Bhutan has always been a special place to me ever since I started reading up about it for my first visit.
I am the guy with the jacket & beanie in case you want to put a face to the voice in your head 🙂.
This is the second time I am visiting this magical Himalayan kingdom covered in trees, rivers, monasteries & fortresses. No wonder it has the ‘Happiest Country in Asia’ title.
When me and my childhood friend Niranjan were brainstorming our new year plans, we stumbled upon the idea of taking a small group of adventurers along with us to celebrate New year on an epic road trip to Bhutan. We started working on it and it took more than a month to chalk out the entire adventure. When we started promoting it on his trekking group and other social media channels, we wanted to take only 9 people along with us but we were floored by the responses we received and the excitement of people to join us. Long story short we ended up taking a total of 33 people divided into 3 different groups. We also organized a ‘vacation briefing’ meetup to give them a brief overview about the vacation.
Here is my story on the whole journey which was a memorable experience to say the least. We had to adjust the itinerary (Rebook hotels, shift tiger’s nest to last etc) to accommodate the flight delay due to fog in Delhi on December 27th which shifted our departure to 28th.
PC : Soheil Taraporewala at Bangalore International Airport.
Day 2 : Paro Dzong & Market. Authentic Pizza in Paro – Must try.
P.C : Rajiv Krishnaswamy.
The Majestic Paro Dzong at night.
Photo credit Kishore Prahalad.
A walk to remember from Paro Market to our stay at holiday home, Paro
Day 3 : Drive to Thimphu.
Thimphu Square, Bike Ride to Chele La Pass.
Day 4 : Drive to Punakha via Dochula Pass, Chimi Lhakhang
New year Party celebration with cultural dance performance.
Day 5 : The Majestic Punakha Dzong, Suspension Bridge & Drive to Paro via Thimphu, Buddha Dordenma, Paro Market revisited for shopping,
Day 6 : Trek to Tiger’s Nest, drive to Phuntsholing.
And Finally. Thanks to Kishore Prahallad for most of the pictures above. I hope you enjoyed my pic-story.
