Bhutan—Our Happy Place

It is both luck and a privilege to travel to a country at its crossroads. We got to experience Nepal in 1977, Bali in 1979, and Thailand and India in 1980 before they went through massive transformations and became hot tourist destinations. 

We can now add Bhutan to the list—and declare it as perhaps the most favorite country we’ve ever visited out of about 46.

At the giant Buddha Point above Thimphu

Flying in from Kathmandu to Paro is quite an experience, both for the Himalayan mountain scenery and the dicey landing in Paro.  Only 50 pilots worldwide are certified to fly in and out of there.

The Paro airport from road to our hotel

A video clip of our landing in the narrow valley with a short runway is in the photo link below.  All that tension melted away when the immigration officer asked me “How was your flight?” She promptly stamped my passport, smiled, then said, “Enjoy Bhutan, Mr. Ronald.”

We were in a cohesive 11-person Road Scholar tour group for two weeks with Tim, our charismatic and humorous 38-year old Bhutanese guide, and Sonam, our skillful 20-passenger minibus driver.

Tishim (Tim) our guide

The amazing Sonnam

It often took six hours to cover 100 miles crossing several passes on narrow rough roads. But the time passed quickly through the beautiful mountains and serene valleys while Tim regaled us Bhutanese history and culture, and with stories of his youth as Bhutan was entering the modern world.  

Our two-week route, out and back.  The house icons are where we stayed for 2-3 nights. The knife and fork symbols in the upper left were the Tiger’s Nest near Paro, where we landed, departed, and stayed two nights.

A stupa and prayer flags

Countless Buddhist temples, stupas, shrines, monasteries, and prayer flags dotted the verdant countryside. Tim, a devout Buddhist, explained its belief system and demonstrated rituals as we entered holy places. “To understand Bhutan,” he said, “you have to understand Buddhism.”  He’s right, and I still don’t fully understand either.

Bhutan is so friendly and mellow! The people are reserved and polite. Drivers cooperate and don’t honk. Everyone aged 10-40 is fluent in English, and many older than that can also understand and speak it.

Friendly girls at a festival wanting to talk with us

It is relativity clean and litter free. Although we saw signs of new wealth, it wasn’t ostentatious, and we didn’t see the income gaps and poverty we recently saw in Nepal or Thailand. Or in the USA.  Beyond its mellow vibe, we got a sense of Bhutan’s cohesion, strong Buddhist faith, and national pride.  However, that comes with the price tag of conformity and sameness.

On our way back from a hike on Hwy #1,
The main road going east to west

Instead of GDP (gross national product) as a measurement of progress, Bhutan pioneered the GNH (gross national happiness) metric. We attended a lecture on the topic on how it is measured through surveys. It IS a happy place, and it was certainly our happy place in the two weeks leading up to the US elections.

Dochola Pass, elevation 10,000+ 
The Himalayas in the backkground

While Kathy and were playing cribbage in the small restaurant of our guest house in Bumthang, the Prime Minister came in and briefly chatted with us.  He wanted to know if Oregon was a blue state and if we had voted yet. He was very intrigued with our vote by mail system. Later the Home Minister came by. He was in Portland two years ago for a forestry conference.

Tourism is the second highest source of income (hydropower is first). Bhutan can go the path of many popular destinations that have become overbuilt and overrun with culturally insensitive tourists, party seekers, bargain hunters, and runaway development.  But I don’t think it will.

First, geography. It took us 23 hours of flight time, plus long layovers to get there. The narrow valleys and steep mountains prohibit jumbo jets. The nearest cruise port is Kolkata, 18 hours away by bus on torturous roads.  

The landlocked mountain kingdom of Bhutan

The altitude of Thimphu, the capital city in the center of the country is 8400 feet, but many of the sites and hikes are at higher elevations. It takes forever to get anywhere. We got farther east than 90% of most tourists do, but it took one week at a leisurely pace and we barely got past central Bhutan.  And by the way, our 20-passenger bus was the largest that the sometimes one-lane roads can accommodate. And we had to constantly make way for cows and dogs.

