Home Again to Khao San Road

Ugh, my plane out of Paro was scheduled for 7:10 a.m. in the morning. This was deliberate--I could have taken the afternoon flight. But I didn't want to hit Bangkok during the evening rush hour, so I forced myself out of bed at 5 a.m.

I hadn't slept much. I'd had a good-bye dinner with my guide, then packed until late.

I'd put off filling out the trip review form until morning, and now here I was, exhausted, late, and feeling inadequate given the lengths Tsering Penjor and Ugyen Dorji had gone to for my Bhutan individual tour. And now I had to write something brilliant that didn't involve the Shangri-La cliche and gave credit to both Ugyen for his organization and Tsering for his care and feeding.

My Last Day in Bhutan

Ugyen Dorji and Tsering Penjor were taking me to the Haa Valley for a picnic on my last day in Bhutan.

I could barely comprehend what a Haa Valley was, because I was tired. Hadn't I just gone across the west coast of Africa only a few months ago? On the BUS? Why did I tire out so easily?

Oh, wait...I was completely exhausted then too.

Non-stop new cultural input is an assault on your senses. Traveling is fascinating but it's sure not relaxing. I wasn't retaining anything I'd learned from the last few days. I was just hoping to store it in my mind for future processing.

Ugyen had helped me digest it all a bit last night. He'd taken me to a tasty little upstairs cafe in Paro for dinner, while Tsering took a break to go home to see his dogs and do his laundry. Ugyen has a foot in Bhutan and another in my world, as he'd attended a Muslim university in southern India and started out as an IT professional. That explained his sleek Bhutan Your Way website and Internet-savviness. He'd known I was a writer before he'd responded to my first web inquiry, when I'd initially approached three operators based on personal testimonies I'd found on TripAdvisor.com and LonelyPlanet.com. Over dinner, I'd asked him for his opinion on many things, including the way forward for this fledgling democracy and the impact of popular culture on today's kids.

Archery! Cheerleaders! Drunk Guys!

Here's a better look at some archery matches in Bhutan. First, you'll see modern bows, then cheerleaders (and drunk guys), then the traditional bow match.

Sightseeing in Paro

Breakfast time in Paro, Bhutan. I was giving the hairy eyeball to my guide Tsering Penjor and my tour operator, Ugyen Dorji. They'd both showed up at breakfast before I'd had my morning coffee, and Bhutan being a pleasant country, I was trying to be polite but this was a challenge at the moment.

"Never chat with a tourist before she's had her coffee," I thought. But I didn't say that out loud, of course. Still, Tsering probably knew. I'd just met Ugyen for the first time, but I'd spent enough time with Tsering now that he was beginning to see that my under my steady stream of one-liners was one exhausted traveler.

But there was time to rest in Bangkok in a few days. I had limited time here in Bhutan, where my mere presence incurred a $240 per day admission fee. I could sightsee now, then process and rest later.

On to Paro

Tsering had eaten dinner with me last night and then built me a fire while I stood by—useless and awkward—but this morning, he was being cool, hanging out with the other guides at the breakfast bar. The guides were all chatting and shooting the breeze until some monks who had been chanting downstairs showed up and sprinkled water on them. To a man, they obediently bowed their heads as if they'd been having water sprinkled on their heads by monks their entire lives.

Which they probably had.

"What was that about?" I asked after the religious guys had roamed around the room a few times, chanting and sprinkling until the ceremony had ended.

"The hotel has an annual ceremony to ward off evil spirits."

Punakha to Phobjikha: Day Four

I'd been too exhausted to complete my weekly Wanderlust magazine website blog entry last night, so I awoke at five in my Punakha hotel room to work on it.

But still I wasn't done by breakfast time. I huddled over my laptop in the corner of the hotel restaurant while the busload of Thai tourists made short work of the breakfast buffet. When my guide Tsering Penjor came in to find me typing, I looked at him sheepishly.

"I'm sorry. I'm not finished yet."

"I recommend you finish here. I don't think we'll have Internet access tonight. We can wait."

On to Punakha: Day Three

Tobgay, our driver, pulled some professional trekking sticks out of the hatchback and handed them to Tsering Penjor, my guide.

"What're those for?" I asked.

"To help you steady yourself when we walk up to the monastery."

"That monastery?" I pointed to a building on a distant hill. But not too distant. A 20-minute walk over some rice fields and then up a gentle slope.

He nodded.

"I won't use them." I am lazy and I may be in my worst physical shape since I lived in no-walking/lots of junk-eating Kuwait City, but I am certainly not so lame that I can't trek up a gentle slope.

In the Mountains Over Thimphu

"You are lucky today," said Tsering Penjor, my Bhutanese guide, as we gazed out over the white-topped Himalayan range in the distance, from atop a ten-thousand-foot mountain pass. This view is frequently shrouded in clouds and fog.

I wasn't just lucky today—I was lucky during most of my trip in Bhutan. I'd gone in at the tail end of the rainy season, though I'd pushed it as far as I could, hanging around Darjeeling and letting the days pass. But I still have half a world to get through before I have to show up for my first day of teaching comic book coloring to seniors at School of Visual Arts in New York in early January.