Beggining the story of an Asian adventure

Leaving town on Thursday, the 9th of August felt strange, as my tour in the wonderful world of Bhutan was not actually to begin until the morning of August 11th. Ellen drove me to the Denver Airport early in the morning. I flew 1k miles to Seattle, 5k miles to Tokyo, 3k miles to Bangkok, and finally another 1k miles or so to Paro, Bhutan on the Druk Royal Airline. I honestly don't know how long the trip took, as I crossed the International Date Line. But it sure FELT like the 48 hours time change was an accurate accrual of lapsed time!

I actually had to spend around 8 hours in the Bangkok airport before my Druk flight left, so I was there a while. This airport is crazy HUGE. All of the seats were metal - so I didn't have a soft spot to sleep. But I did find a nice empty corner to lay my head for a few hours. The rest of the time, I took pictures.

After making a succesful pass through customs, I went straight to the gate. There were absolutely no passengers there for at least 30 mintues. Althought there were two guys from Paro at the far end who summoned me. They were both fairly young and were very talkative and were asking all about me and why I was going to Bhutan. They told me they were just about to board as flight attendants on the Paro flight. They said they had a few days off after this flight, so to give them a call and we'd hang out together. I was shocked at how open they were with me - they wrote down their cell numbers and email addresses and said "Seriously - don't forget to call us when you get to Paro-town; we'll go to a discotech or something."

I boarded the Airbus plane in the dark walking onto it from the tarmac. It was wonderful to see the sunrise as we headed North. They stopped the plane in Calcutta, India for more passengers to board, then we continued. I later heard that it's not uncommon to see monkeys on the runway in Calcutta. They like to steal the luggage from the workers. Shortly after being served breakfast, I suddenly spotted very large hills appearing in the distance. India is very flat right up to the border of Bhutan - then BAM you get Himalayas. This is when i first saw Bhutan:

After weaving through a few giant hilltop (and coming quite close to them indeed!), we landed in the Paro Valley. After stepping off the plane and looking around for a few minutes, it felt like we passengers were the only ones in the region. There were no officials prodding you on to the arrival gate; it was just you and the mountains.

I walked in the airport building and there were just 2 short lines - one for Nationals and one for tourists. You're either one or the other. When I got to the window, the man asked where my card (for customs) was. -.- I said I didn't recieve one. Plus the Bhutanese sitting next to me on the flight told me it was only necessary for nationals to fill them out. They must've gotten their English a bit confused. Hah. So after getting my bag, I walked out of the building and immediately saw Namgay- my tour guide standing to greet me. He was easy to pick out for 2 reasons. I'd seen him in pictures from my sister-in-law's trip and he's just about the tallest Bhutanese man alive. He was only an inch or so taller than me, but most men are alot shorter.

He then took me to his touring car - well one of them anyway. And I met Tshering, who was to be my driver for the rest of the trip. It was great having someone else drive because that way the tour guide could concentrate on talking... the roads are so dangerous that it's much better if when you're driving your mind is only on the road. And my tour began...

Stay tuned for the next several days - I'll be telling how it happened.