permits. Almost everything worth seeing in Bhutan is barred to tourists unless they have a permit. You'll notice your guide fumbling in the pouch of his gho for the paperwork he needs to present to the caretaker monk at each old temple. Despite seeing this happen repeatedly, I'm still not clear how it works. When we asked to stop at a dzong which wasn't officially on the itinerary, our guide just popped off to the office to get an old permit photocopied. I liked to think that someone in an office with a rubber stamp had carefully considered whether to allow us to visit or not, maybe checked we were of good character, took up references and googled us to make sure there were no embarrassing Face Book pages – but it seems sometimes all you need is a photocopier.

~ Q is for Queens ~

The fourth king has four queens; apparently they are all sisters. This is a clever approach – four wives but only one Mother-in-law. The Royal Family is large and with the fourth king abdicating but still on the scene, there are several generations of ex-queens still knocking around. One old queen stands out when you see the many photographs of the old kings - I believe she was the third queen's wife and was a woman of outstanding beauty. The new king is cute and single so likely to be - as Jane Austin would have put it - 'in want of a wife'. Apparently he caused a big stir with the ladies of Thailand during a state visit but chances are, he'll marry a Bhutanese lady.

These multiple queens bring me to a topic that just as easily could have been under P - polygamy. I'm not sure what legislation is in place but it's not only men who can have multiple spouses. In the wild lands of the north, polyandry is also practiced, usually with one woman marrying several brothers in order to prevent division of lands and farms. Somehow the idea of four men to pick up after, feed and 'entertain' doesn't come high on my list of attractive concepts.

~ R is for Regulations ~

Tourism in Bhutan is very very regulated but then so is everything else. There are prescribed ways to do almost everything and the whole country is like an impenetrable secret society of funny handshakes and code words. Entering some of the temples and dzongs, our guide had to rush off and find his large heavily fringed shawl that needs to be folded in a particularly complex and illogical fashion. Inside the dzongs you can identify who's who status-wise by the colour of their scarves - royal family in saffron, ministers in red and so on. Since there seem to be only about a half dozen different patterns for the fabric of the gho (although our guide insisted you could have it made in any fabric - I'm doubting there are too many denim, leather, or sequinned ghos) you can find your driver in the same outfit as the king. So it might be useful to have the high-ups distinguished from the hoi-polloi at state occasions. But surely there's something simpler than several yards of drapery – arm bands maybe? Baseball caps? Maybe not.

~ S is for Stamps ~

As the old saying goes, Philately will get you everywhere - and in Bhutan, bizarrely, stamps are big business. Since almost every other souvenir is prohibitively expensive, a visit to the General Post Office in the centre of Thimphu is a good way to source some unusual gifts for your friends, family and people on whom you don't want to spend too much. Bhutan's post office produces zillions of different commemorative stamp sheets and has a thriving international first day cover trade. Along with tourism, flogging electricity to the Indians and something else that I can't remember at the moment but it might be selling potatoes, stamps are in the top 4 income generators for Bhutan. If your country is celebrating the 34th international tiddly winks extravaganza, the Bhutan post office will probably be doing a sheet of commemoratives. First Belgian in space? No problem, they probably did that one. 90th anniversary of the invention of Velcro, there's probably one for that as well. There is no anniversary or event too insignificant to appear on a Bhutanese stamp.

We picked up some sheets for Cats of the World, Dogs of the World, Japanese paintings, History of the Royal Family and goodness knows what else. We also bought the world's first CDROM stamps because they seemed like such a novelty. It would be fascinating - well mildly interesting I suppose - to know what proportion of Bhutanese stamps actually get stuck on envelopes and posted. My guess is it's a tiny amount.

~ T is for Tiger's Nest ~

The Tiger's Nest is the iconic image of Bhutan that appears on all the posters and websites. It's a monastery SO beautiful that they built it 900 meters up a cliff face clinging to the bare rock-face. I believe this was probably just to ensure you really have to suffer to get there. OK, that's not actually true but it's how it felt when we visited. Bearing in mind the average age of visitors, keeping in mind that the Tiger's Nest is often visited very early in a trip when you may not have acclimatised to the lower oxygen levels, it's quite a challenge. The temple is built at a site where it's said that Guru Rinpoche - the man who brought Buddhism to Bhutan - meditated for three months in a cave after flying up the cliff on a winged tigress. It has burned down repeatedly (a common problem in temples with lots of butter-lamps) and was most recently damaged in 1998. According to my guidebook, a few years ago it still wasn't open to the public.

If your knees or lungs won't deal with the climb, there's an option to go about half way up with horses. They take you to the so-called Cafeteria building which offers fabulous views and cups of tea with biscuits. I would have felt it was cheating to have gone by horse - as well as fairly scary in places.

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~ K is for knees ~As a result of the men wearing the Gho, you will probably see more male knees in Bhutan than almost anywhere else and will almost certainly never see a lady's knees. I'm told that - like a true Scotsman -…Read More

~ K is for knees ~

As a result of the men wearing the Gho, you will probably see more male knees in Bhutan than almost anywhere else and will almost certainly never see a lady's knees. I'm told that - like a true Scotsman - a Bhutanese should wear nothing under his gho but thankfully I can't confirm that. What I did notice though is that wearing a skirt is not considered by most men as a good reason to keep their knees together. In winter you may be spared the sight of so many knees when they adopt the use of thermal long-johns.

