Bhutan is not very far from India, but there are no direct flights from Mumbai this time of year. We spent a night in Kolkata on the way out, and came back through Delhi.

Geographically, Bhutan is right in the middle of the Himalayas, and very similar to Nepal. That Indian continental plate is the fastest moving in the world, and all of India is slamming into Bhutan, Nepal & Tibet at several cm/year, causing the huge uplift in mountains there in the past several million years.

Not labeled, but Mt. Everest is right around the 'L' of Nepal, and we flew right past it on the return.

Bhutan is one of the very few sizeable countries where the capital has no airport! There is just one international airport, in Paro -- an hour's drive from the capital, in Thimpu.

Bhutan is not very big! If it were a US state, it would be 42nd, between West Virginia and Maryland. However, the roads really wind around a lot, and our 8-day trip only got us a small fraction of the way across the country. The tourists who get to eastern Bhutan are the ones who are on three-week trips.

But that's OK -- knowing nothing about the country at all, we had plenty to see in the areas we went: Paro, Thimpu, and Punakha, and the Pobjikha valley.

Leaving the Mumbai airport, Astro poses with a couple of the Jet flight attendants.

Leaving the Mumbai airport, Astro poses with a couple of the Jet flight attendants.

We've landed in Paro, met our guide and driver, and driven to Thimpu, the capital. And here's our guide, Sonam. He lives in a small house a few km outside of Thimpu. He went to university studying business in northeast India, and then decided to be a guide. He took two years of government training, and now has been guiding for about five years.

In Sonam's class, about a third of the trainees were women. We saw a couple of women guides, but not very many. I got the impression some of them dropped out of the job market after having kids.

Not seen here is Prakash, our driver. But we'll see more of him later!

First destination: the main Bhutanese government building -- one of many Dzong across the country.

They look like cherry blossoms, but our guide says they are peaches.

Inside the Dzong! Each of Bhutan's 22 districts has a Dzong. This is the largest and most important, and is the head of the civil government for the summer. It's also a monastery, and a fort, and a lookout for invading armies. It was originally built in the 1100s.

We could walk around the courtyard, but not go in the buildings. They are all active government offices!

Now we visit the central market in Thimpu. The city has a population of 100,000 (or 1 lakh in the sanskrit number system, which India and Bhutan both use). At least 1% of the population must've been at the market, which was packed.

It's two floors: downstairs for products imported from India, and upstairs for the Bhutanese-sourced stuff! Here we are on the lower floor, looking at red rice, which is served in large quantities at nearly every meal.

A couple of rice vendors! We bought some rice from these women.

Check out that market! It was nice and busy, with a lot of produce. This is the floor for imported produce (i.e., Indian).

And now we're upstairs in the Bhutanese section. Yes: mandarins and bananas, grown in Bhutan! There are apparently some low-elevation parts of the country, toward the south near Bangladesh, which are more tropical than I'd realized. And, later in the week we did see some alpine bananas growing above 7000'.

And outside, the squash vendor with her two kids.

Check it out! Hanging up are string after string of dried Bhutanese yak cheese! Each cube is a mouth-sized portion. They are real cheese, but dried in the sun for a week until they are super hard. In front, that's fresh cheese (white), and butter (in the yellow bags).

Astro checks out the butter, and the fresh cheese. The fresh cheese is used for Bhutan's national dish, ema datshi ('chili cheese').

Piper gets ready to chew on a grain ball of some sort. These were actually really good -- kind of a molasses + crisped rice creation.

Fiddlehead ferns!

And right up fron here, these are cakes of yeast! Apparently they are for making beer and wine at home. I've never seen so much yeast at a time... the largest serving size I know of is about a teaspoon.

And outside at the night market in the evening.

We spent two nights in Thimpu. There are more stray dogs in Thimpu than anywhere else I have ever been! The hundreds of stray dogs have long conversations at night, and the the hotel even included a nice set of earplugs in our room for those not wanting to participate

I went out to walk around the city at night, and I came across these lucky dogs here. Why lucky? Because at 9 PM, the butcher shops wash their floors, and sweep all the scraping out to the dogs.

Here's a different meat stall a few blocks away. Furthermore, I found that due to a holiday, all of the meat shops have been shut down for the last month. They just re-opened, and this was the first 'Free Meat Night!' for the dogs in many weeks. They were definitely excited.

