City Paper’s own Running Numbers man Nick Norlen checks in from Canada with this enumerated postcard. Enjoy!

Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they’re catching up. This is the seventh of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Day 7 - March 24 - THE ELECTIONS

We had hoped that we might get a chance to hike up to the pass this morning, as the weather was fine and clear, but the first ever Bhutan national elections were to be held today, and most of our team had to hit the trail back down in the early morning. Everyone who wanted to vote had to do so in the town of their birth, so some people had to drive (or walk) many hours to get to their voting place.

While this election business sounds very exciting, it was perhaps more so for the Bhutanese than for the visiting tourist. Because of the elections, everything was still closed, so for us it meant taking our time on the way down the mountain (a much faster trip than the way up!), stopping and meditating along the way (which was lovely and incredibly peaceful), and then accompanying Kinzang to his polling place so he could vote. This was also more exciting for him than for us, though still interesting to see.

It was all very peaceable, though each person was searched before going into the voting booth. Their fingers were dipped in ink, a la Iraq. After he voted, we went to visit his sister to have some more Bhutanese-style tea: This time black tea with salt. A lot of it! Weird. We stayed for a nice 45 minute chat with his very lovely sister, and afterwards, since everything was still closed, we were dropped off at our hotel around 4:30 and informed that we probably would like to take a rest. Fortunately for us, the shops opened back up after 5pm (when the elections were done) and we were thus permitted a rare unchaperoned walk around town. We even took in a movie — "Lengo II,", a love story about a deaf and mute Bhutanese guy who meets a deaf and mute Bhutanese girl. It was filled with some most offensive portrayals of deaf and mute people. Because of our pre-arranged dinner hour, we had to leave before the ending was revealed, but I’m sure it was heart-warming.

—Amy

Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they’re catching up. This is the sixth of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Day 6 - March 23 - PHAJODING MONASTERY

Today, we went on a difficult and rewarding mini-trek. We began at 8:30am by driving off the road up into the woods on what appeared to be just a path, until it became too rock- and root-ridden to permit us to continue. There we met our ‘team’ - I had no idea you needed so many people for an overnight hike - and began our ascent. The path up to Phajoding Monastery was very, very steep. I am not much of an athlete to begin with, and my adult-onset mild asthma hinders me even further, so along the 5 hour hike from an elevation of 7,000 feet to one of 11,100 ft, I had to stop every ten minutes or so to catch my breath. We hiked all morning, pouring sweat, and stopped to have lunch on the path at around 11:30. Our cook/guide assured us that this was an easy trek. Him and his huge calf muscles. All around us was incredible, old-growth pine forest. The air was very, very fresh. The king of Bhutan had decreed at some point that something like 70% of the country must remain covered with trees. Go him!

After lunch we started up again, up, up, up. The higher we got, the colder it got. By the time we emerged into the clearing before the monastery at 2:00pm, it had begun to snow.

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they’re catching up. This is the fifth of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Day 5 - March 22

bhutan2008.blogspot.com

Today is our first full day in Thimpu and the beginning of the second half of our stay in Bhutan. We´re doing what amounts to a sightseeing tour and there´s a bunch on the agenda. Thimpu is quite small so it shouldn´t be too difficult to get everything in.

We start out by heading to the King´s memorial chorten. A chorten is a monument that begins with a round concrete mound and has a column growing out of it. This one was built in memory of the 3rd King of Bhutan and it´s a yawner. From there, we head to the Changgangkha monastery. It´s quite nice, but after seeing Tiger´s Nest and Kyichu Lhakang (Bhutan´s oldest monastery) earlier on the trip, it doesn´t impress much.

Next on the list is a nunnery. This is nice just because we´ve seen so many monastery´s and no nunneries so far. Of course, this particular nunnery had been a monastery when it was built, so architecturally it´s more of the same, though it does have a particularly lovely prayer room and a great view into the Thimpu valley. It´s also right next to the takin reserve which is just a big fenced in area that has several takin, Bhutan´s national animal. A takin is pretty similar to a yak, it´s as big as a cow and wooly. We feed them some bushes through the fence and then we´re off.

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they’re catching up. This is the fourth of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Day 4 - March 21

Today is the final day of the festival. Our plan is to get to the Paro Dzong by 2:30 AM to see the ritual of the monks processing down the mountain carrying the giant thongdrol (hand painted scroll) of Guru Rimpoche and then unfurling it. Kinzang insists that as long as we get there between 4 and 5 we´ll see it. We ask him several times about this, our itinerary says it´s at 2:30, but he´s lived here his whole life, and he promises us that 4 is fine.

We get there a little after 4 and the scroll is hanging unfurled from the building on the square. This is a huge blow as we both really wanted to witness the procession and unfurling. We talk to some folks and it turns out that to see it, we should have been here at 2:30. Imagine that. (more…)

Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they�re catching up. This is the third of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Bhutan, March 20, Day 3, TAKSTANG MONASTERY!

This morning we´re trekking up to the Tiger´s Nest (AKA Takstang Monastery) which is perched on the end of a steep cliff above the Paro Valley. This is the day I´ve been waiting for since we decided to come to Bhutan and the Tiger´s Nest doesn´t disappoint even a little bit.

We get to the bottom of the mountain at 8 AM ready to hike up before it gets too hot. The trek is steep and difficult, and many people choose to ride donkeys to the top but we prefer to walk it. Of course, the Bhutanese who are used to this terrain take even steeper shortcuts up the mountain at inclines twice as steep as ours, and what takes them only an hour and a half takes us 4 hours.

Most of the way up is beautiful and great smelling pine forest. Every now and again we get to a clearing where we can see the monastery getting a little bit closer and a little bit bigger.

It´s getting harder to breathe and even harder to believe that people carried materials up by hand to build this thing. On the trek we learn that the path we´re hiking on is only a few years old, and that the materials were carried up what we were calling the shortcut. Wow!

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months. After long stretches without Internet access in Bhutan and Uganda, they’re catching up. This is the second of eight days of posts from Bhutan.

Bhuta