Flew into Paro from Bangkok with a stopover at Dacca. The approach into Paro Airport is possibly one of the most extreme in the world. You spend 15 minutes flying between mountains (and sometimes above villages) before arriving at the runway. It can only be done in clear weather!
I suspect that, after three months in the tropics, I may not have enough warm clothes. It was so cold and windy the first night here that I went to bed at seven. It snowed in the morning. The first snow that Thimphu has seen this year. A far cry from the tropical splendour I have enjoyed over the past three months. The government declared the day a national holiday (in honour of the snow) a few minutes after the snow fell (it didn’t settle though).
Prince Charles would like Bhutan: it has a commitment to becoming 100% organic and also very strict planning / architectural laws. All the buildings here are designed along traditional architectural lines - I haven’t seen a building taller than 5 stories high so far. Thimphu is a boom town (attracting many rural migrants) – but half of the locals wear national dress. But it’s only the size of a provincial city – population around 100,000. (Bhutan’s population is only 700,000 in a contry the size of Switzerland). In some respects (the quality of its pavements and gutters) it still feels like a shanty town. And there are hundreds of stray dogs. The first night their barking woke me up four or five times. I like Bhutan (dog barking expected). The second night I slept through it (mostly).
I’m here for a conference on ‘Organic and Ecological Agriculture in Mountain Ecosystems’. There’s some ‘big players’ here from the organic world, Vandana Shiva, Hans Herren, the President and Chief Executive of IFOAM, Bhutan’s Agriculture Minister, the CEC of the Autonomous region of Ladakh. I’ll write more about that later.
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