In the morning, he head out on a trail, to climb a hill to a monstery. Astro races up the trail. We're headed to the Tango Gompa Monastery.

Heidi and Piper!

Astro is now motivated.

Taking a short break on the 2 km trail.

Halfway up, we come upon our first prayer wheel. That's our guide Sonam standing on the left with Heidi.

The deal here is that the prayer wheels were originally put up so that prayers could be done by Buddhist followers who wanted to pray, but were not able to read. They could spin the wheel, and the prayer would essentially get read to the wind, as the words passed by.

Direction is important: only spin the prayer wheels clockwise! If you walk through the pedestal, you must also walk only clockwise. Astro is properly following directions here.

Finn and Astro spin it together.

It's about a 45-minute hike up the hill to the monastery. Monks are coming down! Note that thunder dragon, which is the Bhutanese national symbol, and which I love a lot. Bhutan is definitely The Land of the Thunder Dragon, and they are all over.

And it's the monks of the monastery! They spend about three years up here. We chatted.

Entering the monastery.

Looking down the valley that we walked up. The building is beautifully perched on the hillside.

I think Piper must've taken this panorama on my phone. Nice shot!

Another prayer wheel as we come inside.

Inside the walls of the monastery. There are about 100 monks who live here full time.

Note that there is no real separation of church and state in Bhutan. It's a Buddhist country, and there is a 'religious king', who is part of the government and who has basically equal stature with the king.

Astro battles with Sonam.

Piper checks out that detail work! The carving and painting of things like this in Bhutan is amazing, of course.

Here's Piper about to go into the temple itself. No photos allowed there! There were a lot of large golden Buddhas, and some butter scuptures, and it was fascinating.

The sacred objects (nangten) of 1st and 2nd floor is temporarily shifted to the dinning hall located behind the temple, all devotees kindly proceed to dinning hall for receiving blessing from the sacred object. Thank you for the visit.

Two guide figure out a plan. Yes -- they all are approved by the government, and wear similar outfits.

I love this sign at the base: "Please come back in three years!"

Now we're back in Thimpu, and checking out the very large Buddha statue, the Buddha Dordenma. It is painted gold, and is very large. Our guide Sonam didn't know the whole story here, and it was hard to find much online. But he says that this was funded largely by foreign donations, including perhaps China, and Sony/Ericsson, and some governments.

Of the tallest sculptures in the world, nearly all the large ones are Buddhas. There is a real competition going on in recent years to build bigger and bigger Buddhas, with more and more gold. As of 2018, the largest is a 128-meter one in China. This one, at 51 meters, is about 30th on that list, though certainly the largest ever in Bhutan.

Piper captures that Sun silhouette!

Looking down on Thimpu from the Buddha! Population here in the capital city is 100,000 -- which I always figured was one of the world's smallest capitals. Surprisingly, there are plenty of legitimate countries with smaller capitals: Leichtenstein (4400), Malta (6400), Belize (16,000), Andorra (22,000), and Brunei (28,000) for instance... not to mention all of the island nations with their own often tiny capitals.

And, we're back in town walking through the Memorial Chorten, a stupa near the center of Thimpu, which has apparently been there since the 12th century. Note the sign here: "All foreign visitors except those paying the minimum daily package rate of US $250 will be charged entry fees as follows." So, if you are from India / Bangladesh / Mauritius, you need to pay up, but everyone else already has.

Reflections of prayer candles at the Memorial Chorten.

There are a lot of people doing prayer here. The wheels that they're carrying are the same idea as the large prayer wheels that Astro and Finn liked to spin... they spin around, and this allows the words to be repeated over and over.

Oh, this was cool! So, we visited a small paper factory in the hills outside Thimpu. The paper is all made from the pulp of some stringy plants which looked a little like agaves. They're cooked, and here the fibers are separated by hand.

Here she's cooking the fibers a second time.

Here she's cooking the fibers a second time.

She lays it down on a stack... there are at least several hundred wet sheets below it.

Peeling the screen off and bringing it back for another layer.

That's a stack of hundreds of sheets of fresh wet paper.

