Tiger Nests, Dragon Paths, and Donkey Porters

We're 7/10ths of the way through our Bhutan trip. Since we last had internet access, we've hiked a few hours up a mountain to see the Taktsang Monastery (also known as the Tiger's Nest), eaten a TON of food, and trekked from Paro to Thimphu along the Druk Path (Druk being Bhutanese for Dragon).

The trek was a great experience overall. We started in Paro with our guide Tinleh, a cook, a helper, a horseman and six donkeys carrying all our stuff. The trek itself wasn't TOO challenging, though we did finish each day huffing and puffing for air (most of the trek was above 3500m). The one downside was on day two when, after a morning of amazing views and perfect weather, it started to rain.

And rain.

And rain.

And I'm not talking a long drizzle here. I'm talking rains of biblical magnitude. Angry torrents from the heavens. For about two hours, we were hammered by rain (and a bit of hail) that soaked through all of our clothes and sleeping bags. That, combined with the cold weather, meant our night's activities (which usually consisted of socializing, tea drinking, reading, and wandering around the mountains) consisted of huddling in a ball and trying not to die.

The rain also transformed the final few kilometres of trail descending directly into our camp into a few kilometres of waterfall - descending directly into our camp. At one point, the trail was totally washed out and we had to spend 15 minutes figuring out how best to ford the river that had taken its place (we eventually found a part narrow enough to jump). We didn't finish that day in the best of spirits.

Fortunately, the rest of the trek made up for it with incredible scenery and a degree of remoteness I've never experienced before. The Druk Path is the most popular trek in the country, and we ran into a grand total of seven other foreigners the entire time (for perspective, we ran into about twice that many monks, a few horsemen, and some villagers camped out in the hills to harvest aromatic plants for incense).

We took tons of pictures, but our present internet situation doesn't allow us to upload them very easily. We'll post them, and some more reflections on Bhutan that don't involve rain (seriously, it's an incredible place, I could write about it for hours), as soon as we get back to India in a few days.