There be mountains and tips

Bhutan is basically a series of mountains with some roughly flat bits in between. So our group has been obsessing about altitudes for the last few days. The other obsession has been tipping.

We started today with a trip up one of the mountains surrounding Thimphu to the giant golden Bhudda statue that sits watching over the city. it’s an impressive sight with commanding views of the town and the surrounding mountains.

We then went on a hike for a couple of hours through the forest. After the last few days this was a warm and leisurely stroll which stretched our otherwise abused muscles. Lunch was another contrast – amazing pizza back in town.

After lunch we drove for three hours over what I think are the most winding mountain roads I remember being on. For deed fun there weee precipitous drops on the side and impatient and lunatic local drivers cutting in form all directions. Sitting up the front was a war between being queasy and terrified.

Our destination was Punakha which is substantially lower and warmer than anywhere we’ve been so far. The Punakha valley is filled with green rice terraces which when augmented with a rainbow are wonderful to behold.

Now tipping. As a group of Australians tipping is not our best thing. We are all happy to do it, but have had some difficulty getting the approach right. The situation gets worse when we’re are working with multiple currencies and groups of people to tip different amounts – the cook is the top of the tree, the ‘horse boy’ the bottom. So yesterday we spent an hour in our camp counting money and getting the details right so we could hand over wedges of local cash to each member of our team. We continue to work on getting it right for the driver and guide,