Then the sheets gets pressed and squeezed. From my experience at squeezing wet paper together, it will always stick. But for whatever reason, that's not the case here.

After squeezing it dry, then they peel the paper off the stack in the foreground, and and adhere each individual sheet onto a hot metal surface to get it flattened! The paper dries in place there, and then gets peeled off. You can see all the wires going into those drying racks -- they put out a lot of heat! All that Bhutanese hydropower going to good use.

Archery is the national sport in Bhutan. It's famous, and they're proud of it. I had even seen the Bhutanese national team shooting in El Paso many years earlier.

But, read those rules: "Our national sport of archery can be played truly in our national dress only. Hence, entry for practicing archery on this national archery stadium shall be permitted to those coming in national dress only."

Fortunately, these archers are all following the dress code. Note that all four of them are using fancy compound bows here -- with wheels and pulleys, which give a lot of mechanical advantage. The alternative is to use a traditional simple bow, which is just a single piece of wood + string. It's much much harder -- there's a huge difference.

One of the archers came over to chat with us. All of them were shooting well (by my standards): it's a 140 meter distance, and most shots got within a meter of the target.

Also in Thimpu, a quick trip to see the takins, Bhutan's national animal, which is kind of like a gigantic fuzzy ox-goat with long horns and two toes. OK, this was a little bit disappointing. The takin is an amazing animal, but the `Takin Refuge' just has some animals in fenced enclosure.

Our guide Sonam walks down the hill with Astro.

Bhutan is alleged to be the only legitimate country in the world with no traffic lights. But they do have traffic, and they do have signallers... they just employ people to wave their hands instead! We passed the single controlled intersection in the whole country -- in the capital, Thimpu.

One thing you don't see: rickshaws! Despite being the main mode of transport for many in India, they are not used here. Also, strangely, no chickens. "There are some chickens grown, but they are all in the eastern part of the country."

We're driving out of Thimpu, over to the high-elevation plains of Pukuru. We went over Dochula Pass, at 3100 m (10,200'). We can see many of Bhutan's highest peaks here.

They could be good for climbing, but... not allowed! In fact, almost all of Bhutan's high mountains are closed off. They have religious significance, and they're not allowed to be climbed. "The highest peak -- it will probably remain unclimbed forever. It is too special to climb."

There is some high-elevation trekking, but it is not nearly as big a thing here as in Nepal.

NB: That's Bhutan's highest peak, Ganakar Punsum, on the far right of the map and just off the edge of my photo. At 24,840 it's a few thousand feet short of Everest, which is 100 miles to the west, just before you get to Kathmandu.

Bhutan may have an image of peacefulness, but it has been in many violent conflicts, including recent ones with Tibet. Here at Dochula Pass is a monument to 108 Bhutanese soldiers who were killed when fighting against India in 2003. There are 108 chortens (aka stupas).

More of the stupas at Dochula Pass.

And here we all are! The peak between Heidi and Piper is Masang Kang (6590 m), which seems to have no English wikipedia page.

Astro will never turn down a friendly visit with a dog!

Astro will never turn down a friendly visit with a dog!

OK, now we've made it out to Punakha. It's a different district (one of Bhutan's 20), so they have their own Dzong, which is the government building. This here is, indeed, the administration building for the region.

The Punakha Dzong Zhong is on a jetty, surrounded by two rivers. This one here is known as the Female River, and the one on the right side (not visible) is the Male River. "It is because of the rivers' personalities. The Male is more louder and faster. It is too dangerous. The Female river is much softer."

Astro is walking across the bridge.

We were walking across the bridge too, but then we stopped. Too many fish to feed!

The Dzong is the local government headquarters, and also a monastery, and a temple, and a defensive fort. Lots of monks here!

Toward the entrance to the temple (see the shoes lined up there -- and no photos allowed in the temple, as is the norm).

Piper and Finn check out that always amazing woodwork.

Astro and Finn do not always agree on where we should go next.

Astro reflects.

The Dzong is bordered by the two rivers (Male and Female). We walked over the Female one to get to the Dzong. Now, we've driven 10 km up-river, and are about to raft down, to pass under the same bridge.