K is also for my knees which are dodgy at the best of times (ligament and knee problems caused by too much hockey and ice hockey in my misspent youth). Bhutan is not a country for those who are unsteady on their feet. The biggest tourist attraction in the country - see T is for Tiger's Nest - requires an ascent of 915 m to visit. There are plenty of hills - well it is a Himalayan country after all - and wheelchair access to just about anywhere is poor.


~ L is for Land of the Thunder Dragon ~

This is the literal translation of the name Bhutan. Lovely isn't it?

L is also for language - despite the small population there are dozens of local dialects. A bit like Darwin's finches in the Galapagos, the mountains keep communities isolated and preserve local languages. In the interests of reducing the isolation from the outside world - and to take advantage of foreign volunteer teachers - the third king introduced the rule that all schools should teach in English. So despite the unpronounceable local language of Dzongkha, almost everyone you meet will speak some English. Until recently the exception to this was found in monasteries but now even young monks get English language training. This makes travel easy for English-speaking tourists but rather more challenging for everyone else.

~ M is for Mountains ~

The further north you go in Bhutan, the higher the mountains. In the areas around the two main cities of Paro and Thimphu, you'll find you are at an altitude around the 2500-3000 m mark where you could feel the affects of mild altitude sickness. Heading north to the border with China (Tibet) you get the really big monster mountains. In those areas there is little or no road access and if anything goes wrong, you are probably stuffed. In an emergency, they can call for helicopter assistance from the army in Delhi but it takes two days to arrive and costs more than many insurance policies will deal with. Our guide also leads parties on the four week Snowman Trek which is considered one of the toughest in the world - he actually did some trekking in the north with TV's Bruce Parry and proudly presented us with a DVD of Parry's programme which he appeared in. He told us that seven days into the snowman there's an option to drop out and be rescued but after that, from day 8 onwards you've no option but to just keep going. Scary stuff.

Surely the point of mountains is to climb them - or am I missing something? As George Mallory so famously said when asked about his repeated (and eventually fatal) attempts to conquer Everest, you do it 'because it's there'. However in Bhutan you aren't allowed to go to the summits for fear or angering the mountain gods. Maybe they have the right idea - perhaps we should show more respect to the mountains.

~ N is for National this, National that ~

With all the control-freakery of Bhutan, there are plenty of examples of National-ism by which I mean, National flower, National dress, National music, National arts, National handicrafts, National dances and most bizarrely, there's even a ladies National Haircut. All the women over a certain age in Bhutan look like my mum. The national haircut is short - which is unusual - and rather 'pudding bowl' in aspect. It's the haircut I went through my early teens with thanks to my mum's determination to 'get her money's worth' out of the hairdresser. It's the sort of haircut that used to get playground taunts of 'Who cut your hair? The council?'

~ O is for Old Aged Pensioners ~

The life expectancy in Bhutan isn't very high - somewhere around the mid 60s. Life for many people is hard and hospitals are few and far between. So why did I make O for OAPs? It's not for the locals this time, it's for the visitors. Your average foreign tourist is of retirement age. We felt like positive youngsters and were easily 25-30 years younger than most of the tourists we met. We came across one pair of young girls in their 20s but other than that, the tourist scene is grey. In part this is due to the cost of visiting Bhutan - it's not cheap (see X is for Expensive) but it's also seen by a lot of people as the clean, safe, dependable face of Asia. It's a sort of Switzerland of the Indian sub-continent. For those who don't want to be confronted by beggars, touts, poverty and decay, Bhutan is a bit like the OAP's trip to Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds - dependably pretty and safe and you'll never struggle to get a 'nice cup of tea'. As a result of this, don't expect wild nightlife and nights of getting rip-roaringly bladdered in lively bars. You won't find that. If it existed, you probably still wouldn't find it because your trip will be so controlled.

There is no independent travel in Bhutan and this keeps out a lot of younger travellers. Backpacking over the border and slobbing around in $5 a night dives, living off rice and sleeping in railway stations like you could in Nepal or India just isn't an option. The rules say the only way you can travel around Bhutan is as part of a group on a controlled and pre-arranged tour. Admittedly the group can be as small as one person - you, your guide and your driver - but you won't get left to your own devices.
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~F is for Four Wheel Drive ~The roads of Bhutan are shocking. We were only in the relatively well-developed west of the country but even so we bumped and bounced, swayed and swung for hours to get any where. Take some travel sickness tablets -…Read More

~F is for Four Wheel Drive ~

The roads of Bhutan are shocking. We were only in the relatively well-developed west of the country but even so we bumped and bounced, swayed and swung for hours to get any where. Take some travel sickness tablets - or buy them locally where they are readily available. We were told that the locals are rotten travellers and spend most journeys being sick so it's not hard to find tablets.

The country is only something like 200 miles from east to west and 100 from north to south - yet a journey from the capital Thimphu to the east of the country can take 3 days or more; it's a bit like the M25 on a Friday. From Thimphu to the border in the south, took us seven and a half hours due partly to the roads not being very good to start with and partly to the already-not-very-good roads having loads of landslips and undergoing patching-up repairs.

