Taj Tashi Thimphu

... religion to the<br>four points of the compass. The Dzong is situated at the confluence of<br>Mo Chu and Tang Chu rivers.<br>Drive further and cross over Pelela Pass<br>at 3250 meters. Lunch will be at Chendebji Restaurant. Visit the<br>Chendebji Chorten. This Stupa is patterned after Swayambhunath in<br>Kathmandu and was built in the 19th century by Lama Shida, from Tibet,<br>to cover the remains of an evil spirit that was killed at this spot.<br>Dinner and Overnight in ...

... Four of our group, including Anne Osborn, made it inside. The rest of us climbed a hill and looked down at those inside the walls. We all agreed that we had a very up close and personal (and a bit scary) experience with the Bhutanese people.<br><br>Some of you probably know that Bhutan measures the happiness of its people. We find the people very nice. We feel very comfortable here. All- in- all we are enjoying this tiny kingdom of less than a million people.<br>

... br>Tomorrow I am meeting the Spa team who have been selected to train with me for the next few months. Apparently my arrival has been anticipated for a couple of months by the spa staff. There are five Amankora lodges here in Bhutan, where guests get to tailor make their journeys and taste the main regions of Bhutan and they can trek and go to see the main sites of cultural significance in the 5 main regions these are Paro, Thimpu, Punakha, Gangtey and Bumthang. At these 5 lodges ...

... with Sangay last night which was a lot of fun. The movie theater was a bit run down, but they offer standard western fare snacks, sodas and candies from a little booth. The movie was entirely in Bhutanese (it was a local flick) and there were no subtitles. That being said, the film had a pretty simple plot (and delightfully over dramatic), and offered full on Bollywood style dancing and singing. The film was about an urban guy who gets lost on a hike, very ...

... The country is also surprisingly advanced - quite European in certain ways. It's amazing to think, as they were isolated from the world until the 1960s. Modernization is clearly underway, but there isn't a very greedy capitalistic attitude about wanting more and more. The country only has about 6 or 700,000 people in it and 100,000 of them are monks. Similarly to India, many girls and boys go into the monkhood because their parents can't afford to pay for ...

... I'll be staying for eleven days. Interestingly, it sounds like the country has such a demand for tourists (even given the extremely high per day visa price), that the limited number of seats on the airplanes is the main thing that restricts how many people can enter into the country. Since now is the off season, I'm enjoying being a lone traveler. It sounds like most people who visit are from the U.S. and the U.K. and typically stay for about a week ...

... their outfit, I had to settle for my mangy hiking boots. With Kitty all bundled up in her silk Kira, we were set to go. We each had chosen a white silk scarf to offer the king at the ceremony, so with those packed in our camera bags, we were off. The lineup at the palace gates was long and filled with amazingly dressed people of all ages. There were a number of Western faces, but by and large, this was a crowd of locals all excited to get ...

... These cabins lined the river that ran into Paro, and the courtyard had a nice lake and garden. Once settled in our cabin, we made for the National Museum (which was closed today), and a tour of the Rinpung Dzong (Paro Fortress), a massive stone and wood building built in 1645 to defend Paro valley. It is now a monastery. We were able to tour the inner courtyard and parts of the monastery, which is quite impressive. The smoothed wooden ...

... see them sleeping everywhere (in the middle of roads even) all day long. We joked that all the laying around during the day was to rest up for a whole night of barking. We were told a number of anecdotes about why dogs maintain their popularity amongst Bhutanese people, despite their penchant for disrupting everyone's sleep. One person explained that the dog is supposed to be very close to the human on the reincarnation ...