Punakha, Bhutan

We checked out of the Norbuling Hotel after breakfast. It was one of the larger laundry bills we've had, but we did wash about half the items in our packs.

The drive from Thimpu to the Dochu La pass (3140m) took about an hour. We were lucky that the sky was clear and so we had great views of the Himalayans, with several peaks over 7000m, including Gangkhar Puensum at 7541m, the highest peak completely in Bhutan.

Our travel agency (Bhutan Travel Club) had arranged for us to spend an hour discussing meditation with a lama. At the pass there is a monastery, and so we spent some time with the resident lama, getting an introduction on Buddhist meditation. It was interesting, although our guide (Yeshey) is really knowledgable and we've learnt quite a bit from him.

We then continued with the drive to Punakha, arriving with enough time to visit Punakha Dzong. This Dzong is one of the highlights of Bhutan, and I was looking forward to seeing it almost as much as Tiger's Nest.

Punakha Dzong sits at the confluence of two rivers, with an old pedestrian bridge leading to the entrance. At this time of year it's home to about 500 monks who winter here (it's one of the warmer cities in Bhutan). The monks provide convenient subjects for pics :)

We spent almost two hours exploring the Dzong and getting the history from Yeshey. It was really cool to see.

That was it for our day. We drove back to the hotel, had a nice dinner and then to bed.

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We had an early start to the day, meeting Yeshey and Hasta (our driver) at 8am. Breakfast was a buffet, they did have a local honey which tasted great on toast.

First was a short trek up to ? It's supposed to take about an hour, but I think cause we had acclimatized from our trek, we only took 30 minutes. We had great views of the valley below. The rice harvest had just completed, and we could see different groups threshing the rice, putting aside the rice stems for animal feed. Power lines got in the way of some of the pics.

The temple itself was nice, with three levels plus the rooftop with even nicer views. On the 2nd level there was a monk repeating a mantra, while beating on a drum, and occasionally the cymbals. It was cool to listen to him. The monk repeats the mantra every morning and evening to appease the local deities.

Next we visited Nalanda University, a monastic school. Supposedly it's cool to attend a debate, because the monks are very dramatic although they don't raise their voice. It's all in an ancient Tibetan language so we wouldn't understand, but it's more about watching. Unfortunately the monks have exams coming up and so they were all studying, and weren't debating.

We had a picnic lunch at the university, provided in tiffins by our hotel. It included a dried fish dish (we had seen the dried fish a couple days ago in the market and were curious about them). Locals eat the whole fish, bones and all. We just ate around the bones. It was salty (as you'd expect with dried fish) and yummy.

We then visited a nunnery (Khuruthang Goemba), drove to Pana village for some souvenir shopping (we were looking for a little higher quality so didn't buy anything) and finally Chimi Lhakhang, a temple built for the Divine Madman, the nickname of one of the historical religious figures in Bhutan.

It was a long day, and we had a nice relaxing dinner back at our hotel before calling it a night.