Ladies, consider taking a sports bra. Driving in Bhutan is like galloping on a camel!

~ G is for Gho ~

The Gho is the male national dress. It looks a lot like a dressing gown and is tied tightly around the waste to give a big kangaroo-like 'pouch' at the front in which men keep all sorts of handy things. They've no need for rucksacs, they just stuff everything in their gho. The belt which keeps the gho together is tied so tightly that apparently it's not unusual for novices to lose all blood flow to their legs.You aren't allowed to wear trousers with your gho until the snow is knee deep (or something like that - I might be exaggerating) so the standard combination is gho, knee-high socks and smart shoes. Ladies wear an outfit called a kira which is a long wide piece of cloth tied with some kind of origami skills to create a long straight dress-type-thing. I stared at these all week and still couldn't figure out how it was done. It looks good on anyone with a figure like an ironing board but is incompatible with curves.

The gho and kira are not just for 'special occasions' - they are worn all the time. You don't HAVE to wear one but you can't enter a bank, post office, monastery, museum, government building etc. without one so it's really just easier to go with it. Such buildings often have soldiers or policemen on guard but they aren't there to look for terrorists, they are there to make sure you are properly dressed. Thankfully, tourists don't have to dress up.

~ H is for Happiness ~

The fourth king created a concept called Gross National Happiness and frequently said GNH was much more important than GDP. How nice - maybe western leaders could adopt it as a key economic indicator. However, whilst this happiness is clearly evident, it's also very controlled. There seem to be rules about everything in Bhutan and it's hard to imagine a bunch of Bhutanese just letting rip in a spontaneous outpouring of joy.

Until recently there was no television and the government approach to getting people to stop smoking was to stop selling cigarettes and impose 200% import duty on tobacco - another good! There's a bit of an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand approach to preservation of the purity of the culture by not exposing the people to nasty outside influences. However, throughout our trip the sun shone brightly in clear blue skies - that would be enough to keep me pretty happy most of the time.

~I is for India ~

I was going to be for Independence or Isolationism - two key factors in the development of the culture. Bhutan has never been in someone else's empire so you won't find old European buildings or institutions and declining imperial elegance - everything is very Bhutanese. The mountains have enabled Bhutan to maintain a state of splendid isolation but the key factor in keeping this going, has been good relations with their neighbour to the south - i.e. India. A country with a population of 500-700,000 (nobody seems to agree) sandwiched between 1.1 billion Indians and 1.3 billion Chinese (with Tibet as the traditional historic enemy) needs good friends.

In the days of British rule in India, Bhutan made alliances and pacts with the British to keep them friendly. Wikipedia informs me this type of relationship is known as Suzerainty - which just goes to show there are always new words you didn't realise you didn't know. When the British left and independent India became their neighbour, the same sort of pacts and alliances were rewritten - Tippex out Britain, write in India. Mostly it works fairly well. However, there are tensions especially in the South. Keeping Bhutan's crappy roads in a navigable state needs lots of cheap manual labourers and many of these are brought in from West Bengal. They get a limited time work permit, lots of work but a clear message that they aren't welcome to stay. And when some decided they didn't want to leave a few years ago, the fourth king put on his flak jacket, picked up his rifle and marched off to ask them politely but forcibly to leave.

Indian visitors get special treatment in Bhutan in as much as they are exempted from the $200 per night minimum fees that apply to all other tourists and from the requirement to enter or leave the country by air. However, since they are the only visitors who can travel independently, they can find themselves treated as second class visitors because many won't have guides and drivers and the support of a local tour company to arrange letters of permission for getting into a lot of the monasteries.

~ J is for Jumolhari ~

Mount Jumolhari is a beauty. She's the key mountain of western Bhutan and is sometimes known as "the bride of Kangchenjunga" (the third highest mountain in the world). Part of the Himalaya range, Jumolhari straddles the border between Tibet and Bhutan and, like all Bhutanese mountains, is considered sacred. This means that even where a peak could be accessible, protocol insists that nobody should go to the top for fear of upsetting the mountain gods. The three-day trek to Jumolhari base camp is one of Bhutan's most popular and accessible treks - the other really famous one being a 30 day monster-trek called the Snowman Trek which is strictly for really tough walkers and those with deep pockets – remember $200 per day just for being in the country.

Good views of Jumolhari can be found to the west of the second city of Paro - it's a pretty pointy mountain and very photogenic.
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I suspect that a lot of people haven't even heard of this tiny Himalayan kingdom and that would be fair enough. Don't beat yourself up if you don't know Bhutan - most people can't find it on a map so you're not alone. Bhutan is…Read More

I suspect that a lot of people haven't even heard of this tiny Himalayan kingdom and that would be fair enough. Don't beat yourself up if you don't know Bhutan - most people can't find it on a map so you're not alone. Bhutan is tucked away in the Himalaya mountain range, sandwiched between Tibet and India.

By strictly controlling who comes in and who goes out, the Bhutanese adopted a tactic that reminds me of Douglas Adams' creation the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. This creature appears in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a "mindboggingly stupid animal" (not that I'm suggesting in anyway that the Bhutanese approach is anything less than wise) which assumed that if you can't see it, then it can't see you. By looking inwards and ignoring the outside world, Bhutan has long been hiding in plain sight.

