What a morning. We couldn’t have asked for better weather for our first big hike of the trip. We drove out of Thimphu along the river to the foot of the mountain leading up to Cheri Goemba, a small monastery. It was a challenging hike up, but we have great students and they soldered to the top and were rewarded with a stunning view. We were invited to enter the monastery temple, but there were no photos allowed and we had to remove our shoes. We sat on the floor in front of the Buddha statues and learned about the philosophies practiced there. It was a great feeling, all of us sitting in silence, incense burning, butter carvings decorating, and 1000 small Buddhas surrounding the room.

We hiked back down and had lunch outside on the side of a mountain, overlooking the valley. Delicious food, and a million dollar view.

Afterward we visited the most important Bhutanese Stupa (Chorten) in the center of town. You could see the people coming to pray, making rounds of the Chorten.

We just finished a presentation on Gross National Happiness (GNH). It was interesting to see the data collection that is done to measure how well they are doing at keeping the happiness high, and how this informs government policy. Our economics students were particularly interested.

We are now having a 1 hour break. After that we will visit the National Library, Fortress, and have momos (Bhutanese dumplings) at a local restaurant.