The river was pretty flat, with a few gentle rapids. Nothing crazy... EXCEPT FOR THE WIND!!!! It was totally out of control. We had a super-intense headwind the entire trip down. It was really hard to paddle. We had the worst possible boat (that is, a large floaty raft, with lots of surface area, and not very many people in it, and we're all lightweights). Hey, we made it... but super slow and super tired from our 'gentle' trip.

Heidi and Astro supervise from the center.

Rafting the Female River!

We have never been more thrilled to see our vehicle! That was an intense trip.

Yout can't tell, but it's now the next morning. We are back at the same bridge over the Female River as we started rafting from yesterday... but today, we're hiking up to a temple!

Piper is super-stoked to be putting on the fun-screen this morning. Go Piper go!

Astro has not yet developed quite as much love for the fun-screen as Piper has.

I don't know why, but we ended up with a lot of selfies on the bridge.

I am gnawing on a hunk of dried yak cheese to keep me occupied on the trail. I'm getting more experienced, so this one I actually finished off in less than an hour.

You can see the temple tower on the hill left of center. Walking up, we pass through some really beautiful and amazing terraced fields. A lot of these photos are Piper's -- she is much better at convincing Finn and Astro to pose for her, than I am!

Beans starting to grow! You can see the trail we follow on the hillside; the first zig-zag is the site of a prayer wheel you'll see in a few more photos below.

A nice cow being walked up the path.

And a horse!

Wow! Check out all that agriculture. We were pretty early in the season, so the fields are not naturally green yet. All of these are irrigated from run-off from the mountains. The rains and monsoons will come in a few months, which will irrigate any of the fields not yet growing, such as much of the rice.

This woman was on the ground planting chiles, and giving them their first drink of water.

It's Piper's boots!

This is the secret behind-the-scenes photo of Piper and her boots.

Piper looks kind of regal here. Maybe she could be the next Queen of Bhutan.

Piper and Finn!

Heidi and Finn both race up the mountain, though I'm not sure they're heading in the same direction.

Astro starts off with Sonam, but quickly runs ahead. Any excuse to stick her hand in front of my lens, she'll take.

Sonam.

At the first trail switchback, we find our first prayer wheel! -- or actually three, if you look close. Like the others we've seen, you must spin them clockwise, and walk through the structure in a clockwise direction.

And now we're up top! This is the Khamsum Yulley stupa. It's more vertical than most others we visited, and was really pleasant.

None of the temples allow photos inside, so I'll tell you what they feature:

• A lot of gold Buddhas.
• Often some very large murals showing the life history of Buddha. They can be really detailed, and the story is very clear from the illustrations.
• Some sculptures, many made of butter.
• Often some candles.
• Small offerings of fruit, rice, candy, etc.
• A guy selling water.

Looking down from the temple terrace.

That's our river that we rafted yesterday, and you can see nearly our whole route. The Dzong is just barely out of view on the horizon, but you can see a handful of boats on the river if you zoom in, as well as the bridge at which we started (far right).

Piper's photos of the architecture.

Check out that hopper!

I try to impress Astro with some fancy camera trick.

Back at the bottom, we have some lunchables. Check out that red rice, cabbage, and greens.

We heard mixed stories as to whether the food we were given was traditional, or tourist food, or what. I think this was more-or-less what normal people eat, although they usually have much more rice, and it is a whole lot more spicy.

Bhutan has some great stray dogs. Here are three of them which we played with during lunch.

Oh look! We're on another suspension bridge, with more prayer flags!

Prayer flags galore! The idea here is essentially the same as the prayer wheel: write the prayer down, let it wave in the wind, and the prayer will happen.

I spent 15 years living in Boulder, Colorado and it seems like every third house there has prayer flags in front. But, I bet these are put up by people who can actually read the script mor frequently than in Boulder.

Nice pano of the bridge, by Piper.

This was not "Bhutan's longest suspension bridge" as we originally thought, but "a local bridge which is pretty long." Maybe it was 200 feet across. Still, a great bridge.

Astro tries to convince me that the black pipes going across the bridge are carrying sushi, because she can see some seaweed coming out of them.

There was an extremely cute and friendly dog at the other side. Finn is a big fan of Tintin and wanted to adopt it and call it Snowy. It really was a nice creature.

Well, we're off at another temple! You may sense a theme here... our basic plan for pretty much every day in Bhutan was:

• Hike toward some temples.
• See some temples.
• Eat rice.
• See another temple or two!