So where should I start to write about such a bizarre place? As Julie Andrews would say 'Let's start at the very beginning'.......

~ A is for Archery ~

The ancient art of "bows-and-arrows" is the National Sport of Bhutan. Bhutan likes 'National' things as you'll discover later. I did wonder if archery had grown from a history of hunting small furry critters for food but I was wrong. Archery is not about food it's about war - shooting at invading Tibetan armies or fighting with your neighbours. In a country with tricky terrain that limits many of the usual forms or warfare, archery remained an effective form of warfare.

On any Sunday afternoon when any self-respecting young man in Europe would be out playing football with his friends or drinking down the pub, his Bhutanese counterpart can be found in his traditional dress (plus expensive trainers) with his ultra-technical bow firing arrows at a target no bigger than a football 150 meters away. Forget your normal 'big ringed target with pretty colours about 50 m away - this is hard-core archery. I struggled to even see the target, it was so far away. And the only way you can tell if the archer has hit it, is that all his pals on his team start dancing and singing and jeering at the other team. It's a bit like badly behaved crown green bowling. And so confident are the local stray dogs that they'll happily curl up and sleep in the middle of the archery grounds without any fear.

~ B is for Buddhism ~

The twin pillars of Bhutanese society are Royalty and Religion and the religion is Buddism - or more strictly Buddhism mixed with quite a lot of superstition and animism. In an average day on our tour 4 or 5 different things would happen that we'd be told were auspicious or inauspicious - seeing grey langur monkeys for example is lucky but brown langurs aren't. Bizarre.

But back to Buddhism. Amongst Bhutanese attractions that pull in visitors from all over the world, it's the temples and the scenery that sit at the top table. Most towns have a 'dzong' - a castle-like building that's a combination of monastery and fortress. You'll also find lots of goempas (or gompas) and lhakhangs which are monasteries, either for teaching or meditation. There are thousands of stupas and chortens (strange little monuments that generally commemorate something or are placed to prevent some kind of inauspicious energy) and prayer wheels which all must be circumnavigated in a clockwise direction. We even saw a small stupa slap-bang in the middle of a narrow mountain road - presumably lucky but probably not for any driver who isn't paying attention. Traditionally every family – and families are large – would give at least a son or two to the temple to train as a monk and we met red-robed monks from just a few years old up to elderly gentlemen.

The mainstay of the Bhutanese tourist calendar are the festivals. Always held in the dzongs and monasteries, the monks dress up and dance for the admiration of large crowds of camera-wielding foreigners who pay even more to be in the country at festival time. One of the most famous of these festivals takes place in the Phobjika valley which is the stopping-off place for black cranes. The festival involves people dressing up as cranes and flapping around.

~ C is for the Coronation ~

You may have seen on the news that in November 2008 the Bhutanese crowned their 5th King. He's a good-looking 28 year old with sideburns and more than a touch of the young Elvis about him which is apparently not accidental. We met a couple whose daughter studied at university with the 5th king and said he was known to be a massive Elvis fan. The 4th King is still around - he abdicated in favour of his son a couple of years back. Bearing in mind that he has four wives, I guess he needed a bit of a rest after being the country's longest serving monarch.

The Bhutanese certainly seem to adore their royal family and during our visit, everyone and everywhere was getting ready for last week's coronation. Since it falls in the centenary year of the royal family, royal-fever was at fever pitch with lots of people wearing badges with the faces of the two kings.

The coronation celebrations took place over several days and several of the dzongs we visited were decorated and full of locals practicing some really 'lame' dances for the king's visit. King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck hopefully has a finer appreciation of such dances than we did.

~ D is for Drukair ~

The national carrier of Bhutan is called Druk Air. The country has one airport, one airline and two planes - some reports suggest there might be another two but I'm not convinced. No other airline is allowed to schedule flights at the airport and only 8 pilots worldwide are qualified to land at Paro Airport which works on Visual Site Rules - i.e. if you can't see the runway, don't land; if you can't see the mountains, don't take off.

Druk Air has the sort of monopoly that thankfully rarely exists these days and it's very well protected. It's a condition of getting your visa that all visitors (with the exception of Indian passport holders who can use the road border at Phoentsholing if they can face a horrible drive) must either enter or leave the country through Paro airport. So there's a monopoly supply and a legal obligation to use the carrier which - not surprisingly - leads to high prices and a general lack of respect for the art of timetabling. Your scheduled flight time is not so much a commitment as a suggestion. We met a woman who was two days late arriving from Khatmandu because Druk kept changing the flight times. Considering that once you arrive your tour is highly regimented and inflexible, Druk's habit of flying when they feel like it can be a major inconvenience. However, the service on-board is good, the pilots keep pointing out which big mountains (Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Kanchenjunga) are outside your window and the crew are very nice. Don't be surprised though if your flight leaves and/or arrives at a completely different time than you expected or doesn't stop somewhere it's supposed to on the way.

