Tak Bhadur Rana

Bhutan Traverse from West to East – Tour(TID 8532) Nov19 – Dec03, 2014
Hello, I want to thank you for a wonderful tour of Bhutan. The guide, Penjor; and the driver, Baliman, were top-notch. I certainly will recommend Wind Horse to my friends; and I hope to use your firm again in a return trip to Bhutan.

TID 692 Drukyul Walking Tours (12.11.13 – 25.11.13)
When people ask me what my favorite part of Bhutan was, I have to say that it was seeing Bhutan through our guide Sonam’s eyes. Being in the presence of a devout Buddhist and hearing stories of his life and the people of Bhutan was remarkable. His enthusiasm made me feel like we were his first personal guests in Bhutan! While most people seem to really like their guides, I am convinced that Sonam is the best la! I felt I truly entered another world, so different from my life in the USA and my earlier travels in Scandinavia. Every day of our tour was an adventure and we were blessed with blue skies and sunny weather the entire 2 weeks. Potential travelers should not take lightly the altitude and the nature of the roads. I really hadn’t anticipated that they would be so challenging; be prepared with altitude sickness medication and patches for car sickness. Our driver, Barleman was the best. It was a little scary at first on the left side of these narrow roads but we soon found we could put our full faith in his driving skills, sit back and enjoy the view. There were 4 travelers in our tour and this seemed perfect. We definitely saw tons of temples and I felt like I was visually drunk on their beauty. I loved the walk through the valley farms where we saw the harvesting of rice taking place. As other travelers have noted, the accommodations were adequate, but even with space heaters, I wore warm clothes at night at times. The food; yes, much is written about the food. We had very good food at the YT Hotel and at the restaurant near the Wind Horse office in Thimphu. Otherwise, the food was monotonous and I have to say after two weeks, it was hard to face another “buffet”.

For a couple of foodies, we learned to” eat to live” instead of “living to eat”, which is a valuable experience in and of itself, and part of immersing yourself in a culture void of the fancy restaurants and emphasis on food elsewhere in the world. There were two things I would have enjoyed which we did not do; visit a school and have an opportunity to spend time with some local families. Since we were never at a loss for things to do, I didn’t specifically request this, but in retrospect I think we could have sacrificed a few temples for this. This tour was more than I could have envisioned and will live long and vividly in my memory. Thank you Wind Horse!

TID 680 Dr Rupinder Bhutan Tour (29.10.13 – 06.11.13)
Dear Anand, We are finally getting settled after the amazing time we had at Bhutan. KT and Baliman were great for taking us to all the wonderful places and getting us back safely. Overall, the trip was well organized, except for a few minor glitches. We were not crazy about the hotel in Punakha. My wife did fine, but I would have liked a little more diverse food. All in all, it was a wonderful trip and we are defiantly coming back, and when we do, I’ll like you folks to make all our arrangements including having KT and Baliman work with us.

Thanks for making our trip a huge success.
All the best.

TID 626 Grand Cultural tour of Chris and Charles (Dec. 28, 2012-Jan 6, 2013)

Jambay and Ugen,
We had a great trip to Bhutan. Penjor and Baliman were excellent in leading us from Paro to Bumthang and back again. I will definitely add a positive review to trip advisor. I do have a few suggestions that I’ll write to you in an email, but I don’t have time right now. But it was a really wonderful trip. I’m so glad that we live in Nepal and had the chance to visit Bhutan.

Thanks for putting together a great itinerary and for doing all the upfront work in getting our visas and plane tickets, etc.

Best regards

Sylvia and Family Bhutan Tour Dec. 2011

Dear Ugen and Jambay:
I am back home and am looking over the photos that I took during the trip to Bhutan in December 2011. The photos are very beautiful. It is not because I am a skilled photographer but simply because the places in Bhutan, the dzong, the goemba, the lhakhang, the people, and the landscape are very beautiful and it seems that I couldn’t get enough photos to capture these beauty. I would like to thank both of you to all your help and information during preparation of my trip. The trip went very well and I am very satisfied with the service provided by your tour guide, Karma, and your driver, Baliman.

Karma is very young but he is funny and he knows all the histories of all the places we visited. He explained about Buddhism in great detail with so much enthusiasm to the point that I pulled out my diary and started to write down what he said. We have difficulties recognizing all the gods and deities in the paintings or sculptures. Karma was very patient and repeated what he explained previously. We specially thanked him for helping our mother climbing up and down to Takshang Goemba. My mother has difficulties going down the hill and Karma was literally holding on her hands and trying to find non-slippery stepping stones for my mother all the way down.

Baliman is a very skillful driver. I was a bit worried about the road conditions in Bhutan, especially the long drive between Thimpu to Pobjikha Valley. We brought so many ginger teas from Indonesia to combat the nausea but we didn’t even have to drink one since Baliman was able to maneuver those crazy turns safely. We never feel nauseous while he was driving us in Bhutan. He managed to keep the car and the window clean all the times.

Again, thank you very much and if I ever have a chance to come back to Bhutan, I would certainly give you a call.
Regards,

TID:147: Complete Bhutan Travese into India (Oct 6-21,2008)
Dear Ugen, We had a marvellous time! Both Jambay Dorji and Mr Baliman, our driver, could not have been more helpful; please convey our thanks once again to them. The hotels were not all as advertised to us but were better. We had been prepared to ‘rough it’ a little, especially in the east, but the level of accommodation, washing facilities and food was excellent throughout. The car was very comfortable and we were able to visit more places than a larger group would have been able to do.

We were very pleased to be invited by Windhorse for an enjoyable evening in Thimpu. Vivienne, my wife, has commented on this on the form for feedback which we gave to Jambay in Samdrup Jonkhar.
Overall, we would have no hesitation in recommending Windhorse to others. The only comment we have which you might like to consider is that it is no longer true that the Indian rupee is accepted alongside the ngultrum. We came through Delhi and changed pounds sterling into rupees at the airport there. As usual, such exchanges like to give out high denomination notes. Fortunately we asked for a large number of Rs.100 notes but still had several Rs.500 notes. As we approached the end of the trip, we happened to ask Jambay about using these notes and he told us that they are no longer accepted as legal tender in Bhutan. We managed to negotiate an exchange of these notes but others may have some difficulty in doing this. You might like to warn other tourists about this so that they ask only for Rs.100 notes at the currency exchange. Regards, Chris