The Country of Happiness and the Land of Thunder Dragon

Bhutan, is better known as the Country of Happiness. I never knew this fact before, but Bhutan is the 8th Happiest country in the world, and the most happiest country in Asia. And we could see it there, everywhere. All smiles, everyone seemed happy, even the driver of our bus after he was caught speeding. He happily gave away the fine of Nu 1750 (equivalent to INR 1750).

The trip was a kind of a tiny summer vacation for us, since it had been raining fire all over India those days (Last week of May). Once we boarded the flight to Paro (the international airport of Bhutan) from Kolkata, we never saw sweat for the next 5 days. Oh, Indians and Bhutanese don't need VISA to travel across the borders. Although they check your passports since the immigration authorities would still keep track of your movement, but Bhutan has very friendly relations with India. So much so, almost everyone understand and speaks Hindi quite fluently. The Paro airport is very different from all the other airports I have seen. Although it's a small one, there was something special about it. A slight drizzle welcomed us as we stepped out of the aircraft. And this is the first photo we clicked.

Paro International Airport, Bhutan

And there was a big billboard with a couple's photo. I tried to figure out what were they advertising, until a few days later, I came to know that the picture was of the King and the Queen of Bhutan.

We then boarded our tour bus, and set off for our hotel in Thimpu, the capital city of Bhutan, which was our base station for the next 3 days.

The main cities of Bhutan are Thimpu, Punakha and Paro. Punakha was Bhutan's old capital till 1955. Bhutan is very sparsely populated, and the approximate population of the country is about 7.5 lakhs. The eastern part of the country is where most of the development has happened.

Bhutan's currency is ngultrum which is fixed to the value of Indian rupee. So, you would not need to carry any local currency. The INR notes are accepted everywhere, and they have exactly the same value.

In a span of few days, we visited dozens of places. Mostly cultural and religious sites, since the ethnic culture has remained intact and untouched by the westerners because of it's isolation from the rest of the world till 1960s. Rightly so, Bhutan has been named as the The Last Shangri-La.

Travelling to a new country, and not trying out their traditional dress!!! That's just not possible, especially when your wife is so adamant to getting clicked in the foreign attire. There you go. The dress for the men is called "gho" and for women, it's called "kira".

That's not a real bull.

We visited a lot of Dzongs (Fortresses, now converted to administrative buildings), and Monasteries, and other places of importance.

Buddha Doderma Statue, Thimpu

Paro international Airport, Bhutan

A random click from the streets

I excelled at their National Sports. My second arrow hit the bull's eye. The wife did terribly bad, and almost missed a live human. 

Archery

If you are interested in looking at more photos, we have shared an album with a few hundreds photos. Do check them out. Some of them are really beautiful.

When the 5 days were over, and we were as happy as all the people in Bhutan, we had to sadly depart from Paro. As soon as we landed in Kolkata, we were already thinking about the rising temperatures, office, traffic and such things. That was a well deserved break from our busy life, but a very short one. I hope there would be many more stories and trips soon.

Out and away

For the very first time, I would be travelling abroad in a few minutes. As happy as I am with the above fact, for this trip I have been forced to be away from my laptop and the internet world. I don't consider smartphone at par with a full-keyboard laptop. But the important reason of me getting away with that: The wife is an equally addict when it comes to our phones.

So be it... I will prove it beyond doubt to all who think I can't breathe without my laptop, once and for all, to be dead wrong.

Now, waiting at the Kolkata airport. This is my first time here, although I have been to Kolkata quite a few times before. Not very crowded, probably because its a weekday?

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A trip to Kolkata - Part I

This was on the cards for a very long time. I flew to Kolkata on 28th of February. It was an early morning flight, 6 in the morning. And for that, I had to take a cab at 4:30 in the morning. I never like to carry lots of stuff with me, so I managed to get my things packed in 15 minutes, on that very day, somewhere around 3:30 in the morning and stepped into the waiting cab.

The driver was probably busy watching India vs England world cup match earlier that day. We had a small conversation about that, and then, the cool morning breeze started lulling him to sleep. I could see his eyelids fluttering in the rear view mirror. I was a little scared, but some kind of an alarm seemed to wake him up every now and then. I tried to find out the source, and realized that the cabs were fitted with speed governors which would not allow them to go over 80 kmph. Wow!!! I am saved.

I was relieved, the moment the driver dropped me off at the airport. Come on, I still had hopes that India would qualify for the next round, and I was not going to miss that. This time around, with Sachin perhaps playing his last world cup is the best chance.

Kolkata, after so many years!!!! Yellow Ambassador Taxis!!!! breathing out thick black smoke!!! Perfect. A sign board said, "Welcome to Kolkata".

Since it was a Monday, I had to walk into the office the same day. I wasn't tired though. I dumped my luggage in my guest house and hired a "Yellow Taxi" for office which was about 5 kms away. In that part of Kolkata, traffic seemed to be much better than what I am used to in Bangalore. But, within a few minutes, I also realized that there were literally no rules for vehicles. Cars, bikes criss-crossing all over, screeching and honking all around, finally I reached office. It was a big big building, Technopolis in Salt Lake. I had heard a lot of about Salt Lake. I should say that Salt Lake was well planned, with more trees than I expected. Fortunately, the weather wasn't that bad for the whole 2 weeks of my stay in Kolkata.

Meetings!!!!! Ummm, of late, I have been attending so many of them. A short introduction with everyone, and it was lunch time. Yippee....Pizza Hut with Suman and Cameron.

To be continued...