~ E is for Ema Datse - the National Dish ~

This scary concoction has a name which means chillies and cheese - and that's pretty much what's in it. Most of the food served up to tourists is dull and bland in the extreme but often at the end of your hotel buffet there will be one smaller, innocuous looking dish of 'something green in white sauce'. Don't be tempted to mistake those green bits for green beans or green peppers; they are chillies and they are hot. In any other country, chillies are seen as a spice but in Bhutan, they are used as a vegetable. You have been warned!
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The centre of Thimphu town lies in a flat river valley but you can't go far before you hit the hills again. And as you might expect for any city with hills, there's always a favourite viewpoint where tourists go to look down on the…Read More

The centre of Thimphu town lies in a flat river valley but you can't go far before you hit the hills again. And as you might expect for any city with hills, there's always a favourite viewpoint where tourists go to look down on the town. On our first day in Thimphu we were told that we could get a good sense of the lay of the land by going up to the Sangaygang Transmission Tower which provides the city with the Bhutanese Broadcasting Service's programming and can be found in the Mothithang district of the city.

Our driver set off to wind up the hairpins, climbing to a final elevation 2865m. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting but it was probably some kind of official viewing point – maybe even a small tower to climb up and take photographs. So we were a bit surprised when we came to the end of the road and found barbed wire fencing and 'keep out' signs. Don't think, as I did, that a trip to the television tower actually means a trip to the television tower – it's a trip to the car park just outside the compound where the television tower is located.

Once the disappointment of not climbing a tower was out of the way, we focused on having a good look at what there was to see. You don't unfortunately get the whole of Thimphu because you can't see the side of the hill that's blocked by the BBS but you do get a good view of about half of the city. In particular you can see across the valley to the location where the Fifth King's new residence is being built – a lovely spot where he should be able to sit on the patio with a glass of beer and look down on his city although it looked a bit of a lonely spot tucked into a clearing surrounded by heavy forestation.

We also watched building work going on in the valley directly below us where a major construction project was taking place to build homes for the parliament's new MPs. One of the major changes brought about by the Fourth King was the introduction of the country's first democratic elections in March 2008 in which 47 new members of parliament were elected. It's not likely to be a particularly dynamic parliament with 45 of the MPs from the same party and just two from the opposition so I wasn't surprised when I read that they've been banned from taking laptops into the chamber because several had been caught playing computer games when the assembly was in session. However, in a country where it can take all day to travel just 60 miles or so, many of the MPs represent constituencies that are 3 days drive away so all have to be given new homes. From the hillside it looks like a super-luxury housing estate of matching villas – each has to be as grand as the next so there can be no favouritism. It's a stark contrast to the shacks and tents of the Bengali building workers propped up along the edge of the building zone.

All around the Transmission tower the hillside is decorated with prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. It's not clear if these are to bless the city or to ensure uninterrupted TV transmission. In an attempt to preserve local heritage and keep its people doing healthy worthwhile activities instead of vegetating in front of the box, Bhutan didn't actually introduce television until 1999 making it the last nation on earth to do so. A few years later the TV was being blamed for a crime wave of unprecedented proportions (still pretty tame by Western standards I'm sure) so maybe the flags are to ward away evil influences. Perhaps going from no TV to 46 channels overnight was a bit too much for anyone to cope with in one go. We chatted about the elections, watched the bulldozers, took a few photos and that was it, visit to the TV tower well and truly completed.

You might be thinking that's not much excitement to justify going up the hill but there's another special attraction on the way back down the hill that's worth a stop, though admittedly not a long one. It's the Takin Preserve, possibly the world's lamest animal experience but also a bit of a giggle.

Thimphu used to have a small zoo focusing on local wildlife until the Fourth King decided that such a place wasn't really in keeping with Buddhist principles. So the zoo was closed and rather than taking the critters off to a field in the middle of nowhere and sending them on their way, it seems they just opened the gates and let them out. After many years of incarceration, some of the animals were unable to adapt to freedom and stayed in the area, wandering around begging for food and causing havoc on the roads of the city. Once it became clear that they had no intention of going quietly on their way, the fences went up again to protect the animals, and the zoo was renamed as the Takin Preserve.

The Takin is an indigenous animal which looks like a combination of a gnu and a musk deer (I admit I didn't come up with that comparison, I was told that's the official simile). Legend says that it was created by Lama Drukpa Kunley, a colourful character of Bhutanese Buddhism who's better known by his nickname of 'The Divine Madman'. It is said that he went to a feast where he ate a whole cow and a whole goat. With a burp, he stuck the head of the goat on the bones of the cow, commanded it to stand up and created the Takin.

In addition to Takin, the reserve has several deer species including reindeers and muntjacs. One of the reindeers had three legs and the muntjacs made us giggle because they're also quite common in the UK where they are best known for the damage they can do to your car if you hit them. If you are hoping for Bengal Tigers and wild elephants, you will be disappointed by the Takin Preserve.

We parked up outside the Preserve and headed in. There's no fee to go and not an enormous amount to see but the preserve is laid out very well with metal walkways around the perimeter and small gaps in the fencing where you can take photographs. The takins weren't playing friendly and stayed well away in the middle of the compound but the muntjacs were happy to come over to us for grass and leaves. Somewhat unnervingly the last part of the walk around the preserve goes right through the middle of a family's farm and we felt we were intruding a bit as we strolled past the chickens and through the main farmyard. Nobody batted an eyelid. The animals had plenty of space, appeared to be well cared for and weren't exhibiting any signs of incarceration stress.