We each got a window, and turns to ride “shotgun”

Second, policy. Bhutan requires all visitors to either be on an organized trip or with private guides, which supports the travel industry in a labor-intensive way, promotes Bhutanese culture, and helps enforce temple etiquette.  And it discourages one from lying around the pool in the cool weather. Visitors must pay $250 per day to the tour operators/guide, but almost all charge more. The government takes $100 of that and applies it to health and education, some of which goes to traditional art training. Unlike Nepal, mountaineering isn’t allowed as the peaks are sacred places, home to gods and spirits.  Trekking, however is encouraged and abundant.

New hotel or apt. Under way in Thimphu
Note the bamboo scaffolding

Geography and policies aside, we saw a tremendous amount of new hotel construction underway.  Fortunately, all construction has to generally conform to traditional Bhutanese architecture and design. This supports local artisans that the government helped train. However, we were there at peak season, yet some of our hotels were only partially occupied. Is there a real estate bust in the making? Will the government loosen its policies to help fill them in the future? 

Bhutan isn’t for everyone. There are no bar scenes, beaches, or tobacco sales. But for uniqueness, culture, and beauty, this was our happy place and the trip of a lifetime that went by too quickly.  

What’s not to like?  Just two things:  the forgettable food and the feral dogs that barked all night long. (We made up for the food and the lack of sleep in noisy Thailand.)

We took a LOT of photos, but here a link to but a few that can give you a feel for Bhutan more than the above words. They are best viewed on something larger than a phone. About five photos and our route map were taken by fellow travelers, and all of our photos cannot convey the fun spirit of our group and the beautiful interiors of on the insides of the Dzongs (temples). Some rival that of European cathedrals.  My favorite photo/vido is at the end. Enjoy!

“What We Can, While We Can”

“What We Could, While We Could”

View from our room in Punakha

Tiger’s Nest view point, elevation 

10,240 feet

Road Tripping Around Iceland

Our last full day of road tripping. It was our first 
day without strong winds.

 If we were geologists, our happy place would be Iceland—in the summer at least.  Kathy and I are not, but still Iceland was nothing short of amazing, and we are glad we finally got to go there. We wish we had gone a few years ago before it was so crowded, even in the cold autumn. Through June of this year, visitors to Iceland increased 14% over the same period last year, and the years before it also had big increases.  It was a busy mix on narrow roads of tour busses, sprinter vans, and people like us renting small vehicles.

 

Simply Beautiful and Stunning

We were privileged to view this twice with
different lighting and clouds, as we missed
a museum sign and had to backtrack 13 miles.

But once we got on the northern side, it seemed rather lonely at times as we circumnavigated 1200 miles around the island over two weeks. The miles passed quickly, even at a 54-mph speed limit. There were so many places where we wanted to pull over and take a photo, or simply marvel at what we were seeing. But we couldn’t, hence, you’ll see a few windshield photos in the link below. We’ve never seen so many waterfalls in our lives, and stunning ones at that.  What wasn’t pastoral and green was “recent” geology in action, some of it reminiscent of the Columbia basin and Yellowstone. 

 

Wildlife

It was roundup time, so these were some of the few sheep we
saw that were still out and about before being herded into large
sheds for haircuts and warmth in the upcoming winter.

And unlike Yellowstone, about the only form of non-bird wildlife we saw were unique sheep, goats, and horses, all brought by the Vikings and protected by strict import controls. In fact, the estimated 800,0000 sheep population is double that of Icelanders, 60% of whom live in Reykjavik.  By the way, 20% of Iceland’s population are immigrants or guest workers from all over the world, mostly in construction and tourism. Iceland couldn’t pull it off without them.

 

Logistics

How did we (Kathy) plan this trip? We engaged an Icelandic company called Nordic Visitor. We gave them our parameters for costs, time, and activities.  They designed the itinerary, rented the car (complete with a robust WIFI hot spot), and booked the hotels for a reasonable price. We were on our own for food and entrance fees*.  After visiting family in the UK, we flew three hours on Icelandic Air from Heathrow. The flight home two weeks later was a miserable seven-hour flight, and we will never fly Icelandic air again!

