The Land of the Thunder Dragon

So Bhutan knows how to make an entrance. The Drukair plane does a handbrake turn around a mountain that you can reach out and touch, before coming into land sideways. Never had a landing like that before.

And then once you land, you're in this bucolic, medieval theme park of a country. All the buildings are traditional. The air is fresh. There's no noise. All the people are wearing traditional dress. The air is fresh. The temperature is mild. Everywhere you look there are mountains and flags. It's like the backdrop to a Samurai film. And coming straight fro Delhi it doesn't really seem real.

The overall sense of weird was added to by the sleep deprivation:
A. 5am is a rubbish time to fly, especially given the unpredictable queues at Delhi's passport control.
B. Knowing that you're gonna pass Everest isn't conducive to sleeping on the plane.

But mainly things seem weird because they are weird. Here's some weird:

Weird One
The national animal is a takin. They say it came about because an old God (or maybe a King) put the head of a goat on a cow.

Weird Two
Archery is the national sport. Now you're thinking of Olympic archery, aren't you? You're thinking "That's not that weird." Aside from a bow and arrow there's not too much in common with Olympic Archery.

Start off by making the target a quarter of the size. Then double the length of the pitch. You can't even see the target at that distance. So far so ridiculous? I've not even started. There's a target at both ends. Both ends! In archery! From what I could work out there are two teams of eleven bowman who stand at either end of the pitch firing arrows at each other to try and hit the impossible to hit target. If on the offchance they do, they get rewarded by the other team dancing for them. Assuming they've not been skewered.

Weird Three
They treat chillies as a vegetable. This means cheesey chillies is a thing. What's not to like about that? It goes well with a nice cup of butter tea. Hmmm. Butter tea.

And we haven't even got onto the fact that one of the most famous people in Bhutanese history is known as The Divine Madman. I'm going to his monastery tomorrow. I have high hopes for more weird.