Bhutan – Gateway to Heaven

I’m returning from a holiday to Bhutan. If heaven had a gateway, then this would be it. The beauty started with the national airline of Bhutan “Druk Air’. The first surprise was a view of the amazing “Mount Everest”. An auspicious beginning to a memorable trip.

We were traveling with the Vaidyas, an extremely nice and delightful family. Interestingly the word “Vaidya” means doctor in Sankrit and the 2 senior Vaidyas had 3 doctorates between them. Both are PhD’s and Mrs. Vaidya is in addition a medical doctor.

We landed in Paro and it’s the first airport in the world that I’ve come across where people, including us, were taking a walk, absorbing the atmosphere and generally having a good time. At the airport, our driver and guide for the trip met us. We drove to our hotel in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. The SAARC summit was also being held during our visit and security was pretty tight.

We made several short and long trips and the most interesting fact was the cleanliness of the place and the fact that all the locals were wearing the national dress. All the places we visited were super beautiful and a feast for the eyes.

After a couple of days in Thimpu, we shifted to our second hotel a little distance from Paro. Here we were to go on a trek to a monastery carved out of a mountain with a sheer and steep vertical face. Our guide was pretty certain that none of us would be able to make the 4 – 5 hour trek to the monastery which was at over 10,000 ft. But we were determined, notwithstanding the extra baggage in terms of flab that I was carrying.

The memory of how we made it, itself is too tiring to pen. But suffice it to say that I was so tired when I made it to the top, that I couldn’t even appreciate the monastery and the view, which was the basic purpose of the trek. Thankfully coming back was downhill was a breeze, with gravity doing all the hard work.

On the flight back, I was reading the local newspaper and came across an interesting “Letter to the Editor”. It basically posed a question as to why Thimpu could not alwayd be clean and people in their national costume on a regular basis as it was now. And that left me wondering. Was what we saw real, or was it a show for the SAARC summit, which we had the privilege of witnessing. Looks like the Gateway to Heaven need a few Earth Gods to visit to make it what it is.