Kathmandu and Bhutan in 8 days
 

Just returned from a fun and interesting jaunt around Kathmandu and Bhutan with the wife and two teenagers. I had a few doubts about Bhutan based on the limited research I had done, particularly about the cost, the food, and whether there’d be much interesting to see. But we ended up having a great time, it really is a beautiful and unique country, although we had a few minor issues.

I had suggested adding a brief stay in Kathmandu to the front end of the trip, with the encouragement of Kathie and thursdaysd from this forum. While not a big fan of holiday travel in India for a variety of reasons, I was hopeful that Kathmandu would be different enough, and it was. And it was fun to show the kids another exotic place that their mother had lived as a Foreign Service brat back in the early 1970s. All in all it ended up being a great trip full of memorable sights, great guides, good food (for the most part), and pleasant people.

Days 1-4 - Kathmandu and surrounds

We flew to KTM from Bangkok on Thai Airways, a very comfortable widebody service, and landed in the smoggy and dusty capital city in two and a half hours. We made the excellent decision to stay at the Hyatt Regency, where I was able to defray the cost of one of the rooms with my points. This was a wise move for several reasons (credit to the advice on this board) - one, it was quite close to the airport (although it still took the better part of 30 minutes to go maybe three miles on the potholed and jam-packed roads), and two, it was a very nice hotel, overlooking one of the most important and interesting stupas, and at a very reasonable price. We paid about $180/night for a room that overlooked the historic stupa, which by global Hyatt standards was a bargain. The rooms were spacious and well-appointed, with large bathrooms and comfortable beds. Most importantly, the food was simply outstanding. Normally I hate eating in hotel restaurants, but Kathmandu is one of those cities that is difficult to walk around outside the main tourist areas, due to the dust, exhaust, motorbikes, cars and other hazards. So we ate three of our dinners in the hotel, and the food was just delicious, whether Nepali, Indian or western (we tried it all). I've eaten in great Indian restaurants all over the world, including in Mumbai, Delhi and London, and I'm not sure I've ever had a better murgh masala curry.

We really enjoyed the sightseeing program that my wife arranged with a guide who was recommended by a friend here in Singapore. We had organized a private tour with a freelance guy, Krishna Pandit, who operates out of Kathmandu. He was very knowledgeable, pleasant and experienced, with excellent English and a really comfortable manner - just the right amount of information and friendly to talk to. He put together a program of the highlights of Kathmandu that covered a lot of ground and flowed well, but it didn’t feel we were rushed along.

We visited the main Durbar squares in Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur, all of which showed quite a bit of eathquake damage, but were still very interesting and great for photos. Between the two of us, we must have shot 3000 photos over the course of the nine days; both places are extremely photogenic. One slight annoyance is that every time we'd drive to another durbar, we had to pay about $10/person to walk around the neighborhood. This did not apply to the locals of course, and I assumed it would have been included in the tour, but apparently it is the way they are paying for the reconstruction. Krishna said the main city and national governments have not been too helpful because they are so corrupt, so the towns need to raise their own revenue. Which is all fine, it wasn't that much money in the scheme of things, but just be aware you need to bring a fair amount of Nepali cash for this, as it was $40 every time we reached a new tourist area. Fortunately the ATMs worked fine.

We also visited the Pashupatinath World Heritage Site area with the (public) cremations going on around the river, which was another fascinating site, as several cremations were going on at the time. Just a normal part of life there. The monkeys in that area were quite aggressive, however, so you had to be on your guard. We had lunch in a funky backpacker place in Thamel and also visited a few monasteries. What I found fascinating and did not know beforehand was how intertwined the Hundu and Buddhist religions are in Nepal, with seemingly very little conflict between the two populations.

With the hotel overlooking the Great Boudha Stupa, we made the 10-minute walk down there on several occasions. The light around dusk was amazing for photos, as was the crowd of Buddhist adherants who circled the stupa spinning the many prayer wheels. A stunning spot to visit in late afternoon. We had dinner one night on the rooftop restaurant of the Padma Hotel, overlooking the floodlit stupa - quite a scenic spot. The food outside the hotel was also good, although all pretty similar - a large thali plate with rice, three or four tasty vegetarian dishes and curries, and a somewhat watery dal soup (compared to Indian dal). All of it was good, but we kept finding ourselves back at the Hyatt for most dinners for their delicious menu of Indian and western dishes.

