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Bhutan

Saturday, April 8th, 2006

Bhutan images.
breeze Prayer flags on walking bridge in Paro…went in search of ibisbill.

b-ibisbill 01.jpg And there we found it.

pass

chortens

Chortens at the first pass. It was snowing but not too cold. We stopped at a funky teahouse.

us

The people are friendly, beautiful, and ruddy-cheeked from the altitude.

girl

smile

students

Students in Thimpu, the capitol, in traditional garb.

man in do0rway

Young Trongsa man
The houses followed the traditional style, too, and differed in materials or flourishes. Buddhist iconography was painted on most walls and trim of the most homes. This is a newly build house and devoid of any paintings.
house in country

Window detail below:
painted window

Detail of iconography:

b-house painting.jpg

The male myth–this protects the household from evil spiritsb-house painting 2.jpg:

Dragon is the symbol for Bhutan and is often found on buildings.

dragon on house

The first level is used as storage and for animals. The second level is living quarters and the top is left open and used for stoage, drying and animal fodder. The upper level also acts as a chimney.

columns

They also embellish the vehicles.

truck

Monastery eyes (see the eyes on the truck, too?)
monastery

young monks2

Sitting in on evening chants. These young monkettes were staying near our campsite and were very interested in the scope.

monks and scope

The dzongs were regional fortresses now used as government seats.

dzong

This is a detail of a dzong tower.

dzong top

b-dzong2.jpg

Roads were scary for me. I read there averages 17 curves to the km. in Bhutan. The main (read: only) road is the east-west highway, which is where we birded.

b-road & fog.jpg

b-road stretch.jpg

winding road

Prayer wheels are found in town squares, house-fronts and often along running streams. This one was at our first campsite.

p wheel

Center of town, Trashigang.

b-prayer wheel  Tashigang.jpg

Arts and crafts of Bhutan were everpresent.

old thanka

Old thanka, which we could not afford.

weaver

Young weaver

store

One-stop shopping.
And, of course, there were the birds.

large-billed crows Large-billed crows on huge rhododendron trees.

bp

blood pheasant

Blood pheasants

b-cutias.jpg

Cuddling cutias

b-wallcreeper.jpgWall creeper

barbet Golden-throated barbet
tawny fishowl

Tawny fish owl behind

b-black bulbul.jpgBlack bulbul

kf Crested kf

eagle

Mountain hawk-eagle

bf redstart

Blue-fronted redstart

wp

And, for Oen, the Darjeeling wp

We saw mammals, too.

deer Muntjak

baby macaque

There were many monkeys. This is a baby Assamese macaque.

langur Langur

The beauty of the countryside in Bhutan cannot be captured by my little camera.

camp view

Our first campsite gave us glimpses of the high country that we never could access because of our focus on maximizing our time in the most bio-diverse zones of the country.

Flat areas were at a premium and this campsite was shared with a cow-herding family who had reached it first but agreed to share. The ground cover was interesting.

green stuff

We found this cow tucked in for the night. Know not how he got there without upsetting our tents. In the middle of the night, he left and all we felt was the wind.

cow

This valley was where we saw the wintering black-necked cranes, one of the rarest in the world.

valley of the cranes

bnc

The crane — we were very lucky as only 3 remained from the wintering flock.

Bhutan is 80% forested, which you can’t really see in this photo but the ranges of mountains in the background are totally covered.

views

The mountains were divided by deep valleys and there were riversof all sizes and waterfalls around most bends.

gorge

Shallow gorge.

waterfall

Very high waterfall.

windy bridge

Another windy bridge with prayers flying.

Enough yakkin for now.

yaks

Smiles from Howie and Karen

smiley

Assam photos are coming next.

We are in India and on the way to Sikkim until the end of April.

buddah

Kaeng Krachan NP

Monday, February 13th, 2006

[It is wonderful reading your comments, good friends. Thank you.]
On our way to the largest park in Thailand, we stopped in Ban Pak Thale to find the spoon-billed sandpiper. Once again we were trudging on mud dikes between salt pond shallows. Many shorebirds were feeding in the area so it was a matter of looking at everything that might be THE sandpiper. Dow, Sam’s driver, was a big help in getting us to the right area and he was spared the hot sun and went off in search of lunch. After spotting the bird we walked around some more and saw a couple more of the sbsps and I tried taking photos of them, to no avail, alas. By the time we to to KKNP, it was late afternoon.

Headquarters Campground 1/28

The deal is to buy your entrance fee and camping permits a day ahead. We weren’t sure where we wanted to be, so we paid for 2 nights at Ban Krang and one at the top, Panoen Thung. They also offer you a 1400 Baht/day pick-up to take you up to the campgrounds, which we declined. Sam had sussed it out and said we could probably share a ride up there with other campers, so we decided to try that.

09 dusky leaf monkey.jpg

Our first experience camping in Thailand was an eye-opener. Especially for me, as I forgot my earplugs. We’re used to camping in designated spots and all the usual regulations that campgrounds have, so when we got there and saw tents around the lake (there is a dam/reservoir near the headquarters), we picked a spot along the lake, not too close to the next guy. Then we went off in search of some food; we took a walk back toward the resorts, about half a mile towards the dam. When we returned the space we put between us and the other tents were taken up by more tents. It turned out that tents kept springing up all night and by morning, it looked like a different campground. The worst of it was being woken up at 4:30 by the sound of tents being taken down!

[read on]