The Beginning of a Journey
Having successfully hitched a ride, I found myself at Seattle’s international airport, getting ready to board the first of four flights on two different airlines as I made my way to Paro, Bhutan. This journey would involve a total of 11 flights (including 14 landings and take-offs) on six different airlines. As the Korean Air jet accelerated down the runway a familiar sweet euphoric feeling fell over me that I can only imagine is much like heroin rushing through an addict’s veins. For living in a supposedly free country, it’s not until I leave that I can taste true freedom.
Korean Air is one of the nicest airlines I have flown, in fact I forgot how nice it is to fly on any non-US based airline. Their fares are lower, there is no baggage fee, service is amazing and helpful, and even on my shortest flight of 45 minutes they served a meal and wine. All of which US airline companies are incapable of providing. I put on my slippers and watched a few movies (none of which were all that great) and drifted off to sleep. This first flight would take around 12 hours to reach my first transfer in Seoul, South Korea.
When I told people I was traveling to Bhutan and Myanmar I typically got one of two responses. First, I heard "I don’t know where either of those places are?" And once I told them, I got the second response "Yeah, why do you want to go there?"
The simple answer, "Because few others travel there". I'm not looking to stay in fancy hotels, dine in fancy restaurants, and take the guided tour. That is for others who want to believe they "vacationed" in a country that they never really saw or experienced. My original plan was to create a Google Earth fly-over of my planned route (like I did with my Africa trip). However when I was unable to locate many of my specific destinations, I gave up on this task and knew I had the perfect adventure in front of me.
Traveling to these two countries in a single trip made for a difficult packing task. Bhutan was up in the Himalayan Mountains between China and India, and quite cold. While Myanmar, which was experiencing their winter when I visited, would have temperatures between 85 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This basically meant I had to pack my whole closet in my backpack, but also meet the 20k (around 45 pounds) limitation.
My interest in Bhutan started when I saw a picture of the "Tiger’s Nest" monastery. This incredible image showed a man made structure clinging to the side of a mountain, and I had to see and experience this in person. If it was not such a closed country I’m sure this would have been added as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I started researching Bhutan and began to fall in love with it before I even got there. It is the last Shangri-La. Imagine a King who puts his people and their well-being before himself, a ruling government that has little to no corruption, and a crime rate almost in the negatives. This very simple civilization has matured years beyond the US. It really highlights the fact that the US is a highly corrupt and purchased government run by people with an emotional and mental capacity of a four year old. Bhutan had no currency and only limited trading with India until the early 1980s, and they just introduced cable TV and internet access in the 2000s, once their people were ready and understood the positives and negatives affects it would bring. It is a controlled growth and they limit the number of visitors by imposing a daily tariff. Next year they are increasing this tariff by another $100USD per day, so this was definitely the year to visit. There is no US Embassy here, your closest option is the US Embassy in Delhi, India.
And so I landed in Seoul with only an hour to go through transfers and then make it to the gate for my flight to Bangkok, which would take another 5 hours. It was close as I ran through Incheon, but would not be the closest connection on this trip.