Trip Report: Bhutan
Visited in December 2024
It is terribly cold when I disembark the Druk Air plane in Paro, where Bhutan’s international airport is located. It’s 8 am. December 29. I’m tired. The nearly three-hour flight from Bangkok has just brought me to my country no. 179/197. Bhutan, Land of the Thunder Dragon and Kingdom in the Sky.
It wasn’t a problem that the flight took only 2h45. The problem was the departure time of 5.30 am. I arrived in Bangkok from Myanmar at 6 pm the day before and then had to transfer from Don Mueang to Suvarnabhumi airport to catch the early morning flight to Paro. The flight time of 2h45 should have been my bedtime.
Fortunately, I realized that I’m not 27 anymore and booked a hotel at the airport in Bangkok at the last minute. At least, I had two to three hours of sleep before the flight and more later on the plane. Just like a few centuries ago when people slept twice instead of once. The term for that is biphasic sleep. That saved me from being completely destroyed upon arrival in Bhutan.
The airport in Paro made sure that my eyes didn’t close anyway. Although it is old-fashioned, its architecture and interior would make it a strong candidate for the award for the most beautiful airport in the world. The baggage carousel alone, which revolved around a miniature of a building in typical Bhutanese architecture, was a feast for the eyes.
A fancy airport is what you can expect if you pay the exorbitant SDF (Sustainable Development Fee) of USD 100 per night. The SDF is a kind of tourist tax. Every visitor pays USD 100 per night and that does not include anything else, i.e. no accommodation, no guide, nothing. On top of that, you also pay 40 USD for a visa.
Bhutan wants to control the number of tourists with this fee. High value, low impact. In other words, wealthy tourists willing to spend a lot of money are welcome, but only a few to ensure sustainable tourism. Before Covid, the SDF was USD 65 per night. Then the government raised it to $200. It was only when they realized that tourists were no longer coming that they mercifully lowered it to $100. With the caveat that it would go back up to $200 in 2027 or earlier.
The SDF was certainly one of the reasons why I only booked three days and two nights for my trip to Bhutan. The second reason was that several travelers who had already been to Bhutan told me that it gets repetitive after the second or third day, as you simply visit one temple after another. And I saw too many temples in Myanmar anyway.
By the way, it’s not only the SDF that makes Bhutan expensive. The airfares to the country are also exorbitant. Only two Bhutanese airlines, Druk Air and Bhutan Airlines, have the permission to fly to Bhutan. This keeps the prices artificially high. I paid USD 925 for my round-trip flights from Bangkok to Paro. Almost the same as from Switzerland to Bangkok and back.
The cheapest flight is from Kathmandu in Nepal. The price is about half of what I paid. Basically, it’s worthwhile to visit Bhutan in combination with Nepal. However, when I was in Nepal in 2022, Bhutan had still closed its borders due to the pandemic.
There are different opinions about whether you can travel Bhutan on your own or only with a guide. The correct answer is: you can do it without a guide! However, for convenience, I booked a three-day tour with a budget operator called Best Journey to Bhutan. It cost 300 USD for three days and I booked and paid for the accommodation myself.
My guide Kuenga and a driver picked me up at the airport in Paro. Both wore a gho, the traditional national dress for men. This dress includes leather shoes, knee-length socks and a kind of robe. To greet me, they put a white silk scarf around my neck. This is apparently how they welcome guests here.
With the rising sun, it also got warmer in Paro. December to February is winter in Bhutan. However, the winters are mild. Although the nights can be bitterly cold, it is usually more than 10°C during the day.
After a quick breakfast in Paro, we drove to the capital Thimphu. The tour operator had originally suggested a route that would have taken me to Punakha on the first day and the Tiger Nest trek on the third and final day.
However, I preferred to take the first day easy (as I expected to arrive after a very short night) and avoid the three-hour drive to Punakha. I also didn’t want to do the hike to Tiger Nest on my last day before departure. In the end, this resulted in a more leisurely and slower tour, which only took me to Thimphu besides Paro.
The 1-hour drive from Paro to Thimphu was winding but beautiful. We stopped several times to take pictures of the nature, which reminded me very much of Central Asia. If someone had shown me a picture of these landscapes, I might as well have guessed Tajikistan or Afghanistan.
What you cannot see on the picture above: more than 70% of Bhutan is covered by forest. This is one of the reasons why Bhutan is the only country with a negative carbon footprint. The most important export and economic driver is hydropower, followed by tourism.