We left the preserve and headed back down the hill, a bit under-whelmed by these two attractions but also quite amused. Can you imagine any other major city where standing on a hill and looking at disabled deers would be a highlight of the city tour? Mind you, at that point we still had the National Library to look forward to – but that's another story!
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I don't think that Dungtse Temple was supposed to be on our itinerary for Paro so we were lucky to get to see it as a quick 'fill-in' for an already very busy day. Bhutanese tourism isn't known for its flexibility – in fact it's…Read More

I don't think that Dungtse Temple was supposed to be on our itinerary for Paro so we were lucky to get to see it as a quick 'fill-in' for an already very busy day. Bhutanese tourism isn't known for its flexibility – in fact it's so regimented that there are military campaigns and major government initiatives which require less paperwork and forward planning than a day out in Bhutan. I believe we went because the National Museum was closed due to us inconveniently arriving on the wrong day of the week. And since our guide Rinzin seemed to have magic powers and access to a photocopier for creating magic permits to get into attractions, we stopped off for a quick look as we were passing.

I'm always interested in why temples, churches, mosques or any other religious building are built and in where they are situated. Mostly I'd suggest there are fairly predictable reasons; because someone has lots of money and wants to curry favour with a higher force; because something wonderful has happened and someone wants to commemorate the event and give thanks; perhaps because something AWFUL happened that's equally worthy of marking. I can think of examples of all of these. But in Bhutan, things are a bit different.

We'd already visited Kyichu Lakhang, a small temple built in the 7th century on the site of the foot of a giant ogress who just happened to be sprawled over the Himalaya, blocking the spread of Buddhism. At Dungtse we discovered that 800 years later, the ogress had gone but Paro Valley was in the thrall of a tortoise-shaped demon. Well that's OK then – that's obviously a good reason to pop up a temple.

In the 15th century the Paro Valley was having a rough time of it. The crops kept failing and lots of the locals were having bad luck. Rather than blame the weather (I'm British, we blame the weather for EVERYTHING) or look to change the irrigation or spread some fertiliser around, the inhabitants decided that the bad luck was flowing straight down the valley from the evil tortoise demon whose head was seen in the shape of some strange rocks. To block the flow of inauspicious 'stuff' a holy man called Thangtong Gyalpo (also known as the 'iron bridge builder' ordered the building of a temple right in front of the rock, blocking the tortoise's view of the valley and so bringing good times back to the region.

We arrived in the early afternoon and parked up outside and wandered in through the archway in front of the temple. It was constructed quite differently from most of the temples we saw and resembled a large chorten. According to one website I checked, it's the ONLY chorten-shaped temple in the country. OK, now I'm in trouble because I've just told you it looks like something that I really struggle to describe. Chortens are funny little structures that are also known as stupas in some other Buddhist countries and are horribly difficult for me to get my head round. They vary in size but most of the ones in Bhutan are quite small – about the size of an old telephone box – but others can be the size of a house. I've seen massive ones in Sri Lanka, Ladakh and Thailand and I still don't really 'get' them. They generally are built to hold some kind of Buddhist relics and I believe the earliest ones held parts of the bones and remains of the cremated Buddha but obviously, there aren't too many bits like that floating around any more. The Bhutanese style chorten has a square base and is typically painted mostly in white with a band of dark brown below the roofline.

So, it looks like something I'm not great at describing and it stands in front of a rock that really doesn't look much like a tortoise. I'm doing well aren't I? The temple is built on three levels to symbolise hell, earth and heaven. We walked around the temple at hell-level before we went in – our circumambulation being foremost to see the tortoise rock and the prayer flags on the hillside above it and secondly because walking round in a clockwise direction is just something you do a lot whenever you visit a religious site in Bhutan, whether it's a prayer wheel, a temple or some other structure. Sometimes we walked round three times, or nine or some other multiple of three, depending on how big the structure was and how impatient we were to get inside.

Our circuit completed, it was time to pop inside and we were really surprised by what we found. All over the inside walls were intricate and very dark wall paintings. Foolishly we didn't have torches with us and whilst we strained to see the pictures, we were tripping over rocks around our feet. Quietly and with a sense of awe, we shuffled around the inside of the temple in near pitch darkness squinting at the statue of Milarapa and trying not to injure ourselves. It's a very small temple and it really will only take a few minutes to shuffle through the interior.

As we stepped outside the temple and our eyes adjusted to the afternoon brightness, we saw a wizened little man in the most bizarre boots standing by the prayer wheel. It would have been easy in a place of magic tortoises and saintly bridge builders to assume he was sprite or a goblin but actually he was just the temple guardian, come to check our paperwork and looking to have a chat with our guide. If you check out the photos, he's the little chap who looks like he's wearing Wellington boots and his dressing gown. The latter is, of course, the gho – the male national dress worn by all good Bhutanese chaps but seldom combined with such sartorial footwear. We gave the prayer wheel a few hefty turns, took some photos, wandered round again to say goodbye to the tortoise and hopped back in the car to head back to the hotel for some head-exploding chillies-and-cheese.
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"Would you like to see the paper factory?" our guide asked us as we wandered around the tourist attractions of Thimphu, Bhutan's capital city. He'd clearly realised that all his attempts at the National Library to explain to us what sort of plants were used…Read More

"Would you like to see the paper factory?" our guide asked us as we wandered around the tourist attractions of Thimphu, Bhutan's capital city. He'd clearly realised that all his attempts at the National Library to explain to us what sort of plants were used to make the paper used in the historic volumes had failed completely.