 Geothermal and Hydro Power

A geothermal electricity and hot water plant we visited
outside of Reykjavik. The photo link includes a photo
of Kathy demonstrating the diameter of the hot water
pumps that surge through the buildings of Reykjavik.

One of Iceland’s delightful features is its geothermal pools and power production. Electricity is cheap and many cities and towns are heated thermally with piped in heat. Our hotel floors felt so nice on our feet, laundry dried quickly, and like many Icelanders, we slept with an open window on a cold windy nights with clean consciences. Interesting fact:  Iceland exports tomatoes! Their greenhouses are geothermally heated and lighted with cheap electricity. 

 Food

Note Kathy's expression after ingesting the shark meat, but before
a swig of the local brew to wash it down.  The post-drink photo
in the photo link shows her much happier.

The food was excellent! We took a five-stop walking food tour of Reykjavik and tried everything but the horsemeat. And we lived to tell about eating fermented shark meat, which tasted like ammonia. The
dinners at our isolated accommodations were date-night, Michelin Star quality, kind of like what you would see in The Bear Hulu series, with priority given to presentation and locally sourced food.  Not cheap! Even a small pizza and two wines for lunch could cost $50.

 

Northern Lights

The camera makes them look
impressive. This was the
most colorful one we were able
to photograph.

Yes, we got to see the Northern Lights.  But here's the secret--they look better in photographs. In real life shivering outside they look like streaky cloud formations. Our photos are not enhanced; otherwise, they would be more colorful.

Will We Return?

As amazing and beautiful it was, no. We’d do it in a heartbeat for the first time, but we have too many other priorities on our bucket list while we still can undertake this type of active trip. Maybe with better weather we would have hiked more, but the windchill factor made for some cozy times in the hotel, hot tub, or even in the car. Even the rental car agreement didn’t cover door-hinge damage caused by strong wind gusts!

 

Fjaorargljufur Canyon. Don't ask me
to pronounce it!

More Photos

Here is a link to more photos and some very short video clips. I have organized them in groups, starting with waterfalls, then geologic formations, glaciers, road trip scenery, Reykjavik, and food.  Enjoy!

 

What We Can, While We Can.

What We Could, While We Could

 

Pay to pee! Only tap accepted.

*Security cameras note your license plate coming and going into the parking lots of major tourist attractions to enforce the entrance fees, typically $7-15 via phone app.  We never once used any cash the entire trip.  Even the pay toilets cost $3-5, payable by Google or Apple Pay. (Note: another turnstile photo is in the photo link.)

PS:  It wouldn't be a post from the other side of the pond without a gratuitous photo of our four-year-old grandchild, Hazel.  We got to be there when she mastered her new bike and became a fearless speed demon. And we also got to walk her to her first day in public school kindergarten. What milestones!

"I'll race you down the hill, Grandpa!

"

Our 6,000-Mile Road Trip to See a Second Eclipse

 

Getting ready for four minutes of totality

Chances are, if you experienced one total eclipse, you wanted to see another one.  That’s what happened to us following the August 2017 total eclipse in Oregon. So last year at this time, Kathy spotted an opportunity to attend a 160-trailer Airstream rally in Greenville, OH to see the April 8 2024 total eclipse and immediately signed us up.

 

We could have attended other rallies, and the weather getting there in late March can be dicey (it was), and the odds of a clear day in Greenville weren’t that good either. But the campground at the fairgrounds had full hookups, it was close to the Airstream factory and three major museums: Armstrong Aerospace, the Wright Brothers, and the HUGE US Airforce which featured three Air Force Ones.  Photos of those places are in the photo link below.

Marcelene, MO, the hometown of Walt
and Roy Disney.

 In case weather blocked our view of the eclipse, we made up our minds that this trip was all about the journey with the eclipse as a bonus.  We traveled on backroads about 60% of the time, going through Midwest towns in decline, recovery, or doing just fine, thank you.  It seemed like every one of them had a museum.  (Fun fact:  there are more museums in the US than there are McDonalds and Starbucks combined!).  This was our fifth cross-country road trip since 2016, and it was nice to explore places we haven’t been before.

