As arrivals go, arriving in Bhutan’s Paro airport is memorable. Did I mention we saw Everest AGAIN leaving Kathmandu…. anyway back to Paro – The plane gets very close to the hills as it’s coming in to land and you can hear sighs from the first timers like me! When you disembark you are greeted by one of the nicest looking airport buildings I’ve ever seen.
We flew Royal Bhutan Airlines also known as Druk Air and it was very nice.. even including a meal and glass of wine on the hour flight!! Immigration was easy and the officers were really pleasant – it was a sign of what to expect from the Bhutanese people. Check out this for a baggage reclaim:
Paro is located in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. The air appeared clean and fresh and it felt like we were somewhere very remote. Our hotel was on the opposite side of the valley so we had to drive through town and upward to get to our hotel which overlooked the valley below. We got a good sense of the landscape from this first short journey.. no large billboards, advertising is strictly controlled; no skyscrapers or tower blocks, 5 stories is the limit allowed, all the buildings have to conform to the traditional architecture and absolutely no chains.. it was really refreshing to be somewhere so different to home and most cities across the world.
our hotel was fab – Hotel Olathang was built in 1974 for visitors coming to the coronation of the king. There is a replica of it in the national museum! It’s a dzong (fort/monastery) like building with chalet type guest rooms around the property. Our room was very cozy and wooden cabin like!
We didn’t have much time to explore on our first day as it gets dark early- by 5pm it’s already dark enough that you wouldn’t chance a walk down the hill – so we decided to explore the bar at the hotel instead! Nice bar, decent wifi to say hello to everyone at home, and a mouse running past every few minutes!! It was certainly authentic!
The following day, armed with my notes from comparing the “must see in Paro” to what was covered in our tour we set off to visit the national museum. The driver who picked us up from the airport (who we came to know as Tenzen – btw best driver ever!!) took us where we needed to go and also organised for us to have lunch in town when we were done.. all included in our tour – so nice. We had two others from our tour group join us so we were a nice small group.
The museum was small but housed in a very cool building with really interesting exhibits. It had a huge array of masks that are worn in various different festivals and for different dances and each one has a different meaning. It also had Buddha statues and artwork and then a whole section on the flora and fauna of Bhutan and the wild animals they have. It was a great introduction to the country.
Next we headed to the “town temple”. There was a prayer festival going on so lots of people making offerings to the Buddha statue and sitting praying together. We spotted a wooden staircase and were wondering if we could go up there when five or so young ladies (students) headed in that direction so we followed them. The stairs led to a room, fairly sparse with a monk in full robes sitting on the floor cross legged. The girls sat around him and then he motioned to us to join them and actually asked us all where we were from and shook our hands. In hindsight I think he thought we were part of that group (who had clearly organised this session) so we just went along with it and joined in. It turned out to be a wonderful hour listening to this very learned monk tell us about some of the key wisdoms of Buddhist teaching. There was an opportunity to ask questions and each of the girls prefaced their questions with “in my research”… hmmm clearly they were learning about Buddhism. When the lady on our tour with us asked a question he asked her “and what is your research” to which she replied “oh I have no research” … he didn’t mind at all but it was funny to us as we’d clearly sneaked into a private meeting!! We had a giggle about it later and talked to the girls who were mostly American and were happy that we’d joined in. It was quite a memorable first morning in Bhutan!
I also swung my first Bhutan prayer wheel at this local temple : Druk Choeding
Our welcome meeting was held later in the evening where we got to meet our tour group – 13 of us in total including Canadian (French speaking and the regular kind!!), American and of course one Irish! With a bit of free time on our hands I decided to check out the spa and had the most wonderful banana facial!!!
Dinner and a few drinks at our little bar, a quick goodbye to our yak and we ready for take-off the next day..
odohertyelaine 