Made it to Thimphu today

We left Paro and drove some interesting mountain roads to Thimphu. We'll be here just one night, but we packed a lot of sites into today's schedule. The first place we visited was a giant statue of Buddha that overlooks the city.











Jon Miller brought along a GoPro drone to shoot video of sites we visit. This created quite a stir.








Thimphu is the capital of Bhutan and has about 15% of the country's population of 700,000. It's not as chaotic as Kathmandu, and certainly a lot cleaner, but I think I prefer the more rural setting of Paro. There's a lot of construction going on, which means a lot of noise and dust. We're staying at the Jamolhari hotel, which is adjacent to a building undergoing renovation. Fortunately, the work crews quit before bedtime.

I  had a chance to do a money exchange at a bank in Thimphu. The currency exchange for US dollars is about 60 Bhutanese dollars to one American dollar. I've bought just a few things here - some textiles (we visited a weaving center), prayer flags, postcards, and a birding book. I've been very interested in the birds here, and I brought along my 100-400 lens to help me figure out what birds I've seen. I have a lot of new life birds on this trip so far, including this yellow-billed blue magpie.

I enjoyed photographing the women at the weaving center. I have so many cool photos to process, so this is just a small taste of what I'm seeing while in Bhutan.