Haa, Bhutan

We had another early start at 8am for the 7+ hour drive from Punakha to Haa. We retraced our route from Punakha back to Thimpu, and then to Paro. We had walked from Paro to Thimpu so the views were new to us.

Approaching Paro, we stopped at one of the two original iron bridges left in Bhutan. Back in the 15th century, one of the monks had a vision to build bridges across the rivers. Until then, Bhutan was fractured, separated by the rivers. The monk built many bridges of which only two survive.

We walked across, which was dizzying as the bridge swayed over the running water below. It was also rather rickety. There was a newer bridge that we walked back across. Both bridges were covered with prayer flags.

We had lunch in Paro, and then continued on to Haa. The road passes through Chele La at 3988m, the highest drivable road in Bhutan. It's impassable during the winter months due to snow.

The road down to Haa was recently repaved (very recently - the paving equipment was still on the side of the road) and so it was a much quicker drive than Hasta had thought.

Haa Valley had only recently opened up to tourists. Before that it was off-limits. There's not much to do there - in fact most tourists visit as a long day trip from Paro. It's also possible to do homestays, which is what we did.

We arrived in Haa around 3:30pm. Our hosts had a large farmhouse that was over 200 years old. It allowed us to see inside a typical Bhutanese home.

The centre of action is the kitchen - that's where the wood stove is. There's no chairs - we sat on cushions around the wood stove, had some tea and snacks (roasted rice, popcorn (!), and a deep fried snack we had tried in the Thimpu market). We chatted a bit with our host, with Yeshey doing the translating.

We had another hot stone bath, this one was very relaxing. We watched the process again - red hot stones are taken from the fire, dunked in a bucket to clean off the ash, and then into the bath. They had two baths, which had separators for the stones. They also added some herbs in a larger version of a pot pourri bag. One of the stones exploded on the dunking, which caused a brief moment of excitement, luckily no one was hurt. They had a nice setup where they could add stones from the outside, while Heather and I were inside the bathhouse. We were toasty warm after the bath. It really heats up your core.

Dinner was served in the traditional manner, around the wood stove, with us seated on the cushions. It was excellent, in particular the beef was really tender. They also made one of the better butter teas we've had. It's also typical to eat with your hands; but we stuck with cutlery.

After dinner we had some arra, and then headed to bed around 8:30pm. The sleeping arrangements were also typical - mattresses on the ground, with plenty of blankets. We were warm, but sleeping on the floor still gives us the willies.