 

Willa Cather's hometown. After the museum
we downloaded 'O Pioneers, which perfectly
described the countryside we were driving through

Ten days later we arrived.  The sky cleared and we got a magnificent four minutes of totality to the tune of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon playing on someone's boom box. Unlike the Central Oregon one, we didn’t have hills and coniferous trees blocking the 360° view of twilight that seemed to last forever. Definitely worth the trip!

 

The amazing 360° dusk

This time sequence and the two dusk photos above are courtesy
of fellow Airstreamer Walter Lundahl from northern Ohio

Our trip home was longer, but not long enough.  We would have loved to have driven all the way from Nashville to Natchez, MS on the 404-mile Natchez Trace Scenic Parkway (see photo link) and spend more time in Utah.  But we had commitments back home.

Capitol Reef NP.  Europe has nothing like this!

 Besides the Natchez Parkway, our most surprises of the trip were in Arkansas.  First, it was beautiful. Second, the Walmart-funded Crystal Bridges art museum in Bentonville was probably the best art museum we have ever experienced in the US.  The third surprise –the Clinton Presidential Library--was more of a disappointment.  Unlike others we have visited, it was too policy wonky, and not enough about his childhood and how he became president. By that standard, even Andrew Jackson's hermitage outside of Nashville was more interesting.

One other surprise was how full the National Parks in Utah were. Most campgrounds had been booked months earlier, many by foreign tourists renting RVs.  We can’t blame them—Europe has nothing like the desert SW.

 Like all trips, it’s good to go, and very nice to be back home.  We’re enjoying our three-butt kitchen, queen bed, robust internet, and a beautiful spring.

 Here is a link to some photos.  But unlike in the past, this one is a brief slide show I recently made to the Mid Valley Travel Club with many of the photos labeled. Enjoy!

"What We Can, While We Can."

"What We Could While We Could."

Last evening of spring from our deck

 

First road bike ride of summer to the hills of Polk
County from the old Willamette River RR bridge in Salem

Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falklands--Lands of Exceeded Expectations

 “Why do you want to go to Antarctica?” people would ask us.  “It’s cold, expensive, and difficult to get to.” Our answer is “Why not?” It’s changing by the day and is ground zero for what is happening with global climate change. It has wildlife you can’t see at home and stunning scenery that is hard to describe.  Every person we know who has been there said it was one of the best places they had ever been. And so it was for us, too.

 Those who had been before advocated that we take an expedition type of trip on a small ship specifically designed for icy polar waters and that we include South Georgia and the Falkland Islands in the itinerary, so some of my comments and photos apply to those places as well.

 

18 days, 3,982 miles

We went with Road Scholar, one of the more affordable tour operators that met our criteria. They teamed up with other operators aboard Albatross Expedition’s 175-passenger Ocean Victory. It handled the rough seas of the infamous Drake Passage and the Southern Ocean well (depending upon who you talk to—we didn’t get seasick), and it got us into and out of some very tight and icy places. It took us 3,982 miles over 18 days.

The Ocean Victory--our refuge
in a hostile wilderness

Antarctica is about the size of the United States and Mexico combined, but that all depends upon which time of year you measure its snow and ice. It’s now dramatically smaller in the winter than 10 years ago.  Although not part of Antarctica, South Georgia (1200 miles to the NE) and the Falklands (750 miles to the north) are part of its weather and ocean current systems and marine wildlife migratory patterns. South Georgia has a population of 12 in the winter and 40 in the summer, mostly researchers and caretakers of an historic abandoned whaling village. The Falkland Islands have 3800 residents, mostly in Port Stanley. Very British!

Iceberg off Spert Island, 6:00 AM

 Geography aside, the scenery is stunning, absolutely stunning! We thought it would be a monotonous landscape, but it changed nearly every hour with the lighting, ice formations, and sea color. And none of it is manmade.

And the animals! There isn’t a huge variety of animals compared to a place like Costa Rica, but that is more than made up for in quantity where we would walk among massive penguin colonies. We never got tired of watching the seven of nine species of penguins and their young chicks. But we did we tire of their smell, which made our parkas and rain pants stink up our cabin temporarily. Nor did we tire of sea lions, seals, seabirds, and frequent whale sightings—including a very rare sighting of three blue whales off the coast of South Georgia, which some of the seasoned crew and guides had never seen before.

