Bhutan - Day 1

The flight left Delhi Airport at 0445 and landed in Paros, Bhutan at 0700.  The Bhutan Airport is a marvel with lots of unique murals. 

Luggage Carousel

The guide picked us up and took us to our hotel to rest a bit before going to the National Museum. The hotel has a nice view of Paro Valley with lots of rice paddies and farms.

The National Museum is located above the valley in Ta Dzong watchtower.  It has several different kinds of art works from all over the country.

Ta Dzong

3D Mandala Bottom

3D Mandala Top

Thangka - Natural pigment on cloth

Many, many buddha statues

The museum also had several low doors with steps in them like this. The reason is that it stops skeletons from entering as they cannot bend over low enough or step over the step. 

And a beautiful view of the valley.

After the museum we went to lunch that was toned down for foreigners as Bhutanese like very spicy food.  Our guide did bring us a mild bit of the dish they were eating and it was good, but hot.

Ema Datshi

After eating we visited the Kyichu Lhakhang temple with beautiful Buddha statues, flowers, and lots of prayer wheels.  In their religion, if you chant a prayer, you can only say one prayer at a time, but a prayer wheel has multiple prayers written on it so when you spin it, you are offering multiple prayers at once.

In addition to the prayer wheels, Bhutanese use a lot of prayer flags.  When flags wave in the wind, they offer up their prayers.  Each house has a set of flags on top that are replaced each year.  The flag colors all have meaning and special prayers.  Flags not on a house are left until they disintegrate naturally.  White flags are prayers for people who died.

Afterwards we wandered around town a bit before going back to the hotel.

Woman and cow, close to town.

Bamboo scaffolding

Indian Truck

Outdoor exercise area

Lots of dogs everywhere

Things are very different.  No street or stop lights.  The roads in many cases had huge potholes.  We found out that the city contracted with locals to collect parking fees (instead of machines).  The driver paid via his phone to the city.  The local collector would use his phone to take a pic of the license plate.  They get all money over a base amount each day so the more fees they collect, they more they make.

Parking fee collector