Our first full day in Paro (Sunday) had us up for breakfast in the restaurant early. It was buffet style with plenty of good options from which to choose. After breakfast, we walked over to Paro’s weekend market. Their version is smaller than the one yesterday in Thimphu, but still had plenty of vendors who come into the town to sell or trade their goods. We wanted to find the archery field to see if any archers were competing, but we weren’t having any luck. We stopped in a couple of shops selling locally made crafts – beautiful products – but they didn’t know of any archery fields in the immediate vicinity. We met Martha and her mom in one of the shops and had a nice conversation with them, getting to know more about their lives and family. As we walked around more, we found more to the weekend market – a larger section with similar offerings to the smaller version we found earlier. We spent time at Mountain Café for this week’s Sandy Starbucks time – Sandy had marsala tea and I had hot chocolate.
We stopped by the hotel to change clothes and then made our way on about an hour walk up the hill to the National Museum of Bhutan. Upon arrival, this looked like probably the most tourist-centric place we’ve been in Bhutan so far. Lots of tour buses and lots of visitors from India (that is where Bhutan gets most of its tourists from). It wasn’t overbearing like Disney World, but it was different from what we’ve seen so far here. The museum is housed in a watch tower that was built to protect the Paro Valley back in 1650. They have an excellent collection of artifacts from Bhutan’s history and artwork. The museum is well done and on top of that, it occupies a spot on a hill overlooking the valley, which affords perfect views to watch planes coming in – we got to see two beautiful approaches and landings. After the museum, we went over to the café and enjoyed honey and ginger tea, vegetable biryani, a vegetable cutlet, and vanilla ice cream while overlooking the valley.
After our late lunch, we walked back down to town and walked along the main shopping area – nice active area with lots of shops. We went back to our room and watched (on X) the SpaceX launch and recapture of the booster on the launch pad. That was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. It reminded me of what maybe some people felt when they watched humans walk on the moon back in 1969. It was so cool. We were a little hungry so we went back to Mountain Café – their other location on the main street and had soup, salad and dessert.
Monday morning, we were up early again – breakfast at 8:30 and I watched the Bucs game where they scored 51 points (and won) against the Saints. That was fun. Then I watched South Florida lose again. At least Florida State was off this week. For lunch, we walked over to 99 Shawarma (just across the street from the hotel) and enjoyed a couple of chicken shawarmas each – we did the non-spicy versions, which we are learning to ask for because they really do love their chili peppers here. After lunch, our goal was to walk to the airport viewing point and we wanted to walk across the rice fields that our balcony overlooks. What looked like a nice, paved path from our balcony turned out to be impossible to find on our own so we got help from a nearby resident and the paved part was a gully to route water through the field. It wasn’t the pleasant walk we expected but it was an adventure.
The walk to the viewpoint was around an hour and we watched one plane land. Then we walked a little further to the home of Pickleball in Bhutan. I found the group through Facebook and was thrilled to have the opportunity to play in another new country. Nidup, who is one of the coaches with the Paro Football Club (winners of this year’s Bhutan Premier League) is also the pickleball coach here. He and I played some very challenging singles matches – it was a workout for sure. It’s a great program that a woman from the US has sponsored – sending equipment to help them get it started – and Nidup is executing with lots of youth participation on the weekend. It’s fun to see. They need more adult participation, and I have been telling as many people as I can about it.
After our game, we watched the senior Paro FC team train for a few minutes and then we walked up to the Namgay Artisanal Brewery where we found some of the best beer we’ve had in a while. We especially liked the milk stout and dark ale after having done small tastes of all seven beers they currently have. Sandy had a salad and spaghetti while I had chicken wings and spaghetti and then we called a taxi to take us back since we didn’t want to walk an hour in the dark.
After breakfast on Tuesday, we took a taxi to the Kyichu Temple because we didn’t have time to walk before it closed for lunch break. Unfortunately, when we got there, we learned that it is closed for a couple of weeks because the Queen Mother is here for a traditional ritual. That was too bad because this is an important temple in Bhutan – it is one of the first two temples to be built in the country, originally built in the seventh century. Although we couldn’t see the temple, we had a nice walk back to town (you guessed it, another hour walk – they all seem to be that distance). On the walk, we found the archery field and there were three archers competing or practicing. The targets are very far away from where they shoot from. The picture below shows one end of the range in the distance, and we are standing fairly close to the target, but it’s still another ten or fifteen yards past where we are. We are amazed anyone is able to hit the target, but they do!
Back in town, we went back to the shop where we talked to Martha and her mom a couple of days ago because she mentioned that her brother is a tour guide. We knew we wanted to go to Tiger’s Nest {Taktsang Buddhist Temple) tomorrow and we felt like we wanted to go there with a guide (and maybe it is required anyway – we received differing opinions by locals). They weren’t there, but the brother, Sagar, was. We were excited because originally he was going to be working at the shop tomorrow, but he arranged it so that he could take us.