Fur seals and King penguins on South Georgia

 In Antarctica, we dropped anchor in about eight different places and boarded zodiacs for shore excursions or zodiac cruises about twice per day. We had about six excursions in South Georgia (nice to see greenery again!) including a hard four-mile hike, and two landings in the Falklands with hikes of four and eight miles.

 What was our highlight or the trip? Every day kept getting better than the one before.  However, what we’ll remember the most was a zodiac cruise in the north Weddell Sea at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula amid a field of icebergs, sea ice, and humpback whales. Even though it was 8:00 pm, there was still a lingering twilight. We carefully climbed out of the zodiac to set foot on an ice flow smaller than a football field. We were among the first and the very last people on earth to ever set foot on that exact spot and piece of melting ice. It was one of those surreal moments we will cherish for the rest of our lives. This piece of melting ice was a good analogy for how fragile Antarctica is right now, and it made us feel fragile on this speck of ice in such a vast inhospitable place.

 

The guides scouting out a landing site
on "our" ice flow

Surprises? One of our surprises about this trip so far is just how little free time we had. When we weren't on shore or in the zodiacs, there was always a lecture from one of the 18 guides/zodiac drivers from all over the world with a combined Antarctic guiding experience of 129 years. Most of them also had advanced degrees in marine biology, geology, ornithology, oceanography, and more. The most interesting presentation was on krill, the small crustaceans that are the food source for many creatures up the food chain. The funniest was about penguin poop projectiles.

 We had two special guests aboard. One was Alastair Forthegill, the executive producer of BBC’s Frozen Planet series. He gave us insights into how they filmed various scenes of the series and the Disney movie, Steve. The other was the head of British Bureau of Infectious Diseases, the UK’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci. He talked about the spread of Avian influenza which is now affecting sea mammals in the Antarctic region, especially in South Georgia where we had to abort a shore landing because of a huge die-off of seals.

 

Fortuna Bay, South Georgia, where we had to
abort a landing due to a seal die-off from
the avian flu.

Our favorite communal part of the day was the 6:00 pm briefing where all 170 of us and the guides gathered over drinks to review where we’ve been, what we saw, the upcoming weather, and the plans for the next day.  It was a cat and mouse game with big weather and ice situations, so our plans frequently changed, often serendipitously.

 The things we most love about travel is meeting people, culture, history, and architecture—and food of course! While short of the architecture part, we’ve met a lot of interesting fellow travelers and learned a lot about Antarctica’s history and the stories behind its explorers and whaling. (Ask us anything about Shackleton). And the food had a good selection of Indian and Asian food, some fish species we have never had before, as well as tempting European deserts. Kathy lost five pounds, I gained one.

Firman, our cabin steward
from Jakarta Indonesia

 But on the cultural side, we befriended several of the housekeeping and wait staff who hail from India, Nicaragua, Indonesia, China, and the Philippines, and it’s been fun learning about their families and lives at home and trying to brush up on our rusty Indonesian.  They work nine months of the year here and on arctic expeditions, but they all say they make much more than they possibly could with a similar land-based job back home or on a large cruise ship.

Polar plunge. A video clip from
the vantage point of the
mudroom is on
the photo link below

 And oh yes, I did do the polar plunge, along with about 80 other shipmates. They played the Stones’ Start Me Up while we queued up in the mudroom. It was so fun. The cold shock quickly wore off into a warm glow as we swapped stories with complementary shots of vodka afterward. I should have done a cannonball.

These brief words, my daily journal (available upon request), these photos, and five Facebook and Instagram posts can’t begin to describe the totality of this experience. Our expectations were exceeded beyond measure.  It was the trip of a lifetime!

           

             "What We Can While We Can, What We Could While We Could”

 Here is a link to more photos and brief video clips, mostly in chronological order. They are best enjoyed on something larger than a phone.  (Warning: The penguins really know how to ham it up!) About 5% of the photos in the link are not mine. For more commentary and photos, please check out my five Facebook posts @ron.kelemen  or my Instagram @kelemenron.