A few months on, and our adventure in Bhutan seems like almost a lifetime ago. I was lucky enough to find time to revisit the memories on Thursday in giving a short slideshow presentation to people at work about our trip. Was a bit rushed in the end, as I had to get off to the airport to catch a plane to Brisbane, but was great fun none-the-less.

Inspired by looking through photos in preparing my slideshow, I’ve finally posted a few more photos from our trip to Bhutan up on the web. Head over to my Flickr page (or more specifically, my Bhutan Photo Set) to see them. There are lots more photos to process and publish – especially film photos from our non-digital SLR. I’ll place those up on Flickr as time permits.

All this thinking about Bhutan has also inspired me to finally start reading the book on Dzongkha, the official Bhutanese language, that I bought a few months back. Fascinating reading so far!

Start Altitude: 10m (Bangkok)
Peak Altitude: 2800m (Taktsang)
Sleeping Altitude: 2200m (Paro)

Ater a week in Thailand, our flight from Bangkok Airport was scheduled to leave at 5:50am, meaning an obscenely early start from our hotel in downtown Bangkok. At the airport, we arrived well ahead of Druk Air staff, who eventually showed up sometime after 4am. Whilst waiting, we met a lovely couple from Brisbane who were also heading off to Paro to do the same trek as us. Although we assume that we would be trekking together, they ended up walking in the smaller World Expeditions group.

Unexpectedly, our flight actually had a brief stop-over in Kolkata in eastern India; well, not really a stop-over, since those of us on the plane didn’t even disembark, but passengers alighted and boarded around us.

Once on the final leg to Paro, the scenery was apparently pretty spectacular, with views of Everest, Kanchen Junga and other Himalayan peaks. Unfortunately, we were seated on the wrong side of the plane to see most of this :-/. Despite that, however, the scenery was still pretty impressive, as was the spectacular landing into Paro. Apparently, the Airbus 319 we were flying in is pretty much the largest plane that can actually land at Paro; certainly anything with a wider wingspan would surely be clipping trees and valley spurs as the plane banked from side-to-side on approach, based on how close the mountains, trees and houses appeared to be to the wing tips on our descent.

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You might have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here for the past month. There is actually a very good reason for this – Michelle and I have been overseas in Thailand and Bhutan since the beginning of April, with the main focus of our trip being a 14 day trek through the Himalaya in western and northern Bhutan.

The trek was almost certainly the most physically and mentally demanding activity I have ever undertaken, but was equally fascinating and stunning at the same time. Our trekking was hampered by unseasonably bad weather, including rain, sleet and (a lot of) snow, along with temperatures ranging from -10 to 35 degrees during the course of the trek.

The remote areas of Bhutan in which we spent the bulk of our time really are like walking back a few hundred years to medieval times. The villages have no roads, in fact, no vehicle access at all (not by air or by land) – everything is brought in on yaks, ponies or carried by people who, like us, must make the multiple-day trek along steep, narrow, rocky paths from the nearest road-accessible towns. There is (of course) no mains power or water.

Over the next few days (and probably weeks), I hope to publish a selection of photos and stories from our epic journey in the mountains. Feel free to leave any comments or questions as they arise – Bhutan is a truly fascinating country that I’m still very interested in learning much more about.