I also saw a picture of the king for the first time on this trip. Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy. This means that there is an elected parliament that must carry out the king’s wishes. Malicious tongues could also claim that Bhutan is a dictatorship.
Interestingly, Bhutan does not measure its well-being by Gross Domestic Product, but by Gross National Happiness. This is an index that they measure annually through surveys of the population. According to Kuenga, it was around 85 the last time the government measured it and this number increased a lot in recent years. When I asked him if he was happy, he replied “very happy!”
After checking into the Naksel Urban Hotel & Spa, a small hotel with cute, cozy rooms, sightseeing in the capital was on the agenda. Only 800,000 people live in Bhutan, about a quarter of them in the capital. Still, both Bhutan and especially Paro look more like large villages than cities.
Kuenga and his driver first took me to a museum of sorts called Simply Bhutan, where guides spent an hour telling me about Bhutanese traditions. There were also performances by Bhutanese people in traditional costumes. I later learned that all people who work in museums and the like must wear these dresses.
While I’m not normally a fan of museums, I think Simply Bhutan was actually great. The staff present Bhutan in a nutshell in 60 minutes. It also takes place in an interactive setting and you can taste rice wine and the country’s favorite drink, butter tea.
What I also saw for the first time in this museum were the phallic symbols that Bhutan is famous for. In Bhutan, these symbols are quite common and have a cultural and religious significance. People believe that they bring good luck and fertility.
In Punakha, the whole thing is taken to the extreme, by the way. There you can find phallus paintings on house walls, carved wooden phalli (is that the correct plural of phallus?) on doors and in temples. Seeing this almost made me decide to add Punakha to my itinerary anyway.
Bhutan is a Buddhist country and Buddhism is the state religion. This is emphasized by the largest sitting Buddha in the world (according to Kuenga). This statue is located about 30 minutes outside of Thimphu and was, in my opinion, the second best sight in the country.
You can also go inside the statue. However, it was often the case in Bhutan that photography in religious buildings was forbidden. You could take pictures outside but not once you entered the building.. In the case of this Buddha statue, it was a shame because the interior was really beautifully decorated.
Kuenga then took me to a vegetable market to show me what fruits and vegetables they have in Bhutan (actually more than I thought). We also saw an archery game. Archery is the national sport in Bhutan and two teams, both 150 meters apart, shot at a target next to the opposing team and hit it often to my surprise.
By 4 pm the tour was over. Three days for Thimphu and Paro is quite a lot, so you can’t spend the days from 8am to 6.30 pm sightseeing. But that was ok for me. Looking back, we could have done the three-day tour easily in two days.
On this first day I also tried the national dish of Bhutan, Ema Datshi. This is chili in melted cheese. It sounds a bit strange, but it didn’t taste too bad. An 8/10 for the first time, but I wouldn’t have to eat this dish regularly now. What’s also very typical for Bhutan is red rice, which they serve to almost every meal.
The night was bitterly cold in Bhutan. According to the weather app it was -8°C. Luckily most of the hotels have good heating in the rooms, otherwise it would have been quite uncomfortable. In Bhutan, it doesn’t rain much in December, but the temperatures are cold after sunset.
The next day was the highlight of the Bhutan trip, the hike to the Tiger’s Nest, the most famous attraction of the country. First we had to drive back from Thimphu to Paro, where we drove directly to the starting point of the trail. The ticket for the hike is 1,000 BTN, which is about $10.
The trek is advertised as relatively difficult. You start at 2,300 meters and end at 3,120 meters. In other words, a steep climb in 1.5 hours, covering over 800 meters of altitude. And at an altitude where the air is already thin.
Interestingly, I didn’t even find the hike that difficult, although I would describe my fitness level as average. I completed the hike in one go without taking a break. For those who want to cheat, there are horses available on whose backs you can spend half of the trek.
The Tiger’s Nest, Paro Taktsang in Bhutanese, is a Buddhist monastery located on a steep cliff, which makes for a fantastic view. Once you reach the top, there are several viewpoints where you can take great pictures of this surreal place.
It is also possible to enter the monastery. However, no photos are allowed and you have to leave your cell phone in a locker. Trust me, you won’t miss anything. The Tiger Nest looks much more impressive from the outside than from the inside.
What surprised me was the large number of tourists on this hike that day. Coming from Myanmar, Bhutan suddenly feels like a super tourist destination. I guess about 90% of the tourists were from India. Indians also pay only INR 1,200 per day as SDF. This is only about 14 USD.