Piper checks out the back of the temple, but is unaware of the all-seeing eye above her!

A couple of stupas above the valley.

Oh look! We're headed to another temple. This was a pretty famous one. It was alternately described as a temple to a 'divine madman,' or dedicated to a hugh wooden phallus that he apparently carried around, and used it as an educational tool, and also killed a demon using it. It was a little hard to keep straight the stories from our guide, and from the sign, which had some overlap but not a lot.

Anyhow, the gift shop vendors in the area definitely cash in on the whole phallus thing, as you might imagine. No photos, but they sell many many hand-carved laquered wooden organs to tourists, for sure.

Oh yes... anything Finn does, Astro does as well!

One thing inside every temple seems to be a set of ornate butter sculptures. Photography is prohibited in the temples, so I don't have any photos. But this guy is delivering a huge sack of butter -- or actually solidified vegetable oil -- for carving.

Yes, that monk is riding a dog.

A lot of the buildings have large phalli on them. "But it is not for fertility. It is to chase off the evil spirits. Although sometimes it is for fertility, if they want to have a boy, or a girl."

In the mountains, a grocery story phallus.

A nice restaurant tipping box with dual phalli.

Sonam is showing us a movie of a tiger which has just been seen crossing one of the mountain roads! We didn't end up seeing any (or snow leopards, despite Astro's jacket), but we sure looked!

We didn't see any tigers, though.

At dinner: "Here mommy. I'm going to give you a backrub. Just relax, OK?"

We're driving on some really twisty mountain roads to the next valley over -- the Phobjikha Valley.

On one of the high mountain passes, and stop for tea and bisbuits. Some dogs come over to visit as well. This does not look like a good idea!

At our tea stop, Sonam finds a kitty for Astro.

YAK YAK YAK!!!!! Heidi spies several yaks as we go across the pass.

Yaks block the road! As a precautionary measure, some yaks also leave mines to inhibit future travel.

And on the next pass over, there are even more beautiful yaks!

We're at the Gangteng Monastery. This is one of the oldest monasteries in Bhutan.

All of these monasteries have amazing woodwork. Here's someone making it, as his son is watching a movie.

Monks inside the Gangtey Monastery.

After the monastery, we're walking through the town heading downhill into a short trek. This woman is drying yak meat on her roof.

Emergency!! Astro needs to go potty!! According to our visas, our travel permission can be revoked for using the side of the road (for real). Luckily, we talk with a friendly family who lets us use their potty.

Astro climbs back to the road after using the potty.

We've walked from the monastery through the village, and now we're headed downhill through the Phobjika Valley.

Heidi crosses the river!

And what's that thing behind her, that goes right over the river? It's a water-power prayer wheel! That right: it will keep spinning 24-7 and silently reciting prayers, even if no one is there to spin it.

We walk a couple of miles total (all downhill!), through a really nice forest and grasslands.

We've walked a long way down the valley. These tall sticks all host prayer flags. These are all for a recently deceased family member: 108 poles, white flags, put up 45 days after death.

Heidi has found a tooth! Piper studies it, and Sonam's guide friends eventually determine it to be a yak.

Finally, we're descending into the valley floor.

Sonam crossing the bridge.

Check out those cows behind me!

Now that we're on the valley floor, we head to lunch. It's in the house of a local farmer. Astro climbs over the fence, as Heidi and Sonam watch from the deck.

And here's the owner of the house, who has cooked for us!

Oooh! Yes, we have yak butter tea! It's quite famous across Bhutan. And it basically tastes like... butter. The brown comes from some tea + milk that are added, but there is a definite layer of butter on top. And the puffed rice? That's for floating in the tea!

Upstairs in her house, she bring out lunch. She lives here now with one son... the rest of her family has moved to the city. But she still keeps farming here. All of the vegetables were ones she planted and harvested herself. And she has one cow to make milk and butter. We had a fantastic lunch with her.

Astro loves the butter.

And we have... rice, spicy cheese, greens, peppers, omelet, and potatoes.

And to wash it all down, don't forget the home-brew Bhutanese moonshine, poured out of a plastic jug!

