thedawaring's blog

Mid Summer in Thimphu, Bhutan. Finding happiness towards late June It is not often that you wake up one morning feeling perfectly happy.  One Sunday morning in late June, I wake up feeling a complete new sense of bliss. I jump out of the bed and head towards the veranda. A fresh, soft and cool morning air blows gently past my face. I pull out a red polythene chair and sit to watch a mesmerizing morning magic unfold itself before me. I play the song SubhanAllah from the 2013 Bollywood film ‘Yeh Jawani hai yeh Deewani’on my old fashioned cell phone and listen to the melody fuse itself with the beauty of the morning.   After two days of clouds and rain, a bright sunny morning was opening up. The owner of my apartment was burning pine leaves, perhaps praying for a good day ahead. The smoke wafted across the space riding on the gentle morning wind. The river below my house was swollen. Debris of logs and leaves were being carried away by the murky water. In the...

Chukha, Bhutan. October 3. 2014. A paradise called Drukyul. I am beginning to realize that being born in this beautiful Himalayan kingdom is by sheer luck and previous good karma. No wonder foreigners describe the place as the last Shangri-la . From peaceful morning sunrise from behind the lush green towering mountains to tranquil evening sky filled with billion stars, from countless cascades of pearly waterfalls to beautiful traditional Buddhist stupas, from serene temples to jolly monks, from merry farmers in the paddy fields in the autumn season to wandering musicians, I feel Bhutan is designed by the Almighty. Simply waking up to be greeted by a cool morning breeze against the backdrop of a promising sunny day, you can literally feel all make-happy chemicals being released in your body. And as you gleefully wander through small villages, you come across amazing display of an ancient culture very much intact even in this age of globalization. Traditional son...