|
|
10th October, 2006
Beautiful day - Janet off to work - I decided to try and walk up to the BBS Tower. Left the hotel at 09:30...
A small park with lots of
flowers... and "destination" - the BBS Tower is (not the highest ridge in the
background, but top right corner - the lighter odd pixel or two (about 1 inch in
from the right and less than 1 inch down from the top.
Still going up...
At this point, I'd met a guy who
said the road would take 45 minutes whilst the "Short-cut" takes only 15. This
is looking back at the road after a few minutes hiking on the short-cut trail.
Still on the way up - prayer flags
(old), and the emerging view back into Thimphu.
The trail!!
Thimphu..
Just about made it to the
top...
Made it!! 10:45 - an hour
and a quarter!
Decided to take the "long" way back - along the road.. started off at 11:00
A little stream falling
into the roadway - and someone had stuck a plastic bottle in there to make the
flow better.
These two need some explaining!! I was wearing my super technical/very
advanced sun-glasses.... which colour everything with a yellow hue. What this
does do though - is make certain colours stand out very prominently - red,
yellow, blue - and amongst all the greenery at my right were lovely grasses and
flowers - really standing out - so left piccie is through my sun-glasses in an
attempt to capture what they show... failed!! And the second piccie - also
doesn't capture anything either!!
OK - looking back..the BBS Tower is on the ridge-line about 1 inch in
from the right, you can just about see the trail going up through the trees
(towards the centre of the piccie).. the orangey/brown streak at left of piccie
- about 1 inch down, is the road down from the BBS Tower.
Further down the roadway
now - heading back to the hotel... this area had a bout 6 houses that had bee
partly demolished - apparently done by the council/government, because the area
was to be developed.. for something or other.
I'd seen lots of these daisies,
both light lilac - like these - and yellow/orangey ones. Decided to snap these
in the "garden" of a demolished house, because they were good examples of the
orangey/yellow ones................. except that....... when I took my
super-tech sun-glasses off - I realised the orangey/yellow ones and the light
lilac ones - were one and the same - just seen with or without my super
high-tech sun-glasses - BOGGER!!
Purely by chance (12:00
o'clock) - the road down took me past the DHL Country office (Kandu's house) -
had to snap it!!
Back at the hotel by 12:15 - lunch in Art Cafe - spoke with a Danish guy I'd seen around, he'd been in Bhutan for 3 years - walks to the BBS Tower 6 times per week... dinner was at an Indian restaurant near the handicrafts shop - rubbish!
11 October, 2006
Janet to work... I got Indian Rupees from the bank, sat in the hotel lobby with 108 (5 bus-loads) of Indian kids (Mumbai) with teachers who were on a school trip - they moved off - lunch and .....
in the evening Kandu and
Sornam took us out for dinner at a lovely restaurant overlooking Thimphu - many
thanks!!
12 October, 2006
Up early, check out... Enbee and Wangul pick us up and off we go to Dochu La Pass again - but then we go beyond.....
We pass Simtokha Dzong the
oldest Dzong (Monastery) in the country (1629)... that's it in the mists
top-centre..
Lovely rice fields on the way...
But "the way" was not
always straight forward - road widening...
Lovely countryside....
We stopped in a little
tea-house in this village - don't know its name..
to Punakha - looking upstream to the Dzong..
Looking downstream - to
where two rivers meet... the river on the right... is the black river and it
joins another (to the left of the little "island" of rocks) - and its like one
of those "Amazon meets the Ocean" situations... the two flows remain separate
for a long way down stream - one black and sinister - the other fairly clear and
clean looking.
what a great looking
building!! - we liked it here....
we drove further upstream from
here.. and found this house.... just had to take a piccie....... but why? - you
ask......
Well.... I'd seen similar houses in Bhutan, but hadn't asked the driver to stop... but as we were leaving the country soon - I just had to make sure I photo'd one.....
The two gents sitting near
the front door said it was OK to take a photo... can you see the "house
decorations.."...?? Particularly at bottom left and bottom right of the
house....?
Here's a blown up view.......
WELL!!!! You can see why we ended up calling such places
- "naughty houses"... But apparently its all above board and meaningful....
dwellers in such houses are just wishing/wanting/requesting health and
fertility.... good... hey??
Moving right along............this is further upstream (rice fields)..
Wangul/Janet and a
suspension bridge.... lots of spiders and webs amongst the netting/ropes...
And here we are at Wangdhue.. a
(one street) village and Dzong hanging at the top of a steep slope down to the
river...
Wangdue is still "up there" - but it seems.... "when in doubt.....
build some Stupae"!!
Another "naughty house"
see the willie by the front door??
Now we had to get back to Thimphu, swap Enbee for Sornam and then we had to race like mad - to get to the "road widening" construction on the Thimphu/Paro road - and get through there before 15:30, when the road got closed - just made it by about 1 or 2 minutes!! On to Paro.... all this because we were flying out tomorrow quite early, and we wouldn't have been able to get from Thimphu to the airport, so we had to move to the Mandala Resort in Paro.
This is Paro airport - just where Janet's head is , switch
to the left-hand picture - and on the hillside you can see a little white dot.
That's a house.. and on landing you fly just about level with that before
touchdown!!
Wangul and Sornam our
accomplished drivers... and "Birds Eye view of Paro Airport"
Further up the valley we
get to see THE main attraction of Paro - Takstang or Tiger's Nest Monastery -
its those white dots on the far hillside just left of Janet's right
shoulder..... - some zoomed views....
How did they build it...?? - I
guess.... with difficulty!!
From here we drove back to Mandala Resort - a lovely Resort/hotel tumbling down a hillside - Wangul and Sornam stayed too - they would get us to the airport on the morrow.. but first we went out drinking at a bar with lots of pool tables, then back to Mandala for dinner. And so to bed...