This entry is for Friday, May 29.

Ash slept 8 hours, my sleep wasn’t nearly as good. But we were up by 3:30am, out for a walk by a little after 5am.

The sun was just coming up and had a nice effect on the clouds.

This is a chinaberry tree. Full of blooms that look like jasmine except they are lavender in color and smell like lilacs.

We did the same path as Sunday, along the river.

This was the bridge we saw from the park the last time but didn’t feel like exiting the park and walking more to walk on it. So made up for that this morning.

These are prayer flags – you can see the writing on them below – and they are everywhere. It’s a lovely tradition. Bhutanese believe that as the wind flutters the flags they release sacred mantras and prayers into the air, spreading compassion, peace, and good fortune to all beings.

The colors represent fundamental elements of nature:

• Blue – sky and space
• White – air and wind
• Red – fire
• Green – water
• Yellow – earth

There are different kinds and sizes but that’s enough for now.

Looking back from the bridge. Remember the rose garden from Sunday?

Some homes and a football (soccer) field on the other side.

This is across the street from our hotel. I thought it was a nice mix of modern elements with the mirrored glass along with the traditional Bhutanese style.

Breakfast was mostly standard fare but they had poori chole. It’s legumes that tasted like I would make at home because the flavors are the same – a rich spicy broth made from tomato, onion, garlic, cumin. Eaten with poori – the bread type item that’s more like a tortilla. It was great.

We left around 9am and stopped at a weaving center about 30 minutes into the drive.

It was fascinating watching these women work.

And more interesting seeing the variety of results. Some of these literally take years to complete.

We bought a few things including our pillow case which is sticking out of the bag. We try to get one every trip and our couch is covered with them.

We drove for over 3 hours this morning and saw miles and miles of this. Sweet villages nestled in gorgeous valleys. I took these when we stopped for a toilet break.

We stopped for lunch around 12:30pm.

Family style lunch again although this one was vegetarian and by far the best of the lunches we have had. Of note were the fried potato rounds about 8:00 and fried tofu about 1:00. The green beans were really good, too.

We got to our hotel a little after 1pm. It was raining when we arrived so I didn’t get a photo of the front.

Nice room. We asked for another chair….

…and they quickly accommodated.

Interesting bathroom. Notice the shower is just there. Took me a minute to realize it.

Pretty courtyard looking out our front door.

We weren’t supposed to come here until after a visit to a monastery but we all whined a bit after lunch and they switched things up. Everyone was ready for a break after the long drive. They aren’t relaxing because the roads are so windy.

We meet up again in about 20 minutes at 3pm.

———

It’s approaching 6pm. Ash stayed in to rest, he’s been fighting headaches for a few days now.

This is the outer building of where we are staying.

Our room is in a building behind and to the left of that. We are the open window in the middle.

It was a fairly quick outing visiting 2 temples – known as White and Black. There’s a whole bird mythology behind the names that I will leave out. They are important because they were the first built in Bhutan, in the 7th Century by Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo. We went to the White first.

Above and below were to the right and left of the entrance.

This is the temple from the 7th century. The buildings on the left and right were built much later, and contain monks quarters and a hostel.

The details in the architecture started way back then.

It was actually closed so we couldn’t go in.

It was about a half mile hike to the Black temple.

This one was much simpler in design itself but also stood alone in the woods without the entry courtyard and other buildings. This was the whole entrance once you came out of the woods. So it was open and the monk we met inside pretty much lives here.

I’d mentioned the taller flags earlier and noticed some examples as I was leaving the temple.

More beautiful scenery on the hike back to the van. This is pretty much what we saw for our entire drive up.

We did a couple of other stops – for coffee and dessert although I didn’t get anything. And then a couple of markets in town but then it started raining so we came back. I was back about 4:40 and laid down a bit. Dinner will be in about an hour.

——-

Green tea to start with a vegetable soup that was nice and buttery.

Other than the yellow daal there on the left (a kind of bean or lentil soup), this is pretty much the same meal we’ve had for lunch and dinner since we got here.

There was a dessert they called cheesecake which absolutely wasn’t. We decided it was more like a very thick iced cookie. And from that perspective it was pretty good.

It’s about 8:15pm and Ash is already in bed. I will be following soon.

We are here just for tonight. Tomorrow we head to Paro – where we landed last Saturday – and are there for 2 nights. Then that’s the end of this tour, after which we spend 3 nights in Delhi.