On the last day we drove out of the city for about 90 minutes and went on a nice, several-hour hike through the foothils. We were rewarded with stunning views of the Himalayas (which were difficult to see from town because of the foothills and the smog), and even caught a tiny glimpse of the top of Mount Everest..

Probably the biggest downside of the trip was the smog and the horrendous conditions of the road, both in terms of traffic and potholes. Driving around was not so fun, and it took awhile to get from place to place despite being only a few miles apart. We managed to track down my wife's old neighborhood, which had changed quite a bit given the influx of people to the capital city in recent decades - the population has more than doubled to 5 million over the last 20 years.

All in all a great visit, and a place I would highly recommend for three or four days, whether or not you plan to go trekking or see other parts of the country.

Bhutan to follow...

thanks for your amazing trip report. iam a local of kathmandu and have been to bhutan also. sometime i smile for a minute because of my country and get a chance to heard this kind of feedback. thanks for visiting our country.

Great report. Thanks. Looking forward to Bhutan. It is on our radar.

Glad to hear that you enjoyed Kathmandu and that my recommendations were helpful. The intertwining of Hinduism and Buddhism in Nepal is unique in my experience.

I look forward to reading about your time in Bhutan.

Thanks for sharing. I too enjoyed your report on your time in Nepal and await your posts on Bhutan.

Bhutan

From Kathmandu we flew the short leg to Paro, the town in Bhutan with the country’s only international airport, on the national carrier DrukAir. The flight was fine, a modern Airbus A320 with a professional crew, and it left punctually from Kathmandu. At check-in I had requested two sets of window-middle seats on the left-hand side in order to get a glimpse at Mount Everest, and we were not disappointed - about 25 minutes into the quick 45-minute hop to Paro, the black pyramidal hulk of Everest appeared clearly in our sights, and looked to be almost the same height as our cruising altitude (which, at 29,000 feet, it is, of course). A wispy contrail of cloud stretched east from the summit, testifying to the strong winds aloft, and it’s hard to imagine how people could possibly climb the exposed monster. It was also strange that most of the surrounding peaks were covered with snow, but Everest stood out as mostly a black hulk of rock. Very cool to see the legendary Sagarmatha, as the Nepalis call it, from the air. (I picked up another copy of Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” in the airport to re-read for about the fifth time. It’s one of the best adventure books ever written, in my view, and takes you inside the ill-fated 1996 expedition to the top of Everest.)

I had read about the harrowing landing at Paro, a narrow valley surrounded by mountains, and it was indeed a bit of a thrill ride. Not long after passing Everest, we started the descent to maybe 25,000 feet, passed closely over a mountain ridge, and I looked down to see a lovely deep valley with an airstrip almost directly below us, and wondered how the hell we were going to descend quickly enough to get down there. But our pilot made a tight left turn and descended, closely hugged the mountains as we dropped into the valley and followed it to the north end. Then he made a swooping 180-degree right turn at the top end of the valley, and dropped in to the airport in a southerly direction, landing smoothly and without so much as a bump of turbulence. I’m sure it is much hairier on windy or cloudy days, and the mountains and trees are as close off your left wing as I’ve ever flown, but overall it was a very smooth approach and landing. It was a beautifully sunny day in Paro and felt like about 65 degrees when we landed in the mid-afternoon. As the airport only receives a few flights per day, either on DrukAir or a second private carrier, Bhutan Airlines, immigration and luggage formalities were a breeze. (Our Bhutanese guide had recommended DrukAir as being more reliable, and indeed we took off promptly from Kathmandu while a Bhutan Air flight that was supposed to depart two hours earlier was still on the tarmac, for what that's worth).

Our guide, Tshewang Rin, met us outside the terminal for the one-hour drive to the capital city of Thimpo for our first night. One thing to note about Bhutan - from what I saw most of the country is mountains, which beautiful deep river valleys punctuating the landscape. Which means most of the driving is on winding mountain roads. Compared to Nepal, the roads were in excellent condition, the driving was smooth from that point of view. But if you suffer from the slightest of carsickness, bring along Dramamine or Quell or whatever. Our daughter took it and she was fine, but most of the driving was on narrow, winding roads, some with disconcertingly sheer drops hundreds of feet to the river below. But our driver Sangay did an excellent job throughout the trip, and there was not a lot of traffic in this rural mountainous country with a total population of only 700,000.