"It's made from Daphne" he said and we looked at him vaguely, with absolutely no idea what or who Daphne was. He tried and failed to explain and eventually realised that, unlike more horticulturally savvy guests, he'd landed himself a pair of ignorant dodos. We were clueless.

And so, heading back to our hotel, the River View, we pulled off the main road and scuttled up a rather rough looking side road and parked up outside a small building with a hand painted sign proclaiming it as the Jungshi Handmade Paper Factory. This was no touristic organised tour with guides in uniforms showing you the wonders of industry - instead the two of us and Rinzin, our guide, just wandered in and mooched about the building being pretty much ignored by the staff which was just fine by us.

A group of ladies sat pulling bits of woody fibrous 'stuff' apart whilst chatting and gossiping. Looking at this material we still had no idea what the paper was made from, so Rinzin took us outside to see a large metal pot built into a sort of boiler where the woody stuff was cooked to soften the fibres. We saw a large vat of the material both before and after cooking and still had no idea what it was. Back inside the factory, we watched the paper makers dipping metal mesh frames into large sinks of sludgy water. They scooped water onto the frames, swooshed it back and forth until the bulk of the water drained and then turned the sediment out onto a large block of wet paper sheets. From the block, the sheets were transferred onto hot near-vertical plates for drying. The ladies were sitting close to these plates - clearly they not only dried the paper but kept the ladies warm too. We saw bowls of nasturtium petals which were added to some of the paper for decoration and then moved into the small factory shop where we could see the fuller range of products available.

The shop was selling sheets of paper - of the size of a sheet of wrapping paper - for about £4 a go. They had notebooks in various sizes, writing paper and envelopes, even lampshades. Some paper contained flower petals, others leaves and pieces of fern. Nothing was cheap but all was very charming and authentic but ultimately not very useful. If you've ever tried to write on handmade papers, then you'll know what I mean.

We emerged without spending anything but we were somewhat wiser. The man in the shop knew the translation of daphne and showed us photos of the tree from which the paper is made. Daphne, it turned out, it the botanical name for Mulberry, something that we don't have in England so we felt less guilty for not knowing about it. Clearly it's got more uses than just feeding silk-worms.

As a totally irrelevant aside, I learned when trying to sell raspberry flavours to a major Chinese confectionery firm, that China doesn't have raspberries and mulberries are as close as they get - there you go, my reviews are nothing if not educational!

There was no charge to see the factory, no hard-sell to buy anything, just a nice little visit to see how paper was made everywhere in olden times. I can't help thinking though that I'm glad I can just call the stationery suppliers and get a massive box of photocopy paper any time I need it.

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Walking around the Bhutanese town of Paro, it's easy to be confused. Firstly it seems hard to believe that this rather tiny place is actually the second biggest town or city in the country and secondly, you can get confused about which century you've found…Read More

Walking around the Bhutanese town of Paro, it's easy to be confused. Firstly it seems hard to believe that this rather tiny place is actually the second biggest town or city in the country and secondly, you can get confused about which century you've found yourself living in. The first impression I had was one of wandering through an almost medieval town where all the buildings looked SO old yet so well preserved. Then I started to wonder at how tidy and well laid out it seemed to be. Surely something so seemingly old would have degenerated into a rather more chaotic place by now? The mystery was soon solved; despite looking like it's been there since time immemorial, most of current-day Paro town dates back only to the 1960s. Stretching neatly for about 4 or 5 blocks in one direction and one mile in length, most of what you see today is really very new. However, at a time when my home country was building massive concrete monstrosities like Corby, Peterborough and Milton Keynes, the Bhutanese were constructing neat buildings made with traditional craftsmanship and to traditional designs. Perhaps the give away when seen from above - and you will almost certainly see it from above when visiting the Dzong and the National Museum - is just how tidy the grid pattern is and how uniform the pattern of green corrugated metal roofs appears.

The roads are wide and untroubled by much in the way of traffic. There's a single fuel filling station and even a roundabout - maybe two. And of course they drive the British and Indian way - i.e. on the left side of the road. There's plenty of space for parking and open spaces where children play out or locals gather to chat and pass a warm afternoon. There are scores of shops although all seem to be tiny and to be selling pretty much the same things - or rather two sets of things. Small grocery stores for the locals and vastly overpriced trinkets for tourists. If you find yourself weakening and your hand starts to twitch towards your credit card, ask yourself first "Is this really local?" and secondly "Is this worth the ridiculous price?" - try if you can, not to get carried away. We are not strangers to the region and so we knew that most of what we saw in the shops of Paro and Thimphu could be bought for a song when we got to India after our Bhutan trip was over. If you go only to Bhutan and will never have a chance to buy over-priced Nepali or Tibetan goods ever again, then go ahead and buy. But you will kick yourself when you get over the border when you find you've been taken for a mug.

