I really didnt sleep very well last night. The room was too hot, I could hear dogs barking all night and the bed was as hard as a rock. I woke up this morning well before the alarm clock was supposed to go off and got up because being awake was preferable to spending any more time lying in that bed.

I havent explained a lot about Bhutan so here’s the low down. You can’t travel around Bhutan by yourself. To come here you have to book a tour, even if it is a tour of one. The government sets the price at US$250/day each for a couple or $280 a day if you are a single traveller. The airfare is on top of that and cost me $700 of which only one airline flies in here and that is Drukair. Ultimately the Bhutanese Government controls your entire trip. The reason for this (and the steep prices) is that Bhutan is trying to control the type of travellers it gets and to enable them to keep their culture. It’s only a small Kingdom and piles of backpackers would spoil the place.

Bhutan was one of the first countries in the world to ban smoking. A few years ago they jailed a monk for 3 years for smuggling chewing tobacco into the country. Cigarettes are of course available here on the black market at twice the price you can buy them for in India (where they are smuggled in from). You can only smoke legally if you are a foreigner and have imported cigarettes and paid 100% duty on them.

This morning we (me, my guide and my driver), headed from Thimphu to Paro for the Paro Festival. As we left the hotel, a police suzuki cut in front of us and then a Toyota Landcruiser with the rego BHUTAN 6. It turned out to be the Bhutanese Royal Family out for a visit somewhere. It was quite funny as we were directly behind the royal vehicle and cars were pulling off the road to let them (and us) pass by. Since we were also in a 4wd, we think that some of those vehicles thought we were part of the royal convoy. After we had driven through the capital, the royals headed off in another direction but I did think it was quite nice of them to give me an escort through the capital 🙂

Paro is about an hour from Thimphu and we headed to the festival. The festival is an annual event held in the Paro Dzong. It is mostly traditional dancers and a reasonable size crowd of locals with some foreigners thrown in. I took lots of photos and I promise not to subject them to all of them. I was amused looking at the foreigners as many of them had expensive cameras. You could easily spot the serious photographer from the amateurs purely by the way they held their cameras. The amateurs had their elbows sticking out everywhere. I found it quite funny to watch.

After watching the festival for a couple of hours, I headed to lunch in a local restaurant and then tried to do some shopping, although the thing I liked was priced at £600, shipping would have been another £100 and customs would have stung me for at least £200. I doubt I would have got much change out of £1000 so I decided not to do it. It was an antique Bhutanese dragon ornament made of solid bronze.

Headed to a new hotel in Paro which is where I am staying for the next 2 nights. They have wifi here and you can connect to it… there is just no internet on the other end so this post will get published next time I can connect.

Second day in Paro was pretty laid back. Headed up to see the ruin of another old Dzong which dated back to 1651. To get there i had to walk up yet another extremely steep hill. This place is great if you are a mountain goat!

Following that, a visit to the Archery where I got to watch some men shoot arrows extremely accurately over a distance of 140 metres. It was quite impressive although I think they were cheating since they were using compound bows instead of tradition bows. Bhutan is sending an archery team to the olympics so I might keep an eye out for them.

Spent the afternoon walking around a temporary market that had been set up for the Festival and that was it.

My thoughts on Bhutan…

It isnt my favourite country but that could be because I havent had a decent night’s sleep since I got here. At the first hotel it was because of continual barking dogs (ironically the hotel was called “Peaceful Resort”) and the second hotel is freezing cold.

Everything you may want to visit is at the top of a damn mountain that you have to climb to get there. It isnt quite so much fun to climb up when you know that because of an incident about 12 years ago where you managed to fracture your knee cap, climbing down the mountain is going to hurt like hell.

The smoking ban is a bit of a farce. They may have banned smoking but the black market is doing a roaring trade. The reason for banning it was because it is against Buddhist traditions. Whoever thought that through conveniently forgot that drinking is also against Buddhist traditions hence booze is freely available. Killing animals is yet another thing against Buddhist beliefs but they get around that by importing meat from India. Surely if killing animals is against your beliefs then eating them should be as well.

What I do like about Bhutan is the way they look after stray animals. There are no skinny stray dogs or cats. All stray animals are well fed because the locals feed them and the government spays any animals they catch. Although despite that there are loads of strays.

Can’t say I have been keen on the food here. The vegies are usually okay but the meat is generally awful. I expected the food to be similar to Indian food but it isnt. I’m not really sure how to describe it.

All in all, if you like trekking or hiking in mountains then you may like Bhutan. Sure there is some really nice scenery and stuff but it isnt the country for me.

Plans:
I arrived in Bangkok this afternoon for 1 night only. Bangkok is becoming a bit like a second home. Country number 100 is coming up tomorrow… Taiwan. I am there for 6 days. Hoping to spend a couple of days in Taipei and then head on south to Kenting on the bullet train for a couple of days. 100 Countries is a huge milestone for me and I will finally achieve what has been a very long term ambition.

After Taiwan I am in Hong Kong for a night before flying into Beijing (Country number 101) where I catch the train to Dandong in North China on the border of North Korea (Country number 102). I overnight in Dandong and head into North Korea on the train. Once I am out of North Korea, I head back down to Beijing and am then going to check out the wall, terracotta warriors etc before trying to head to Hainan (103).

After that it’s a very uninspiring time in Hong Kong where I have to hang out for 10 days to get a Russian and new Chinese visa in preparation for the Trans Siberian at the beginning of July. The only good bit about HKG is that I will get to meet up with Sara and David again (who I originally met in BKK and travelled with for 2 weeks). It will be great to hear about their travels since I last saw them.

Right now I havent worked out much more but I have 10 days in HKG to think about it. I have some basic ideas in my head but nothing firm as yet.