Bhardwaj Rish

I really enjoyed traveling Bhutan, but there were several things that stood out, felt very out of place, or were just surprising and I thought this would make an interesting read. Naming Things The Bhutanese aren't very creative while naming things. Everything is Druk-something;  they have the Druk Airport, Druk Beer, Druk Bank, Druk Hotel, and the list goes on. The other common name is Tashi. You'll find an equal number of Tashi-somethings there. Escaping materialism but still expensive? Being the Buddhist capital of the world, preaching to let go of the material world and all its enticements, ironically it's a very expensive nation to travel. The government sets the price to basic necessities - traveling from place A to B, the price of fruits and vegetables, etc, and it is far more expensive than you'd expect. For a foreigner it's even more so - a fixed rate of $200 USD applies to anyone visiting without an Indian passport. Killing animals isn't okay,...

I visited a couple monasteries in Paro. The fun part was always getting to know more about these places from the monks living there. As an Indian, you are allowed to roam around where-ever you'd like; but for a foreigner, the Bhutanese government mandates every visitor to have a personal tour guide - this is probably done in an attempt to increase jobs. There are guides who know French, German and Spanish! If you're lucky, you could ask to tag along with one of these foreign visitors explaining things in English. You'll learn a lot more than just walking about on your own. Inside one of the monasteries in Paro. I asked a tour guide how the monastery decides whom to admit, and how a monk spends his day. The procedure to get into a monastery is like you'd apply to any school - there is a short interview, and if there are vacancies, you get a free pass to daily meals, a room to stay in, and the companionship of other monks studying along with you. Throughout their lif...

My plan for Bhutan was fairly simple from the time I planned the trip. I wanted to reach there, figure things out as I go, and spend a good 2 weeks - to just be.  I wanted to spend some time in a remote village, and some time in a busy city. And I did exactly that. I did nothing more than read my books, sit outside in the sun, and walk for long hours on quiet roads, to  just be.  I spent 7 days in Lango, a small village 7km ahead of Paro, at a homestay. Lango, just as the rest of Bhutan, is surrounded by mountains. There is only one road that passes through Lango - the one that takes you to Paro, and the entire village is built around this road. There aren't further smaller roads inside. There is a narrow river parallel to the road, a small stretch of which is adopted by a school to clean and protect from further pollution. It is probably one of the cleanest rivers I've seen in a populated locality. The frequency of cars passing by is probably one per a mi...

Banaras. A city confused between the history of its mythical past, present day religion and religious ceremonies, and the influence of modernization and the West. In under ten minutes you can go from feeling as if you’ve stepped into history, to suddenly a dejavu resemblance to yet-another- modern -Indian-city. From sitting in an electric rickshaw to spotting cycle rickshaws and normal autos, Olas and Ubers, pass by a Domino’s surrounded by several small vegetable stores, handicraft stores and pharmacies, see a Pantaloons or a large city mall, and in no time reach super crowded streets queued up by people in hundreds to visit yet another mandir. And if you walk a little further, you’d find yourself by the Ganga at a funeral ghat. All in 10 minutes. The city is full of color, graffiti-ed with imagery of Shiva, life all around you is alive - busy streets and constant honking, people rushing about but stopping for a second to pray as they pass the dozens of temples on every street. I...

The Land of the Bholenath. You may be outside a temple, walking the busy streets across the Lakshman Jhula, or be sitting by the Ganga, you are bound to find a Sadhu, a hippie in the strangest of clothing, or a local in his everyday attire casually slipping a kash of ganja. The story of how Rishikesh went from becoming an Above of Gods and a land of several myths and legends to the Yoga capital of the nation and a place to let your hippie side out is particularly interesting. The Beatles came in search for answers to life’s larger questions in 1968, and ended up performing transcendental meditation - I’m certain they were merely stoned, and were given the freedom to sit and ponder by the holy Ganga - but it’s here they wrote their most famous album, the White Album. There was then a second wave of foreign artists coming in search for a story of their own, and this is where the locals realized these visits could become a major tourist attraction. There are now a dozen privately...