It was back to Mountain Café for salad, fruit, and lemonade for lunch and then over to Brioche Café for dessert. They have all kinds of homemade ice cream flavors there. Sandy had a mint chocolate chip with homemade waffle cone and I had chocolate and blueberry ice creams in the homemade waffle cone. Delicious – one of my favorite cones I have had. We went back to the hotel for the afternoon – did some reading and lifted weights in the fitness center. We stopped by the pharmacy later to have our blood pressure checked. It’s a little high and that may be due to the elevation – we are a little under 8,000 feet here, but we’ll check it again in a few days. For dinner, we craved pizza and found delicious pizza at Explore Pizza. The crust was soft, just how we like it.
Yesterday morning (Wednesday), we were up especially early because we had a 7am departure to go to Tiger’s Nest. The hotel packed breakfast bags to take with us. Tiger’s Nest is the top tourist destination in Bhutan. The legend is that Guru Rinpoche chose a cave on a sheer rock face in which to meditate in 747 AD and he arrived at the cave on the back of a tigress – hence the name, Tiger’s Nest. The hike up took us just shy of two hours – it’s about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. With Sagar, we started the hike up around 7:30am. Sagar gave us a nice tour of the accessible temples at the monastery – as usual, no cameras allowed, so our pictures are only from the approach to the monastery.
On our way back down, we stopped at the cafeteria and had traditional Bhutanese foods from the buffet. We made it down a little quicker and we were back at the hotel around 1:30pm. There had been some confusion about breakfast and even though they took care of the confusion before we left in the morning, the manager left a basket with various treats in our room. So nice! Later in the afternoon, we treated ourselves to chocolate chip cookies at Brioche – they were tasty but crispier than we prefer. Nidup mentioned the chance to play pickleball again this afternoon and I wasn’t sure if my legs would be up to it after the Tiger’s Nest hike. Things went better than I thought so I gave it a shot. I’m glad I did. In addition to Nidup, John from Australia is leading a motorcycle tour here in Bhutan and he is a top player in his age group down under. We had some great games rotating who played singles each time. The singles player never won, but the games were fun and another excellent workout. While we played, Sandy met a lovely young woman named Pema and they had good conversation. It’s so much fun making new friends in all these places.
After pickleball, we watched a little more of the training and talked for a few minutes with the President of Paro FC. The training was special because Keisuke Honda has just returned to play for Paro as they move into the group stage of the Asia club championships. Honda is one of the best players to ever play for the Japan national team and other teams, including AC Milan. Pema then showed us a shortcut up to the Namgay Artisanal Brewery where we planned to have dinner again. We ordered burgers and then ran into Pieter and Vanessa. We had seen them on the Tiger’s Nest hike earlier in the day and then we saw them at Brioche Café when we got our cookies, so it was just destiny that we were going to meet them. They joined us while we ate and we had the best conversations about travel experiences, places we want to go, living in the EU and UK – Vanessa is from Spain, Pieter is from Belgium, they live together now in Belgium, and Vanessa still commutes to work in London. Vanessa is a nurse and Pieter is an anesthetist. It was great to meet and talk with the two of them and we hope to cross paths in our travels in the future. Just like Monday night, we taxied back to the hotel.
Today is moving day. We weren’t leaving until Noon, which gave us time to get packed in the morning and get some other things done after breakfast. Our time in Bhutan is being spent in the three different valleys in the western part of the country. If you picture the high Himalayas running across the northern border with China, and various mountain rivers coming down out of the Himalayas to create valleys that run north and south, it is those three valleys that are in the far west that we are in. First Thimphu Valley, then one valley to the west called Paro Valley, and today we cross the pass with the highest road in Bhutan (just over 13,000 feet) to descend into Haa Valley.
Our driver, Kinley, arrived around 1pm and we started the drive on a single lane road (when cars passed, each car would almost come to a stop to navigate past each other) winding up through pristine forest, eventually reaching Chele La Pass. It was cold and windy at the pass. There is a stupa there and we walked up to it and then around it clockwise three times.
After that, we headed down into the Haa Valley and the village of Haa. We arrived at the Sonam Zhidhey Resort around 3:45pm. We were greeted with tea and the menu from which to pick dinner. We settled into our room, worked on our journal, and went to dinner at 6pm.
We had hoentey (buckwheat dumplings), salads, French onion soup, fresh grilled trout, and veggies. The hoentey and trout are specialties of this valley. I think we’re going to really enjoy our time in this rather remote part of Bhutan.
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