Happiness is a place, this place

View towards Gasa in the Punakha Valley.  Those are LARGE  mountains

In the literature we received when we arrived there was a tourism promotional package with a dvd entitled "Happiness is a Place".  This past weekend I spent with 5 colleagues travelling to Punakha and Gasa hot springs.  My mantra was: happiness is this place.  We were stuffed into small mini vans, sometimes in the trunk or on the floor, travelling dreadful roads but the scenery and weather and friends were all spectacular. 

On the road to GAsa,  Sarah from Miane, Sarah from TO, Brick from Colorado, Arwen from Australia

Dave from Canada t the Hot Springs

 Laughing about the how to's of difficult toilets, with live demonstrations after several glasses of K5 whisky (locally brewed coronation special) and cooking fantastic meals using local spices and foods.  Dreadful lunches as we stopped at little canteens to find only mango juice, beer and spicy chips. . . walking because the locals said it was not far. . . and finding a wonderful taxi driver to take us the final 7 kilometres.  Hot springs in a 
giant gravel pit as there was a flash flood a couple of years ago and the beautiful forest was washed away leaving the gravel bed of the river.   At the hot springs there is a pedestrian suspension bridge to nowhere as the people have closed it off. It seems that no one returns when they cross over so the belief is that one dies if one crosses.  
Our drive from Gasa to Punakha was interrupted by tea and "Baby Toasts" at the taxi driver's home.  In Thimphu we ate western (hamburgers and ice cream)  and I picked up one of the parcels that I had sent on December 3rd. Dave Plant (my Chukha buddy who teaches south of me at Pakshika) and I got a ride part way in a TATA truck - pulling 12 tons of calcium carbonate.  It was SLOW but fun. 

The dashboard of the Tata truck, long slow ride 

On the road to the Hot Springs