In the land of the thunder dragon

Well it was 28 hours of airports and airplanes with no real sleep, including 6 hours wandering Bangkok’s new airport and trying to sleep on the cold marble floors at 2am. But, finally, we are in Bhutan at Keren’s parents place just outside the capital Thimphu. Immigration required our address, which we have discovered is Jungshina, turn right just over the bridge, opposite the cowshed! Photo of cow shed attached below . The lady feeding the cow is one of the landlord’s wives. They are fairly wealthy as far as Bhutanese are concerned but that doesn’t get you off mucking out the cows! The smaller cow is called Santa, a common Bhutanese name but named by Keren’s Mum as it was born on Christmas eve. We’ll post a link to the story she wrote the event and had published.

I have only got 30k connections that are not reliable at our base so photos may or may not be with each posting. Will try to find faster links, I’m told they do exist!

First impressions are of really friendly people who seem mostly to speak some english (at least in the city), dry mountainous scenery covered with cedar forest and bhuddist “chortens”, amazing looking houses with great decorations, huge temples “dhzong”,  CRAZY driving and dogs everywhere.

We had an awesome flight down a deep valley in a 737 which made me wonder when we would hit the ground. Keren, being far less of a wuss, found this less nerve racking. We arrived at the building (airport) in the header bar picture and found it covered in scaffolding which was being deconstructed in a manner OSH would shut them down for. See piccy.  

Tomorrow we are walking to Taktsang monastry (the tigers nest) 2 hours up a mountain edge and the Paro festival is on and we will get some great shots of local dance and crazy costumes.