Backdate: Bhutan Dec 2024 Day 5

16/12/24 Mon: Met at 7.30am this morning for our hike to Khamsum Yulley Namgyal Chorten and the scenery was awesome. We had to walk across the Balip suspension bridge to get over to the village. *Glad Potato’s better after breaking out in sweat for the second time at night.* I love those colourful flags~ they carry all the blessings of the five elements.

Once in a while, we 'd walk past locals or their animals, and seeing the terrace fields. Jamyang told us the lands in Bhutan traditionally belong to the women in the families. It was quite an easy one-hour walk and hike up. Halfway up the slopes, we saw this view... just breathtaking, isn't it?

Look at the chir pines along the way! And there we are at the entrance of Khamsum Yulley Chorten, and it's like sneaks of autumn still here and there in Bhutan in December! 

I don't know why it didn't dawn on me where we were going to eat breakfast but as we were going up some stairs, we saw the hotel staffs again haha! They already had the tables set up for breakfast for us and other guests omg~

Yay to our surprise breakfast at 8.30am! The surroundings were so beautiful, albeit the sun was quite glaring too. We had some veggie roll, fruits, smoothies etc.

A dog, crippled on his left fore, kept coming in the hope we’d feed him. He’s cute but we were not supposed to feed him because he’s looked after by caretakers at the lhakhang.

After breakfast, we removed our shoes to go into the 3-storey lhakhang. This is built by Her Majesty the Queen Ashi Tshering Yangdon and it houses representatives of the tantric form of Buddhist deities that subjugate enemies and ward off harmful influences on the people of Bhutan. Again, the sculptures inside each level were intricate.

As we stood on top, we could take a photos of the surrounding and  we saw where we started the hike near the Balip bridge. *Jamyang shared with us about the reincarnation of spiritual masters in Bhutan and around the world. Interesting.* 

If one were to see what’s inside those lhakhangs, they would see the works of art. Very beautiful. On the way back at 10am, Jamyang bought very sour gooseberries from young kids for us to try. We took some photos by the river stream once we were back at the starting point too.

Then, we were being driven to our starting point for rafting (not the photo above) and saw Punakha Dzong from another angle while on the way.

Also saw the Punakha Suspension Bridge which was 180m long! We did not go on it though. Soon, we met our rafting guides at Pho Chu (male) river at 11.30am.

This was before we knew how cold the waters were lol. *On hindsight, we were really glad Jamyang suggested we wear the waterproof jacket because there were many times when the cold water just splashed at us...* Meet the two married guides on our kayak and the single safety kayak paddler lol~

Our feet felt the "icy cold" when we parked them under the kayak lol. The river's fed by glaciers in the Lunana region. the 16-km course has 15 different rapids ranging from Class 2 to 4. It was not all “smooth-sailing” because there were some rough areas and we were 3/4 soaked! Very cold leh! *The way to say "water is cold" in Dzongkha is “chu ah chu”... very cute and easy to remember haha!*

Yes we saw many flying ducks in Bhutan haha. We passed a cliff at one point and were told those black patches on the cliffs were bee hives omg.

It was a great 1.5 hour drifting down Pho Chu river. Again, the scenery was breathtaking. We saw the Punakha Suspension Bridge and some monks (clothed) bathing and washing their clothes by the river too haha. *Oh and "hot" is "ah za" and "pain" is "ah low wae" in Dzongkha.* 

We had refreshments by the river, prepared by the staffs again. The dragonfruit smoothie was good!

Had lunch by andBeyond lodge's swimming pool at 2pm. I don't think I was feeling unwell yet because of the adrenaline rush, but things would take a turn for the worse from afternoon onwards...

There were BBQ chicken wings, druk beer trout, pumpkin poke bowl, ginger braised carrot and torched tomato. He enjoyed the wings with pickled cucumber and apricot sauce. The fried trout with remoulade, hand cut chips and lemon salt was not bad too. We decided to have the dessert, Lemon Pavlova in our room. There's walnut cream cheese, peanut butter yoghurt, candied lemon peel and spiced bubble chips.

Haha just when Potato has recovered, I came down with a fever and cold after lunch. *Thanks to Potato who helped me prepare tub for some warm soak and cold towels to bring the fever down.* Was just lethargic in the afternoon and felt chilly in our room. At night, my body temperature, at one point, hit 38.6 degrees Celcius. We decided to forgo our usual set dinner and the hotel prepped just hot chicken noodle for me. It was similar to their chicken ramen the day before but the soup was too salty. *He still didn’t like his beef haha.*

I also popped some panadol tablets but very soon afterwards, I puked everything in the toilet, although phew my fever went down to 37.7 degrees Celcius then. The sleep that night was quite difficult for me if I did not remember wrongly. Till today, I'm unsure if it was the virus Potato passed to me or was it I caught a cold from the weather or the rafting...

On a sidenote, one of the yellow protective strings on my wrist also broke out of nowhere on the day I felt unwell. A traditional belief to Taoists is that things like bracelets/beads snap to "block evil spirits" from  their owners, but when I told Jamyang about it the next day, he helped me tie it back before taking all the threads back from us on the day we leave Bhutan. Well, different beliefs haha. *只要心中相信就自有佛祖保佑吧。*