Bhutan: Pretty hikes

Bhutan was gorgeous. The trip I signed up for was allegedly a “moderately active” trip, and I thought it would have more hikes than it did, but the few we had were really amazing.

The views from the mountains were breathtaking, and there really were mountains everywhere. The entire country is mountain or valley. Really, not a lot of just flat space, like, say, Florida or North Dakota. It was just up and down all the time.

This made for a lot of long road trips – we only visited a few cities that really weren’t that far apart, but sure seemed that way because it took hours.

 

The last place we stayed, we went the next morning to a temple that looked like I, or at least Roberto Auguayo, could have kicked a field goal to it. But it took 20 minutes to drive there.

So the hikes were pretty steep in some place and always yielded some cool views.

The first one, up to a temple of course, was through a bunch of rice terraces. These are different kinds of rice paddies, built into mountains. They’d harvested some, but mostly there were still rice stalks everywhere. Some cows, too. I really like cows. Sometimes they even pose for me.

 I’m saving the big hike photos for later, but we did a couple more. Up until the last one, I really did adhere to the “hiking is walking in the woods” theory, because that really is what we’d do. The bus would drop us off at the top of something, and we’d basically just walk down a beautiful path.

And stop along the way to take photos and pee behind bushes and trees, culverts or just – this was later in the trip and not me – just behind the bus. There are not a lot of rest area-type facilities in under-developed countries. Or toilet paper, so do what you have to do. (And I’ll stop on that subject here.)

Bhutan's national bird is the crow, and they were everywhere, too. Maybe not as much as the prayer flags, but their presence was really obvious. There were also some really weird looking birds, like the one in the cow photo. Someone had a book and we looked some of them up, but I don't really remember.

Remember going on a week’s vacation and having one 36-exposure roll of film? So glad those days are over. With digital photos, I find myself shooting boring stuff, and shooting the same thing over and over. It’s so much fun to shoot at different angles. You tend to get something you missed before.

I wind up with a lot of photos of water. I am definitely a water person. I love the rivers and waterfalls, and we had some of those in Bhutan. The one on this page was taken through a couple of fading prayer flags.

The thing is, they’re always so much prettier than the photos make them look. NatGeo will not be calling me for my photography skills. 

I did find some feature on my camera that said something about “brilliant color” or something like that, and I started using it. That helped, although I don't have any of those photos on this page.

  

The blue skies were amazing to me in Bhutan. Had I been still based out of North Dakota, it might not have been so, but I don’t see the actual sky much here in Guangzhou. And although I am sure Bhutan has its share of air pollution, it was a refreshing change of pace for me.

In non-Bhutan news, I am headed away for Christmas. A person I know from before is coming back to Guangzhou and we are going to go to Hangzhou, which looks by a quick Google search that it should yield some beautiful views as well. It’s an hour and a half flight from here, in the mountains around Shanghai.

My friend is a native Chinese speaker so I am hopeful we won’t get screwed on the accommodations or anything else like that. The plane ticket was fairly cheap – and really should put me into Delta medallion status category again – and although it’s four nights in a hotel, I don’t think it will be too horrible cost-wise.

So I will not be available to try to Skype anyone for the holiday. When I suggested it, I really thought we’d be leaving Christmas day and I’d still have Christmas Eve to call, etc., but there weren’t flights.

Speaking of, I am going to Frankfurt for Chinese New Year and once again, the dates we’re off have changed. Grr. I was already taking two days off to stay longer but now I have to take off three. And now I am just going to be hanging around on Wednesday. Our holiday had been scheduled to start Thursday and I was leaving that evening, so now I am just going to be bored at home for Wednesday, too.

Staying home. The horrors.