October 19 - Monk's Village

I took a beautiful hike up to a monk' s village and monastery. The hike up was about three hours long and I did manage to avoid stepping on a black mysterious snake which slithered away under my feet. Once we completed the hike, we headed to the next Aman hotel in Punakha. It took us approximately 21/2 to 3 hours to get there because the roads in Bhutan are quite primitive

Cars are driven on the opposite side of the road and there are no stoplights in the entire country. The occasional stop sign is routinely ignored.   Our driver Kumar was/is a very competent driver. At 22 years of age, he worked in the tourism industry driving tourists all over while the guide was in charge of touring and instruction.  

The roadways which Kumar had to navigate are usually two lanes and there are very few straight roads in Bhutan. The roads are very curvy and full of hairpin turns. What makes driving even more of a challenge are the massive boulders which are strewn all over the roads as a result of the slides caused by the heavy rain due to the Indian cyclone. We passed many enormous boulders lying in the road and I was grateful that none of them landed on our Toyota SUV.

We arrived at our second Aman hotel which was made up of only eight rooms. The dinner and service were exceptional and then we got ready for the nine hour drive the following day to Bumthang