First impression of Bhutan: Holy crap, we flew in
where?
This is because the airport is absolutely amazing. You
essentially fly into a valley, with mountains all around you. It’s also at a
very high altitude, something like the second-highest airport in the world.
There are only a handful of pilots who can handle flying into it, and we
applauded the pilot upon landing.
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| Prayer wheels everywhere. |
Once we filed out the back of the plane, the whole airplane
full of people just wandered on the tarmac, slack-jawed at the beauty around
us. It really is amazing.
My group of 14 kind of wandered, gaping at the plane, the
mountains, the funky architecture and the billboard of the king and queen,
snapping photos like we’d never seen any more, which we did.
Really, it was the trip of a lifetime, the kind you save up
for, have a wonderful time doing but would never go again.
The place is fabulous, but when you reflect on it, it might
be so fabulous because you’re only allowed to see the fabulous parts.
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| Dogs everywhere. |
Bhutan
isn’t like most vacation spots. Most spots you can buy a ticket and go visit,
sometimes with the added layer of purchasing a visa, but sometimes not.
Bhutan
isn’t like that. You are obligated to go with a guide and driver, assuring you
that you’ll see what they want you to see.
Obstinately, there’s nothing wrong with this, because
really, who knows much about Bhutan?
You want to soak it all in, so who better to guide you than locals?
But halfway through the bliss, you really do start to wonder
if there’s anything negative out there, like poverty, bad health or whatever.
And you never really figure it out, because you’re consistently told about how
the king takes care of everyone. It’s a little creepy.
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| Penises everywhere. |
And very Buddhist. My tour came billed as Buddhism 101, but
really it was some kind of advance class that I tuned out early on. I think the
architecture of temples is awesome and it was very fascinating to wander around
stuff built in the seventh century, but the whole Buddha-down-your-throat thing
got old really fast. I, and several others in my group, got “templed out” and
started to not take off my shoes to enter the temples and instead just wandered
around the courtyards, taking pictures of prayer wheels, ravens (the national
bird) and all the pretty flowers.
The prayer wheels and prayer flags were pretty cool. They
have some kind of Buddhist meaning, but I figure anything that hints at the
power of prayer can be interpreted by Christians, too. I felt the same way
about the Islamic call to prayer in Morocco
and Jakarta!
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| Big, bigger, biggest Buddha. |
I’ve posted a photo of the prayer wheels on this post; will
get to prayer flags later. I took close to 600 photos and I’m still sorting. The
prayer wheels are found singly and in rows at temples and near these things
called stupas, which are some kind of thing for the dead. (Seriously, I tuned
out the Buddha stuff really fast. Didn’t know much about it going in; wasn’t
interested in learning – too many other cool things to see.)
We did go up to a big Buddha under construction, which was
kind of neat because it gave us an aerial view of Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. I also
liked the way the sky looked with the Buddha. When it’s done, it will be bigger
than the one in Hong Kong, although, having
seen both, I don’t see how it is. It doesn’t look as big as the Hong Kong one.
At some point during the trip, we took a flight for 81 air
miles, flying us back from Bumtang to Paro, a drive that, through the
mountains, took 14 hours.
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| I have a million shots like this. |
THAT airport was the tiniest thing you could ever see. I’ve
posted a photo; that’s the airport in its entirety, including the tower. The
flight was 25 minutes and it really was a jet. On a good day, you could see the
Himalayas. That day, we really couldn’t, but
we did see bits and pieces of them during the trip. Bhutan is in the foothills. It’s
just so beautiful.
There are dogs everywhere. Unlike Morocco, they seem to be well-fed,
but they’re not owned by anyone or played with. We had two vets on the trip and
they said the dogs were pretty listless and probably sick. They had no energy
to play, even the puppies.
But many were neutered and they weren’t all starving.
Buddhists apparently believe that in reincarnation, being a dog is the last
stop before becoming human again. Or something like that.
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| The Bumtang airport. All of it. |
But the dogs were everywhere. Just tons of them. On the last
day, when we hiked up to Tiger’s Nest and back down for a picnic, there were
nine of them waiting for leftovers.
Another thing that was everywhere: penises. Holy smokes.
EVERYWHERE. Somehow, in the land
of Buddha, a penis is a
symbol that wards off evil. I do not know how that’s possible, but there are
wooden penises hung outside houses, paintings of them were slapped up on
houses, etc. It was very strange and pretty darn ugly. Some homes had very
pointy and painful-looking penises on every corner of the house.
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| Tiger's Nest. Hiked up here. |
The architecture was like nothing I’d seen before. There are
no buildings more than five stories on account of earthquakes and the
structures are made of concrete and intricately painted wood. I’ve seen stuff
close to it, but nothing exactly similar.
I did come back with a pretty bad cold and my brain isn’t
quite functioning, so I think I’ll leave it at the photos for now and go for
something more cognizant later.
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