"Oh, Piper, why don't you try some?" says Heidi. It's certainly enough to keep Piper away from anything like that soon.

And we head on out.

The scene here is looking down the valley floor. The farmhouse is across the valley on the left, a kilometer or two away. We're at the black-necked crane center. Wow!

This is a really cool facility that has been working to monitor and study these huge birds. There are 10,000 of them, and they all live in Indian/Bhutan/China. They love the cold, so they just come here for the winter, and then for the summer they head back to the super-high elevations.

This valley is the winter home for about 500 of them. Unfortunately, nearly all of them had already left for the season when we got there. But not all! The friendly guy running it tells us to come back at 6 PM and maybe we'll get lucky. Sure enough... he's set up some spotting scopes, and we see four birds on the valley floor (at least a kilometer away - they are tiny!).

The actual birds are very much human-sized.

At our hotel for the night. That is not a crane! But we did have a lot of beautiful fog.

Check it out -- it's the (upcoming) Sixth King of Bhutan, born in 2016 and here playing with a fancy yellow car!

His father is the current and Fifth King, and pictures of the royal family are all over the country, including this bar. Bhutan has moved slightly toward a democracy -- there is an elected Prime Minister, but the king remains much more influential.

We did the long drive in the morning, and now we're back in Thimpu for lunch. This is an interesting restaurant in an old mud building. We're looking for four-leaf clovers (many found).

They are not ant larvae... but puffed rice for the yak butter tea!

Astro catches the wind!

We wander outside the restaurant, and come across something anomalous: an employee in Bhutan, who is not wearing the government-mandated native Bhutanese clothing while on the job!

According to our guide: yes, you are allowed to wear a t-shirt and jeans at home. But when working, it must be traditional clothing always. The king decrees it will be this way, so it is! This can seem a little controlling, but perhaps it is well intentioned and effective in maintaining the country's identity and independence.

Now we're back in Paro, which is where the airport is and where we started. We have two days left. First, let's get dressed up for some traditional Bhutanese archery!

Finn gets on his dress.

And Piper is the first go to! We start off doing some heavy weighted darts. Note all of the archery equipment that Sonam is holding.

At close range! Astro is an expert at these darts.

Oh look! Astro got a bullseye...

And now it's time for the real bow and arrow!

I have to say, this was really hard. I mean, I thought I must have shot a bow and arrow in my life before... like, at 'Field day' in PE, or at a resort activity one time. But maybe those were new high-tech bows. There was nothing easy about this. Just look at it: there's nothing keeping the arrow aligned. No tube for it to travel along. No cut-out to keep it going in a straight line. So, even doing the most basic shot -- "shoot an arrow in a straight line for 15 feet" -- was really hard.

With an hour's practice, both Finn and Piper did eventually hit the target. But it was hard! Our target was at about a 10-meter range; we watched the professionals do it from 140 meters.

Finn collects his arrows for another round.

Heidi does really well!

Go Piper go!!

Is it excitement? Is it horror? What is Piper thinking right now?

None of my arrows went anywhere near the target. By the end of an hour, Finn and Piper had gotten a handful of hits onto the target from a distance of about 7 meters.

Just another 193 meters to go until they are competitive with the best traditional Bhutanese archers.

I've never seen Game of Thrones, but this shot looks vaguely like what I picture it might be about? Bring on the ancient warriors with long flowing hair gliding through the mountains...

Astro takes a double-fisted approach to archery.

Well, there's our calendar shot for the year!

We spend a couple of hours in downtown Paro doing tourist things. One item they push heavily are the cordyceps, as advertised here in the in-flight magazine of Bhutanese Royal Airlines. Points to the copy-writer here... that's quite a memorable headline (even with the mis-punctuation).

It's not a plant, it's not a worm, it's a mushroom with healing powers.

A cute lost-key stall on the main street in Paro.

Looking at this now, I admit to some suspicion that perhaps these keys were planted there a year ago, and will never be claimed, but stand only as symbolic indicator of honesty. For what it's worth, however, another tourist's photo from a few months earlier shows none of these same keys, so perhaps there is more legitimacy than I had originally thought.

We drive a few minutes outside of Paro to the farmhouse at which we'll stay for the night. This is a very normal house -- similar in spirit to the pair that we had lunch in a few days earlier. All of them are three stories, and made of mud and bricks.