We stayed in the capital of Thimpu for only one night, which happened to be New Year's Eve, but we all were tired and conked out before the celebrations (I awoke for the countdown and again an hour or two later when the considerable number of stray dogs in town decided to go nuts for awhile). The notable thing about the towns in Bhutan is the beautiful and unique architecture - it really looks like nowhere else I've been. Stone or wooden buildings with intricate carved and painted wood trim around the doors, windows and rooflines, and often painted with animals, nature scenes and many phalluses (or is it phalli?). Obviously a fertility thing, but the wife and teenage daughter got a kick out of it. We visited the massive Tashi Choe dzong (fortress/monastery), but were not allowed to see the royal palace, home to the country's fifth king. His likeness is everywhere, and his father was the one who introduced democracy (almost against the peoples' will, according to our guide), so it remains a constitutional monarchy where the king appears to be widely respected and democracy is still somewhat in its infancy. We also visited a huge new Buddha still under construction on a nearby hill; apparently it is overseas money that built it, rich Buddhists from Singapore and elsewhere trying to boost their karma points. A nice view from the hill and a really giant Buddha, but as it is brand new it doesn’t hold much historical appeal.

We left Thimpu early the next day for the drive over the mountains and about 3 hours east to Punakha. From Dochula Pass, at around 10,000 feet elevation, the views of the Bhutanese Himalaya was outstanding. Many 7000-meter peaks, but none of the world’s 14 8000-meter ones, most of which reside in Nepal. Unlike Nepal, Bhutan does not allow their mountains to be climbed (for environmental and religious reasons, it appears), although trekking is allowed. The drive through the pass was gorgeous; steep mountains covered with pine and fir forests that appeared virtually untouched in most places.

Punakha is situated in a fertile river valley at much lower elevation, where they grow citrus and bananas in addition to rice and other crops. The notable sights were the 15th-century Divine Madman temple (which was fairly modest), and the stunning Punakha dzong, which is historically very old and important in Bhutanese culture – this was where the king and queen were married. The dzong is huge, incredibly photogenic, sitting right alongside the river, and had one of the most spectacular Buddhist temples I’ve ever seen.

We had a nice lunch at a place with a view over the valley toward the Divine Madman temple. A word about the food – I had been concerned about this because I had read that the national dish was “muchrooms, chilies and cheese” and that it was served everywhere. As I’m lactose intolerant (or as my wife says, it started with lactose but now I’m intolerant of a lot of things), I brought a case of granola bars and planned to get by on that.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised by the variety and tastiness of the food. A bit like Nepal, it was mainly vegetarian stir-fry dishes which were often excellent, lots of fresh spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes, etc. The meat was usually chicken, often chopped up with the bones and rather hard to eat, so I stuck to vegetarian most of the time and found it mostly fine. I asked the guide if this is what they ate, however, and he said no – they ate the much more spicy food. He ordered some of those local dishes, and the chilies were off the charts hot. I grew up on spicy Mexican food and enjoy Thai and Indian with a kick, but this was a whole different level of heat in these innocent-looking green chilies. Having said that, one dish was sliced potatoes with green chili in a very light cheesy sauce, and it was outstanding as long as you pushed the chilies aside – just enough heat to be deliciously Southwestern. But accidentally swallow one of those green chilies and it’s time to call the fire department.

We stayed one night in Punakha, and that’s when we started to notice the problem with the hotels and restaurants – they just weren’t heated very well. When organizing the trip, we opted not to pay what I thought was a very high upcharge for the Le Meridian – as I recall it was going to be a couple thousand dollars more for the four of us for several days, which seemed excessive. And the photos of the “standard” hotels looked fine – a bit rustic, but nothing like the dumps I used to stay in Siberia back in the Soviet days.

But we discovered that the Bhutanese are hardy mountain people and don’t worry too much about things like heating the rooms. This was particularly a problem back in Paro, where we spent the last two nights in order to climb to the famed Tiger’s Nest monastery. The “Tenzinling Resort” there was nominally fine, with large rooms and modern bathrooms. But they were heated by a single electric wall heater that did not put out nearly enough heat to warm the rooms. For while it was in the low-60s during the day, even T-shirt weather at times, with abundant warm sunshine at that altitude, as soon as the sun dipped over the horizon, the temperature dropped close to freezing. So even with our heaters cranked and an extra portable electric heater in each room, it was tough to get the rooms up to western-hotel heating levels. You basically had to huddle in bed with the electric blanket to get warm. Making things worse, the bathrooms were freezing in the morning and the hot water was unreliable or didn’t last long. And the lobby of the hotel, which was the only place to connect to wifi, was seriously about 45-50 degrees F., and none of the staff seemed to mind it. Same for breakfast in the morning, and most of the restaurants in town – you had to bundle up like you were going skiing just to have a meal. It wasn’t what we expected – maybe OK for backpackers, but not people expecting western-style hotel comfort. We gave the guide some grief for this, but we agreed with him that the few western-brand hotels really gouged the tourists because they can, and because they were full. He said the new Aman resort in Paro was $1800 per night!