The entire trek to the Tiger’s Nest and back takes about four hours for most people. These four hours include the visit to the monastery and breaks for taking pictures. We completed it in about 3 hours and 30 minutes. Some people need five hours or longer, Kuenga said.
Looking back, my only tip would be to start the hike early or late, but not at around 10.00 am like we did. We were at the view points at around 11.30 am and the sunlight was not ideal for taking photos. It only got a little better when we passed the viewpoints on the way back after 12.30 pm. For this reason, I would start the hike at either 7am or 1pm. Last entry is supposedly at 2 pm.
We spent the rest of the day sightseeing in Paro. Although sightseeing is a bit exaggerated. Paro is actually a rather small village consisting of one main street and a few side streets.
However, the architecture of Bhutan is interesting. All houses have to be built in the same traditional style. The houses have either green or red roofs. Green is for private buildings and red is for government buildings. I really liked this style of architecture.
What I found a shame, by the way, was the amount of garbage in Bhutan, especially in nature. There is plastic everywhere. Not as annoying as in West Africa, but for a country that values nature so much, I would have expected more cleanliness. When I asked Kuenga why people litter so much, he said that they only do it because they assume that someone will collect it. Yeah, sure.
It was only 4 pm when Kuenga dropped me off at a restaurant for a beer and finished the tour. Before that, he wanted me to rent a traditional dress and have my picture taken in it. When I told him I didn’t want to do that, he did not talk a lot anymore. Maybe that offended him.
I was alone for the rest of the evening and this time I had Indian food for dinner. The cuisine in Bhutan has some elements of Indian cuisine, and there are a few Indian restaurants in Paro and Thimphu. The many guests must be another reason for that.
Apart from the SDF and airfares, Bhutan is not an expensive country. I usually ate for the equivalent of 5-6 USD or even less. Hotels were not expensive either. You can find good options for less than 30 USD in both Paro and Thimphu.
We spent the last day visiting the fortress and the national museum in Paro. The latter was closed, but at least it offered another nice view over Paro. The fortress on the other hand was actually quite cool.
But what I enjoyed the most was to see the Paro International Airport from a vantage point (also called bird view). This airport is considered to be one of the most difficult in the world. Pilots need a special license to land here. Less than 20 pilots have this license.
We were lucky enough to see a Druk Air take off just as we arrived. From this vantage point, you can see why this airport is considered dangerous, as it is surrounded by mountains in the middle of a valley. Only two or three planes land here each day. Take-offs and landings are only permitted during daylight hours.
I left Bhutan in the early afternoon, as my flight was at 4.20 pm. The airport itself seemed deserted. No wonder, when there are only two or three international flights a day. At least this has the advantage that the flights are usually on time. And it’s totally fine when you arrive 1.5 or 2 hours before departure.
Well, what can I say about Bhutan?
Bhutan is certainly a unique country in many ways. People have said to me that Bhutan is their favorite country, and I can understand why. Because you won’t find a country like Bhutan anywhere else. So if you like Bhutan’s traditional, anti-materialistic philosophy of life, you will certainly like this country.
My three days here were relatively relaxed. Like I said, I could have done the entire program in two days instead of three. Nevertheless, it was okay to travel a bit slowly here and I found that three days was just right for me.
In summary, I would say that my time in Bhutan was alright but the country did not blow me away. The Tiger’s Nest was world class, as was the Buddha statue. The rest was nice, no more, no less. At the beginning I said that some people told me that Bhutan becomes repetitive after a few days, which I can now very well imagine after this trip.
The high costs for Bhutan are certainly also a negative factor. This mainly concerns the SDF and flights if you are not coming from Kathmandu. I asked my guide how many days the average tourist spends in Bhutan. He answered one month, which I cannot believe. For non-Indian travelers, that would mean an SDF of 3,000 USD.
Overall, I was satisfied with my tour operator Best Journey to Bhutan (Whatsapp: +97517628651). The service level of my guide and driver was a 10/10, although his English was not perfect, which made communication difficult at times. Especially in Bhutan, where it is certainly interesting to learn more about the local customs, a language barrier is not desirable. However, if you can overlook this, you will be happy with this company.
Would I go again to Bhutan? Probably not, at least not so soon. Nepal, which is most likely the most similar country to Bhutan (since Tibet is not a country), offers the better package in my opinion when it comes to nature, food and prices, although Bhutan can offer visitor to witness its unique lifestyle.
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