A lazy morning in our quiet, warm and dry bungalow overlooking the Himalayas. After our breakfast (including French fries…?) we packed our things and headed out. Our first stop was the Druk Wangyel Monastery, a temple built on top of the pass by the current King about 20 years ago.
It was incredibly ornate and colorful (sorry, no pics allowed in temples). It also contained a solid-gold incense burner weighing 11 kilograms (approximately $775,000 USD). From there we travelled around an hour to the capital, Thimphu, where we visited the amazing Jungshi paper “factory”. There’s a team of people hand making the paper called Deh-sho. The process they go through is fascinating.
After that we traveled another hour to Paro. We walked about for a few minutes, passing through a farmer’s market, before having lunch at some tourist spot restaurant. Wasn’t very good at all. We should have gone off on our own which we did afterwards. We left there and crossed Main Street to a bakery cafe where we had a couple sweets and some espresso (eh, they tried). We then told our guide we wanted some free time to roam the streets and get a feel for Paro. What we found was that Paro isn’t really hitting on much. We saw a city full of shops selling the same touristy goods, most of which appear to be made abroad. We saw a city that has some construction going on but needs much fixing up. It was a bit surprising. Afterwards, we returned to Hotel Olathang Cottages, the place we stayed previously. We were given a slightly nicer cottage this time. We got here very early so we spent the afternoon scoping out how to spend the rest of our time other than our hike to the Tiger’s Nest tomorrow. For dinner, we were taken to a place called Mountain Cafe, which was decent.
Ed & Joan Walk in Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon 
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