Tiger's Nest Hotel Paro

... King of Bhutan. The National Assembly<br>Hall is housed in a modern building on the other side of the river from<br>the Dzong. During the warmer summer months, the monk body headed by His<br>Holiness, the Je Khenpo, makes its home in the Dzong. Visit Jungshi<br>Handmade Paper Factory, The paper products are made from a mulberry<br>plant bark called daphne and this factory produces watermark paper as<br>well as cards, lampshades, envelopes, calendars and other items made ...

... Tashi. The scary thing is how similar they all are to my own students back in London, I thought to myself this can&#8217;t be for real, it was just so uncanny. Dema reminded me of Marta, a giantess in comparison to the rest of the other Bhutanese, tall about 5&#8217;11 and strikingly beautiful, soft natured and respectful. Dawa on the other hand was a wiry sort of guy never smiles and has a hunched sort of posture has a certain arrogant air about his demeanour a bit ...

... also a reincarnation of an important Bhuddist figure, was currently in India finishing his studies and when he is done, he will begin preaching to the Dalai Lama. He's 14. Bhuddism permeates every aspect of Bhutanese life and so many of the places we visited, or stories we were told, revolved around these monasteries and their teachings. Quite a change coming from a predominantly secular culture. The brightly coloured paintings inside each monastery are amazing and never ceased to impress us.

... killing living creatures versus enjoying carnivorous meals. The irony in Bhutan and Nepal is that much of their beef is imported from Kolkota in India - a somewhat odd export in a land where cattle is so preciously guarded. Lonely Planet cites roaming noisy nocturnal dogs as one of Bhutan's chief nuisances for tourists. We certainly found many dogs splayed out asleep by day anywhere they fancied, even on the roads ...

... that has only 300 inhabitants. So they're actually more rare than the cranes!! And I photographed two of them!! What has happened in the last few days... I bought a few items - including some prayer flags - which I had blessed by a monk in a traditional Bhutanese Buddhist monastary dating from the early 1600s. Sangay explained to the monk what I wanted, and he carefully laid out the items in front of him. For about five minutes, he patiently ...

... socks very endearing. The women have some other kind of wrapping robe thing too, but I haven't seen a good example of it yet. Sangay and the driver drove me to my hotel, and I have to say I feel like I'm having another weird form of culture shock. I don't think I've ever gone from one country to the next (nonetheless one right next door) while on the same trip. Bhutan is dramatically different from India to say the least. Its a lot like Northern California in the ...

... of about 100,000 people, but overflowing on this weekend as this was the coronation of the country's fifth King, and much of the country (population, 600,000) had come to the capital to take part or watch one of several ceremonies over the three day period starting tomorrow. This in fact, is why we were here also. Having made our way through throngs of cars and people, most in traditional dress, we checked in at our VERY comfortable ...

... sure we were up and at it early. Boots on as today we had another small trek to do up another mountain Cheri Monastry we had a nice drive out to god knows where, when our guide pointed up and said, "friends, this where you are trekking to today". We looked up, and **** it looked a long way, but after walking everyday, we thought that this would be easy, but then again, it doesn't matter how many hills we go up, I still ...

... villages and and across terraced farmland of rice, wheat and barley before we started to make our ascent. We had the trail to ourselves but on this first day there was an ever present reminder that others had been here before: TRASH! The amount of litter, primarily water bottles and other kinds of packaging on the side of the trail was shocking. In a country marketed as one of the last pristine landscapes on the planet it was depressing to see how the ...

... with contrasting hem. The kids are so cute dressed like that! The first day I crossed the border by land. I was amazed to see the huge line up of Indian people crossing over to go to work. I really didn't want to see Indian people while in Bhutan, but they are everywhere working on the roads and in Thimphu on Sunday they seemed to have taken over the city. They were all going to the market which was otherwise quite ordinary except from this animal skin they ...