The houses and shops are heavily decorated in traditional carved and painted wood. The windows are tiny - presumably to keep the warmth in during winter and many windows have metal bars across them. From what I could figure these were nothing to do with protection or keeping out thieves - the bars appeared to be for hanging threads loaded with fiery red chillies up to dry. My first thoughts were that the chillies were to ward off evil - you often see holy Basil, chillies and limes hanging up in Asian countries. Not so with Bhutan. They are drying chillies for the national dish, Ema Datse - literally chillies and cheese. This scary concoction uses chillies as a vegetable rather than a spice and will take your head off.

What else is there to see in the actual town of Paro? To be honest, not really very much. The museum and dzong are just outside the town and the town itself is more of a functional centre for the locals. Aside from the souvenir shops there's a mildly interesting weaving centre where you can watch local ladies weaving fabrics for the traditional local dress, the kira. A kira made on the traditional looms retails for about £1000 (at the time of our visit, that was about $1750) - it's a lot of money for a bedspread or table cloth! There are restaurants and bars but you'll be taken where your guide wants you to go and there's not a lot of opportunity to go 'off piste'. If you've arrived in Paro at the start of your holiday you'll probably change money in Paro's bank.

Whilst the town itself isn't very exciting, the attractions in the Paro area are excellent and most are reviewed in my journal so I'll not go into detail. The world-class Taksthang Monastery, better known as the Tiger's Nest, is outstanding and the Paro Dzong is a great introduction to the dzong concept. Two local temples at Kyichu and Dungtse are also very interesting and my favourite visit was to the serene and secluded Drukyel Dzong, ruined several decades ago and standing in the shadow of Mount Jumolhari.   Close

Paro Airport is the only airport in the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and is renowned as one of the world's most scary airports for landings. Only eight pilots worldwide are qualified to land at Paro but I'm really pleased that I didn't know that…Read More

Paro Airport is the only airport in the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and is renowned as one of the world's most scary airports for landings. Only eight pilots worldwide are qualified to land at Paro but I'm really pleased that I didn't know that before I went there. It's a condition of getting your visa to visit Bhutan that all travellers - with the exception of those from India - have to either enter or leave the country by air. Most will probably do both as the road journey to the border is so awful and so time consuming that it really can't be recommended.

We flew to Paro in mid-October on a clear, warm, sunny day so our experience really wasn't very worrying at all. However, the airport uses a system known as Visible Sight Rules which means that no plane can be permitted to land if the pilot can't see the runway - or take off if the pilot can't see the mountains. It seems obvious but many airports happily let pilots land in heavy fog or storms using automatic pilot settings but that's not allowed in Paro.

Our flight from Delhi was scheduled to stop in Kathmandu along the way so we were really surprised when, several hours before we were due to land, the pilot told us we were approaching Paro. The journey had been a pretty one and we had been lucky enough to get seats on the left side of the plane and to see four of the world's highest mountains from our window. Coming into Paro, the plane makes several steep 'banking' moves to shuffle through the mountain peaks. The approach to the runway follows a river and squeezes between high mountains covered in green trees with a few scattered houses.

Our landing was smooth and uneventful and as we taxied along the runway we started to notice the airport buildings were far from normal. Not only is the airport tiny, but every building - with the exception of the aircraft hangar - is built in traditional Bhutanese style with lots of carved and painted woodwork. Even the air-traffic control tower looks like it was built by Disney.

The plane came to a halt close to the arrivals hall and we left by steps at the front and rear of the plane. The plane stood photogenic against a background of green mountains with its bold Bhutanese flag on the tail fin. Only one airline - the national carrier, Druk Air - uses the airport and only a tiny number of flights come in each day so there's no need to worry about not getting a good place for the plane to park or having to wait a long time.

We walked to the arrivals hall, trying not to giggle at the local men in their traditional dress of the Gho - a knee length coat with more than a passing resemblance to a tightly belted dressing gown. These are worn with knee-high socks and well polished shoes. Entering the arrivals, we popped to the toilets and were impressed at their cleanliness, then joined the queue for immigration. An official asked if we were tourists (pretty obviously I'm sure) and then sent us the a desk marked for aircrew - they had all already passed through the hall. Whilst we waited in line, a lady took the copies of our visa confirmations which our tour organisers had emailed beforehand, and she disappeared off to find the visas. In just a few minutes, they immigration official had found our visas, stamped our landing cards and waved us through to baggage reclaim.

Paro has just the one luggage belt and needs no more because it has so few flights. With the plane standing so near, our bags were already on the belt before we got there and we were soon out the door to receive a traditional welcome of a white silk scarf and then whisked away by our guide and driver.

The airport is only a few minutes drive from the town of Paro and can be seen from most high points in the town. If you are leaving from Paro rather than arriving there, don't go to the airport too early - there's very little to do and you could probably stay in the town and wait until you see your plane land before you set off. Also be sure to check your flight departure times - Druk appear to fly when they feel like it and frequently change flight times without warning.
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