Up to the Tiger's Nest

Today is our last day in Bhutan and it turned out to be quite a day. At seven this morning we started out on the hike to the Tiger's Nest monastery, which is located 3000 feet above Paro Valley. You can see it waaaaaaaaaaay up on the side of a cliff, a small monastery which is wedged into a large cave on the face of a huge rock cliff. The hike starts out through a lovely forest of oak and pine trees and quickly starts up. You can see the monastery through the trees a lot of the way and it really looks far, far away. But after about 1 1/2 hours of steep climbing, you notice that you are about eyeball to eyeball with it. Then it disappears from view for awhile until you reach a lookout point and it is right there, across a deep ravine. This is one of those breath taking views that you really don't get to see very often. I would compare it to two other breathtaking scenes, Machu Picchu and Yosemite Valley. It's incredible how this monastery was built, almost 500 years ago (although the current monastery was rebuilt just a few years ago after it burned down in a fire).

Since we left so early, we were pretty much the only ones on the trail. At one point, Amy, Dorje and I put up some prayer flags that we had bought in Paro town. These flags are on a hill with a great view of the valley and the monastery. So the flags just wave in the breeze, sending your prayers out and about. They pretty much just stay where they are until they disintegrate. It was very nice of Dorje to suggest doing this, as I didn't see any other chillips (foreigners in Bhutanese) doing this.

You then have to go down some very steep, narrow steps that are right on the edge of a cliff, many thousands of feet down. Then, at the bottom of the ravine, there is a water fall and little creek that you cross on a bridge, with a water driven prayer wheel in its small house, continuously rotating, sending its prayers out to the universe. Then you head up to the monastery itself, which is quite nice with views of the valley. We checked out a couple of the temples (one of which had a great statue of Guru Rimpoche on his flying tiger, which is where this monastery got its start) and then just hung out on the balcony, looking at the view and just feeling the amazing energy in this place.

We spent about an hour here and then started down for the 1 1/2 hour walk down to the valley floor. At one point we made a small detour up to a very small monastery, kind of a branch of the Tiger's Nest, where monks come to meditate. This is monastery dedicated to Guru Rimpoche's main consort and there are a few relics here, including a footprint of Guru made in a rock (you see lots of these in different monasteries around Bhutan). The walk to this place was great, again pretty much straight up the side of the cliff, across a couple of creeks.

We headed down to the valley, stopping at the only small restaurant on the way. This is about 1/2 way up the cliff and is where the tourists who can't walk up can ride a horse. The view, again, are outstanding.

When we got back to the car, our driver, Rajim, had purchased a picnic lunch for us. We drove to an abandoned school, where King 4 had studied as a boy. We had a great warm lunch of red rice, momos (potsticker like things), ema datsi (chillies with cheese), veggies and fruit. There were cows and several dogs just hanging out with us.

For our last stop of the day we visited the Paro Dzong, where lots of young boys study. We got a great picture with four boys, ages 6 to 10, and they gave us a blessing with a red string you wear around your neck. Great kids. Even though these boys are studying some pretty serious stuff, boys will be boys, as they say, and they were always joking around and having fun.

We then spent a little time in town, ending up at an internet cafe, which happened to be owned by the Druk Air pilot who was to fly us out the next day. I asked him about the incredible landing in Paro and he said it took him a year until he was really confident landing there. He told us there are actually EIGHT turns that the plane has to make as it is coming into Paro. Wow!