So by the end, the lack of sufficient heat in the hotel rooms really put a damper on things; the kids both got colds and we were ready to leave right after we climbed the Tiger’s Nest, but we were not able to get the earlier flight back and had to spend another night in deep freeze. On the other hand, visiting in December was great for avoiding the tourist crowds, as we really didn’t see many other tourists at most of the sights. But my advice is to look closely at the hotel options, which we didn’t really do. Due to the “minimum spend” tourism requirement, we were paying $800/day for two rooms, and one would think the hotels would be about half that cost. But no way were these $200/night rooms – the guide admitted the room in Punakha was only $60/night, which begs the question of where the rest of the money goes – to the guide or the government? Admittedly we did not research this aspect well enough, but the fact is there is not yet a lot of western-style tourism infrastructure, and that which does exist, like the Aman or Le Meridian, charge exorbitant prices. I’m just surprised there appeared to be no middle ground between the places we stayed and the Le Meridian.

Other sights in Paro included the National Museum (also freezing, but interesting and not too long), and the Rinpung dzong. Finally, the highlight of the trip was the climb to Taktsang Monastery, better known as the Tiger’s Nest, clinging to the side of a mountain at around 10,000 feet. I wasn’t quite prepared for the difficulty of this hike - it’s pretty much a 700-meter or 2000-foot climb straight up the mountain to this famous monastery hanging off a sheer cliff face. It took us two hours to get up to it, and was a very strenuous hike to this weekend workout guy. The trail is wide in most places and not terribly frightening, it’s just the combination of thin air (starting at 8000 feet or so, equivalent to Vail or Aspen, I suppose) and vertical climb that really gets the heart and lungs going. We saw a fair number of not-too-fit, middle-aged Indian couples doing it, and some were really struggling, but as long as you take it slowly enough, I suppose most people can make it up. The last quarter of the hike is a lot of uneven stairs, mostly with railings, and bad knees are punished. But the views and photo opportunities are simply stunning, one of the great sights of the world. It is absolutely worth the challenge of the hike.

Upon finally reaching the monastery, we had to check our cameras and phones before entering to see several small temples tucked away inside the frigid building. (Being a cold morning, we were layered up when we started the hike at 8:30am in temperatures not much above freezing. But the combination of sunshine and the exertion if the climb soon had me stripped down to a T-shirt. Once we got to the Tiger’s Nest, though, I had to bundle up again to go inside. Those monks seem to live in constant 40-degree temperatures without a lot of heating sources readily apparent.)

The hike back down, while certainly easier, was not much quicker due to the rugged and often slippery surface of the dirt trail, and it took us about 90 minutes to make it back to the car at the trailhead, in time for a late lunch. But we all had a good sense of satisfaction along with about a thousand photos of this very photogenic place.

All in all, it was a fascinating trip to a place that I knew very little about, and came away with a great appreciation for the beauty of the country. Tshewang was, like Krishna, and outstanding guide, and we really enjoyed his company. He apologized for the hotel discomfort, and I would encourage people to explore the hotel options in more detail, as none of this was really made apparent to us when we booked the trip. The guide even said all of the money we paid goes to the government, which takes 38% of it and then only pays the guide after we’ve left. So who knows, but the hotels were really the only downside of a fun and interesting trip to a very unique country.

Bhutan is on my (very long) list, I’d have to go in summer with the crowds though, brrrr.

Great report, thanks.

The flight from Nepal to Bhutan sounds stunning and nerve-racking at the same time. You paint a beautiful tableau with your description of the country too.

Thanks for the report. It sounds as beautiful as I imagined. Thanks for the hotel tip. This is a huge thing. Being cold in a hotel would really put a damper on things for me as well, so you are right that hotel research is paramount. But I still want to go one day!

Can you provide the contact for your guide, Mr. Pandit. We're planning a nearly exact trip in April Thanks!

Guide informatio
 

Very interesting read. Can you please share your guide contact info in Kathmandu. Thanks a lot

Sorry for the very late reply! Obviously I’m not on here much these days.

I lost Krishna’s card sometime after the trip, but I googled him and I think this is him:

[email protected]

Good luck!