Category: Bhutan

If you’ve ever seen any pictures of Bhutan, there’s a very good chance it’s been a picture of Paro Taktsang, aka Tiger’s Nest Monastery. It’s probably the most famous building in the country. Most itineraries place it on the final day, making it a sort of grand finale to a trip to Bhutan! The monastery is only accessible by hiking, which is a 3.5 mile out and back trail with an elevation gain of 1,948 feet. Alltrails considers it to be a hard hike, which is mostly from the elevation and the sheer number of stairs.

We woke up very early so we could get started before the sun got too hot. This was the right call – it was a lot less busy when we were hiking up, and by the time we were heading down, the trail was crowded and it was getting quite warm. We had our packed lunches from the hotel. The hike started with a short flat walk through the woods, and then we came around a corner to start the stairs.

From there, the hike was a lot of stairs! The halfway point, more or less, is the café. One of the wildest things is how far away the temple still is when you’re at the café – the picture below hopefully captures the scale. Still, the stop to eat a little and get some coffee helps a lot psychologically, even if it’s right back to more stairs. At some point, you get to the end of the stairs and it flattens out for a bit.

The most amazing moment of the whole hike is when you round the corner and the monastery comes into view! After marveling at it, and taking all the pictures you could want, there are two more sets of stairs. The worst is the staircase going down, because you know you have to immediately go back up again to actually get to the temple.

Touring the monastery was a great reward for the hike. We’ve seen a lot of cool Bhutanese architecture while we’ve been here, so it wasn’t especially different from the dzongs and temples in other places, but we appreciated it more here after the effort it took to get here! The hike down wasn’t too bad either, because after the one staircase up, it’s all downhill. We had a relaxed afternoon and then a cultural show with dinner, and then the next morning we all headed out for our international flights to our next destinations.

And that’s a wrap on Bhutan! It’s a fascinating place. Years of isolation from the rest of the world has left Bhutan with a truly unique culture, and I’m glad I had the chance to learn more about it.

The next morning, we headed out of Thimphu and went over Dochula Pass! Our first stop was the 106 memorial stupas, and a viewpoint that probably would have been amazing if the clouds weren’t so low. The drive through the mountains was beautiful and gave us a much better sense of the countryside of Bhutan.

From there, we had lunch and then took a nice walk out to the Chimi Lhakhang Temple, which is perhaps better known as the Fertility Temple. One of the aspects of Bhutan that is so fascinating is the part of its history dealing with the Divine Madman. Basically, he helped people reach enlightenment through intercourse, and so phallic symbols are a way for Bhutanese people to protect themselves from the evil eye. It’s hard to describe how many phallic symbols you see across the country. They’re painted on buildings. They’re sold in shops, with elaborate paintings and shapes and carvings. Our driver had one as his compass. Needless to say, I have a number of photos that I cannot show publicly from this trip.

It’s strange to have to edit my pictures in this way. I had to do that a little in PNG, because some of the tribes have traditional outfits for sing-sings that are more revealing than the West is comfortable with, but this is a whole different level – most of the photos from this area are unpostable because of the phallic imagery!

Once we got to the temple, our guide asked us if anyone wanted to do the fertility ritual. Two women in my group did, which was very cool to be able to watch! Basically, they had to put on what was essentially a backpack made out of a large dildo, walk around the courtyard clockwise three times, and then receive a blessing. This included rolling some sort of dice to learn about the gender and name of their future child.

From there, we kept driving to the Punakha Dzong! This one is often considered the most beautiful in the country, and I would have to say I agree. Seeing it over the river was stunning.

We had one more stop before we got to our hotel in Punakha, which was the longest suspension bridge in Bhutan. It’s beautiful over the river in Punakha – I loved the view from our hotel room while we were here!

The next morning we did the whole drive in reverse (with less stops) and headed back to Paro. Our first activity was the National Museum in Paro, which was an interesting experience. I’ve never seen a museum designed quite like this – it was in a cylinder, and you started around floor 3 or 4 and then went up to the top and then all the way down. There was a prescribed path that felt a little bit like a labyrinth, especially in areas where it took you down a staircase and then immediately back up another. Eventually, I ended up sort of separated from the group and I was working my way through the historical artifacts of Bhutan all on my own. It felt a little surreal.

After the National Museum, we headed down the hill to the Paro Dzong, which was smaller than the other ones we’d been to. We also stopped by some local archery grounds! Archery is Bhutan’s national sport. This was underscored when we arrived and our driver reached into a compartment in the bus where he kept his own bow and arrows, and he joined in. I’ve seen archery on TV before, like at the Olympics, but I don’t think I’d truly understood how far the distances were that they were shooting. It’s pretty incredible, I’m definitely glad we got a chance to see it.

We had a little free time to wander around in Paro, which was nice. Chelsea and I found a market and a path along the river. I love the chance to get lost in a city (or at least try, Paro isn’t big enough or windy enough to truly get lost). We had dinner at the hotel and then had a chill night – we knew we had an early rise the next morning so that we could hike to Tiger’s Nest!

From Istanbul, I headed to Bhutan! My friend Chelsea and I had been talking about going for several years, and so we finally made it happen in 2024. Bhutan is one of those places where tourism is pretty regulated, so we signed up for a GAdventures tour that would take us to Thimphu, Punakha, and Paro over the course of about six days. We met up in the Istanbul airport and flew to Kathmandu, and then from Kathmandu to Paro.

The flight from Kathmandu to Paro is well-known to be one of the most challenging routes to fly. Part of this is the altitude and part of it is the terrain – to fly into Paro, there’s a drop down into a valley and then the pilot has to fly with mountains on both sides. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous flight if you sit on the correct side (left from KTM to PBH, right from PBH to KTM). We didn’t manage it on the way to Kathmandu but we heard the pilot come over the radio as we passed Mount Everest! Once we landed, we went through immigration and customs in Paro, which is a very fancy airport, and met up with our group so we could all drive to Thimphu.

Thimphu is the capital of Bhutan, and has the interesting distinction of being the only world capital that doesn’t have any traffic lights. I also find it very interesting to see the architectural styles of Bhutan – they adhere very rigidly to specific aesthetic standards, both in their architecture and in their decoration. We went to one of the schools where they teach people the traditional painting and art styles. It’s great to see that they’re preserving that component of their history, but what it means for visitors is that you can’t actually tell how old something is based on how it looks. The shop on the corner might be in a building that was from the 1600s or might be built earlier this year, and it would look more or less the same.

Visiting the school was pretty cool. They were teaching a bunch of different disciplines, so we could wander through and observe as the students worked on their various paintings and sculptures.

One of our other visits in Thimphu was the Royal Takin Preserve! I had never heard of a takin before, but they’re a national symbol in Bhutan. Apparently, they like humans a lot, and when the Bhutanese people thought that they shouldn’t keep them in enclosures and released them back into the wild, the takins just came and lived in downtown Thimphu, so they’re back in their preserve now. They were really cute.

We also headed up to the top of a nearby hill to see the giant Buddha, one of the symbols of the city.

Our last stop of the day was the first of many dzongs, the fortresses that used to help protect every town in Bhutan! This was the Tashichho Dzong, and it was gorgeous. It was fun to go from Istanbul to here and see two cultures that did a spectacular job at designing these beautiful, intricate palaces and religious institutions in two totally different ways – Türkiye with tile, Bhutan with paintings and carvings. It felt like everywhere I looked had new interesting features to examine. We headed out of Thimphu the next day, but I’m glad we had a chance to explore Bhutan’s capital first.