Wise Bhutan

Yes, where the heck have I been?? I wish I had an exciting and fascinating answer for that - but I don't. Just been busy with other things I've afraid.

Anyway, I'm sure you're pretty much done with my travelogue, so I shall endeavour to make this the last instalment.

Bhutan, as you probably know, is focused on Gross Domestic Happiness rather than economic development. They have a point. They value the environment over mining and logging and have constituted that a minimum 60% of their landmass needs to remain in its natural state. It's currently 80% - and most of it is spectacularly green and mountainous.

Their poverty rate is around 13%. Against a different scale I'm sure, but it's the same as Australia. Their solution is to address the cause, which is to build roads and fund powered ploughs that can also be attached to carts so impoverished farming families can get their produce to market in a more timely manner and get a better price. So simple.

Strings of Yak milk curd
It's like dairy rock candy

Fresh produce market

                           

Close up in case you
can't see it in the shot below!

Travel to Bhutan is expensive. They whack tourists with a tariff, executed as a minimum daily spend that needs to be verified by the travel agent before a visa will be issued. Again, as a concept, it's hard to refute. They don't want backpackers there for the wild marijuana or people who are disrespectful in their temples. They want to leverage tourism for the benefit of all their population -  a meagre 700,000. On arrival, our guide gave us a message from their king; that our money is not wasted, it's directed to education and health.

Banks of marijuana - all through the towns.
You can smell it as you walk past

Our guide - in traditional dress
which most people still wear everyday

TV and the internet weren't introduced until 1990. (In fact, I'm still not convinced they do have the internet...)

They also have stray dogs everywhere. Mostly well fed from kitchen scraps, the government has a program to vaccinate them to ensure rabies doesn't get into the country. They even vaccinate the dogs that hang around the Indian side of the Bhutan border in case they should stroll over. We noticed some dogs had had their ear clipped, which our guide explained was part of the sterilisation program aimed to reduce numbers. Again, just so sensible.

Some of the many stray dogs

Our guide insisted that Buddhism can be viewed solely as a philosophy - and not necessarily as a religion. The tenets of tolerance and being kind are hard to dispute. In fact, when I asked about the Bhutanese attitude towards homosexuality and homosexuals, our guide quipped that if god hadn't meant us to all live harmoniously together, he would have made a seperate world for the LGBTIQ community!

In truth, I did feel our guide had drunk the Kool-Aid. For someone who'd only travelled to India for further study, he had some very firmly held ideas on how the world views their King. I didn't let on that many people haven't heard of Bhutan, let alone formed an opinion of its monarch. However, he was quite the intellect and philosopher and I certainly enjoyed the conversation. Not sure the kids were so dazzled.

An oddity was the devotion to air fresheners. I'm not sure if it's because of damp and mould, which I didn't particularly notice, but when we arrived at our first hotel, the lobby had been given such a big spray of something vile,  I was relieved when we were invited to go upstairs for coffee -  so my eyes could stop watering.

One of many air fresheners along the way

The food was fresh, tasty and good, if somewhat repetitious. Lunch and dinner consisted of a mini buffet of rice, noodles, cheesy potatoes, mixed veg and chicken. I think because we were outside the peak tourist season (it was meant to be rainy - but it wasn't) they downsized the buffet for a table of four. (In fact, we only saw four other Europeans in the week we were there.) I did request the local favourite of cheesy chili - it was hot, but delicious.

A mini buffet for four

We had pizza for lunch -twice - to
break up the buffets

They do some great local beers as well. Red Panda is their most acclaimed - but to us, it tasted a bit like the temples smell - of incense. Much more to our taste was a new red rice beer that had just launched - now that was good!

At our request, our guide also arranged for us to sample yak butter tea. Not as salty as the Mongolian tea and no sign of a lump of fried mutton fat, this one tasted a lot like soy and the roasted rice adds a nutty aspect. It was actually pretty good!

Yak butter tea

We rafted and hiked up to various temples - all beautiful - but the highlight is the iconic Tiger's Nest. It's a 5 hour round hike but not difficult and well worth it.

So there you go; Bhutan in a nutshell. Pop it on your bucket list!