Not a very pleasant night in the Tibet International Hotel since it was noisy outside all night long. We meet Captain Sonam Choeda of Royal Bhutan Airlines for breakfast. He will be our navigator guiding us through the mountains during the landing in Paros. This is one of the most difficult ones in the world and only a few pilots are allowed to fly it. Mr. Choeda is a very experienced pilot flying over 20 years.
Handling at Kathmandu airport is easy and the flight over the city is already impressive. But what follows is just spectacular: flying along the Himalaya! We see the world’s tallest mountains and they are unbelievable! The Mount Everest we see clearly and it looks like it has a cloud. But we get told that this is snow getting blown away on the top! With Captain Choeda we have a very knowledgable guide.
The landing in Paros is done by 3 captains is smooth and Captain Frey has done another very difficult one. The building looks great and people are here in no time. Filling it up, going through immigration in no time and outside our guide, Chimmi Dorji is waiting for us. He wears, like most all men in Bhutan, a Gho, the traditional dress. They look just great and must be very practical! Chimmi is a nice, quiet and gentle man; does not talk too much and not too little. What a relieve from the Tatyana’s we had before!! The hotel is great and we have a quick bite: Yak Burger! Then we drive one hour to Timphu, Bhutan’s capital. It grew dramatically over the last 10 years, but still no comparison to Kathmandu. Everything is quiet here and people are gentle. First we visit the Changlimithang Archery Ground. Archery is Bhutan’s national sport and there is a tournament going on right now. The two teams compete with high-tech carbon-fibre bows and the targets are 145m away. People are standing right next to it and seem not concerned that they might get hit. Obviously there are some occasional accidents... The skills, camaraderie and good-humored ribbing are entertaining. They perform also traditional songs and victory dances. Can it get more Bhutanese? Next we visit a Stupa. It is full with life people worshiping. We drive up to a newly built golden Buddha with a great view over Timphu. At the vegetable market we see that local people must like chillies!! Timphu is apparently the world’s only capital without traffic lights. A set was installed a few years back but residents complained in classic Bhutanese fashion that it was too impersonal, which is why the beloved white-gloved police continue to direct the increasing traffic with the balletic grace of someone doing a 1980s robot dance.
Since it starts to rain, we had back to Paro, see an accident on the way (car in the river - not pretty) and have a great dinner at the wonderful hotel. Sleeping at night is a bit difficult; we feel that we are at 2’200m altitude!