A lot of times I would ask "How old is that building?" and the answer would usually be that it was built in 1200 or 1600 or something a crazy long time ago. "But it has been revised continually since then." None of the existing parts might still be there, but the concept of a building on that site was many hundreds of years old.

The back of the house overlooks the apple trees which are the family's main source of revenue at the farm. They tell me that they have 130 apple trees. "We water them, and take care of them. At the end of the season, the harvesters come, and pick them all for sale to Bangladesh."

And this is the family we're staying with! That's the mother on the left, and her daughter.

Palden and her new husband Tshering Dorjee -- newlyweds who were married in this house three days ago! She works at a bank in Paro, and he's an a trekking guide with a company called World Expeditions. Mostly his clients are from Australia, and they do some high-elevation trips -- up to 7100 m, on a three-week trek.

Palden is showing us wedding pictures on her phone!

So this wedding was just outside the house, three days ago! So cool. This is a traditional Buddhist wedding. "My parents got married in this house. And my sister. And my grandparents. And also my..."

And it's time for dinner! We're pretty used to the Bhutanese staples by now: red rice, greens, chili+cheese, asparagus, potatoes.

We've gotten a lot of eggs as well but I think they were making them just for us, mayber after taking too literally our discussion about not eating meat, but being OK with eggs.

Surprisingly, there really are no chickens in western Bhutan. You'd think they would be all over the place, since they grow fast, and they're flexible eaters, and they're pretty common to see wandering about Mumbai. But the city has no stray chickens -- only a lot of dogs.

This food was all so good. Everything was grown right here on their farm: rice, asparagus, red chiles, potatoes, milk + butter. The only thing imported is green chiles from India (which is interesting, because that is the national dish of Bhutan).

We're all sitting around the stove for warmth. We're at 7000' and it still gets pretty chilly at night. (Of course, some of the windows and doors are wide open too.. And, after three years in hot+steamy Mumbai, we freeze fast.)

Finn: "Mommy, I'm tired of this food. I want western food!! Like a dosa."

In the kitchen...

The house is three stories tall... we all slept in this room on the main floor ('1st floor'). There's a ladder to the other floors. The house has some electricity, but not a lot. And you can see the open-air cracks in the walls!

In the morning, having leftover for breakfast!

It really is a beautiful area, and it's been so nice to see the mountains.

The house is surrounded by farms.

We're on on last full day in Bhutan. We've gotten up early, and driven a few km out of town to the base of the Tiger's Nest Monastery. OK, this is certainly the most visited tourist site in the entire country. But it is also a really dramatic site. It's a long hike -- about six miles round-trip. But you can see the destination the whole time, including right here: it's the set of small white buildings high on the rock face, just above the guy's grey and white hat on the left.

Piper sees that monastery ahead of her!

Heidi and Astro are good walkers.

Piper and Finn take lots of photos together!

We are hiking up, but we see a whole lot of horses walking down. What's happening?

As it turns out, you are allowed to ride the horses up, but only halfway. There is a large group of about 50 Korean tourists just ahead of us. They've taken 50 horses up to the halfway point. Most of them will walk up the second half, and then walk down the whole way.

I'm taking a strategic photo of that Tiger's Nest!

Prayer wheels along the way...

Astro and Heidi are making progress!, and you can see the monastery getting closer. Astro is busy playing with her shirt, which has a really neat touchy-flippy thing that you can reverse its colors by rubbing your fingers across it. Believe me -- if I had a shirt like that, I'd be playing with it all the time too.

We're at the halfway point here, which features a prayer wheel, and a coffee shop.

Check out those soda-bottle prayer wheels! They spin in the wind just fine...

This is certainly one of the world's most beautiful tea stalls...

Looking at the monastery through the lichen. We still have a mile of hiking, but we're finally level with it.

Off to the side of the trail frequently we see little mini stupas, usually hidden in small caves to protect them. These are put there to remember the dead, often with ashes. They're shielded from the rain.

Finn is geting close... though not as close as he looks! We still need to walk down a lot of steep steps, and then back up.

We're going to make it! And just barely visible: check out that snow on the distant horizon.

