Howie-n-Karen: Asia

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

And there we found it.

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

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

Students in Thimpu, the capitol, in traditional garb.

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.

Window detail below:

Detail of iconography:

The male myth–this protects the household from evil spirits:

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

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.

They also embellish the vehicles.

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

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

The dzongs were regional fortresses now used as government seats.

This is a detail of a dzong tower.

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.

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

Center of town, Trashigang.

Arts and crafts of Bhutan were everpresent.

Old thanka, which we could not afford.

Young weaver

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

Large-billed crows on huge rhododendron trees.

Blood pheasants

Cuddling cutias

Wall creeper

Golden-throated barbet

Tawny fish owl behind

Black bulbul

Crested kf

Mountain hawk-eagle

Blue-fronted redstart

And, for Oen, the Darjeeling wp

We saw mammals, too.

Muntjak

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

Langur

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Shallow gorge.

Very high waterfall.

Another windy bridge with prayers flying.

Enough yakkin for now.

Smiles from Howie and Karen

Assam photos are coming next.

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

Tags: Birding Asia, birds, Travel, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 8th, 2006 at 7:06 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.