Getting closer, and almost on our final approach. This is my last photo: like all other monasteries, the inside is closed to photography. This one had very complete searches going in -- no cell phones allowed.

The monastery is a good deal bigger than the others we visited on our trip. It has a temple, various shrines, and so forth. There were many people walking up the trail who were monks, or were coming to meditate (for a night, or a month, or more).

Tourists outnumbered monks by at least 10:1, but my understanding is that monasteries like this are intentionally kept open in part to expose the outside world to Buddhism -- that is, tourism is strongly encouraged by the monks.

Four hours up, 90 minutes down! At the bottom, we passed these people on their way up. Piper was a few minutes ahead of me.

Piper: "OK, H, we had a bet. I was sure that you were going to a) stop those people, b) talk with them, and c) ask if you could take a photo. You're so predictable!"

Haha, yes indeed Piper! And the story they told me: these are monks who stay at Tiger's Nest year-round. The 50-pound mesh bag he's carrying is groceries: carrots, cabbage, oil, butter, etc. In two weeks, he'll hike back down and do it again.

Astro and Heidi with the trailhead in sight!

This was a fantastic hike... the monastery was neat, and I thought it was great that we all made it up! Six miles, serious mountains, huge exposure, and very little complaining.

Once we were down, the kids got to choose anything they wanted to eat. We passed a store selling pav bhaji earlier, so that's where they wanted to go. Then Finn got turned on to the hamburger on the menu.

Finn: I want a burger.
Heidi: So the cheese hamburger.... It is veg, or non veg? Is it beef? Or is it a veg patty?
Server: the hamburger? it's meat.
Heidi: is it beef? Or it's chicken?
Server: Yes ma'am. Yes, it is pure ham. Of course ma'am.

How could this not be our favorite sign?? This is one a large series of road safety messages on the Bhutanese highways. Another: "Safety on the Road is Safe Tea at Home!"

After hiking the Eagle's Nest, we still had a few hours left. We'd been in Bhutan for a week but not seen snow in-person yet. So Sonam and Prakash did some research and thought we could find some snow if we headed up Bhutan's highest road, which conveniently is just outside of Paro. We drove for about an hour, before the snow was dense enough to cause us to pull over and start an epic snowball fight.

Go Piper go!

Piper gets obliterated.

Lookin' good Piper!

Lookin' good Piper!

Prakash, incredibly, makes not a snowman but a Snow-Astro. He is super careful in decorating it.

Aww... it was super sweet of him.

Prakash with his Snow-Astro.

An incredible catch by Prakash sends the snow flying.

Astro has hiked up the slope to access some more of that fresh snow. She looks harmless here.

But watch out!! Astro nails Prakash big-time.

But watch out!! Astro nails Prakash big-time.

Check out that crashing snowball!

And Prakash and Sonam have their own as well.

Heidi, one second before nailing me.

And moments after...

We head down the mountain to our hotel for one final night. We're all pretty wet, and cold, and dirty, as is my camera. So it's not a great shot of the buildings, but... those are Bhutanese government buildings. And that's a beautiful truck coming in from the left, as we speed past.

The next morning, Prakash dropping us off at the airport.

Waiting in the Paro airport, one of a dozen rounds of Monopoly Deal. Highly recommended if you haven't played it. It has the same themes as classic Monopoly, but is fast to play, and Astro can pick it up easily and often come out winning due to her cunning skills.

It's a beautiful airport! We're headed back to Mumbai, via Kolkata.

Heidi has stragetically placed us in seats on the right-hand side of the plane. The flight out (Paro to Delhi) goes right past Mt. Everest. We have a fantastic view.

Me: "Piper!! Do you know what that is? It's Everest!!!"

Piper: "Wow! That's awesome H. It's so impressive!"

Me, a few minutes later: "Oh. actually, I think this one's Everest. It has the... uh, it's a really distinctive shape, you know? ANd I'm totally sure it's this one."

Pilot, 10 minutes later: "And on our right, the large black pyramid is Mt Everest." Well, so much for my mountaineering skills. We're looking at it here from the SW side. A bit of searching around tells me that the most common routes are up the S side (following that ridge on the right), and the NE (which is the backside, not visible from this view).

Yes, there it is for sure, I think. The valley below is about 10,000 feet lower. iPhone photo by Heidi.