Tag: thimphu

THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: I ❤️ THIMPHU ~ LIFE IN MOMENTS

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The screen lights up with a bold declaration—I ❤️ Thimphu. It’s one of those familiar signs, the kind that travelers photograph, but for those of us who have spent time here, it means something more. This is not just a place; it’s a rhythm, a way of life, a set of small, interwoven moments that make up the everyday magic of Bhutan’s capital.

From that opening image, the video unfolds like a quiet walk through the city, a collage of life in motion. Narrow walkways wind between buildings, where vendors arrange their sales items in tidy, colorful stacks.

There’s a different kind of pace here. Thimphu may be Bhutan’s capital, but it never loses its intimacy. This montage captures those subtle, fleeting interactions—a shopkeeper sharing a laugh with a regular customer, two monks walking side by side, away from the ‘bright lights.’

The city exhales.

Watching the video, I feel the pull of this place, the way it seeps into you. It’s not just the grandeur of the mountains that surround it or the traditions woven into its fabric—it’s the ordinary moments, the warmth of connection, the stillness found in the midst of movement.

Thimphu isn’t just a city. It’s a feeling. And sometimes, all it takes is a simple video collage to remind me of that.

March 2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN: RAW & UNFINISHED

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Thimphu in Transit

There’s something about the way a city wears its construction sites—like open wounds, raw and unfinished, waiting for the world to stitch them into place. Thimphu is no different. Wrapped in green mesh, steel bones exposed, scaffolding bending with the weight of time, the city stands both in progress and in pause.

This morning, I walked past a sheet of corrugated metal, graffiti scrawled across it in uneven strokes: “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” A proverb? A warning? A joke? Above it, the words “Table Tennis” stand alone, absurdly, as if the whole thing is a riddle I’ve been invited to solve.

And then, in the frame—him. A monk in deep red, hands clasped behind his back, walking slow but steady along the pavement. An old-world presence against this half-built, half-forgotten modernity. He doesn’t look at the words. He doesn’t need to. He already understands something I don’t.

Thimphu exists like this, in these small, unspoken moments. The stillness of a monk against the movement of a city. The permanence of wisdom against the impermanence of buildings. The things we choose to notice and the things we walk past without a second glance.

I snap a photo. The date stamp in the corner marks this day, this second. A reminder that for now, at least, I am here. But like all places, Thimphu is just another stop on the road—one man’s home, another man’s horizon.

13march2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN: NOWHERE, SOMEWHERE, EVERYWHERE

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“A monk strides past, beads clicking, wrapped in his ochre cocoon, carrying the kind of certainty I can’t seem to hold onto.”

Nowhere, Somewhere, Everywhere

The air is thin in Thimphu. Thin like the veil between past and present, like the space between knowing and not knowing.

Last night, I got lost in old photos, each one a postcard from another life—Kyiv’s cold blue mornings, Saigon’s ‘Bread and Butter Pub’ nights, Bogotá’s thundercloud afternoons, Paris in art, Miami burning bright. I let them wash over me, these ghosts of past selves, all those cities where I was briefly someone, then no one, then gone.

I sip my coffee at a nameless café, watching the morning unfold. A monk strides past, beads clicking, wrapped in his ochre cocoon, carrying the kind of certainty I can’t seem to hold onto. The traffic cop stands straight-backed, radio in hand, a fixed point in a world that shifts beneath my feet.

I don’t know where I’m going next. I never have. But the road—she always finds me.

“The traffic cop stands straight-backed, radio in hand, a fixed point in a world that shifts beneath my feet.”

March 2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN: THE PRICE OF EGGS

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9march2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: BLEND OF OLD AND NEW

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Downtown Thimphu’s unique blend of old and new—where rows of meat shops and bedding stores line the street, framed by traditional Bhutanese architecture still standing strong. A glimpse of everyday life in Bhutan’s normally bustling capital, which just happens to be slow and peaceful today due to the LOSAR holiday.

1march25

THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: OLD-STYLE ARCHITECTURE

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Amidst Thimphu’s growing modernity, traditional Bhutanese architecture still stands strong—ornate woodwork, intricate paintings, and centuries-old craftsmanship telling stories of heritage and resilience. A timeless reminder of Bhutan’s rich cultural legacy. 

1march2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: FAST FOOD ROW

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Fast Food Row in Thimphu is unusually quiet today as most families celebrate Losar (New Year) at home. The usual buzz of sizzling momos, spicy ema datshi, and piping hot suja is on pause—but the flavors of Bhutanese street food will be back in full swing soon! 

1march2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN: ON CONFIDENCE AND SOLITUDE

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On Confidence, Solitude, and the Quiet Courage of My Students

Reading my students’ essays today has left me feeling existential. Their words, their struggles, their dreams—they all sit with me. Many of them dream of travel, of seeing the world beyond Bhutan. But what strikes me most is how many of them aspire to something I’ve never thought twice about: the confidence to walk into a restaurant or café alone, to order a coffee, to sit with themselves.

It’s a quiet kind of courage, one I’ve taken for granted.

For the past 22 years, I’ve lived as a nomad, moving from country to country, city to city. Sitting alone in a café, watching the world move around me, has always been my preference. It’s where I feel most at home. I’ve never needed to summon the courage to do it—it’s simply who I am. But for my students, it’s a milestone, a step toward self-assurance, toward independence.

And that humbles me.

It reminds me to never take my freedom for granted. The ability to move through the world with ease, to find joy in solitude, to sit alone without questioning my place—these are privileges, built on years of experience, maybe even an innate confidence I never had to develop.

But for my students, confidence isn’t always innate. It’s something they reach for. And I see that in their writing, in their longing to step beyond their comfort zones, in their quiet dreams of sitting in a café alone, ordering a meal without hesitation.

It makes me wonder: When did something so small, so ordinary to me, become an act of bravery for them?

Maybe that’s the lesson for today. What we take for granted might be someone else’s mountain to climb. And what we see as effortless, others might see as courage.

“One Free”

Thimphu, Bhutan, February 2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN ART: THE TIGER’S EYES

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The tiger’s eyes burn through the wall, wide and unblinking, caught somewhere between fury and wisdom. It is not just paint on plaster—it is a presence, a reminder, a guardian from an older world where symbols hold power and myths walk alongside the living.
In Bhutanese Buddhism, the tiger is strength, protection, a force that does not hesitate. And yet, in the way its body stretches and curls, there is movement, a restless energy pressing against the surface, as if it might leap free, off this wall, at any moment.
In Thimphu, these symbols are everywhere, woven into the streets, the temples, the fabric of daily life. You pass by them without thinking, until one day, you don’t. You stop. You meet the tiger’s gaze, and for a moment, you understand—this place is alive in ways you can’t quite explain.
I notice them everywhere. 🐅 ☸️

February 2025

THIMPHU, BHUTAN: THE EVER-FLOWING NOW OF IT ALL

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I saw that dragon, that crazy serpentine beast dancing up the mint-green wall like some holy apparition rising through Himalayan mist, all spotted and scaled and breathing fire-clouds that curl like the smoke from a thousand butter lamps in the dawn. Always passing by it in a taxi, today, I decided to walk to it.

And there hanging, this massive prayer wheel with its ancient Sanskrit wisdom etched in gold against white, turning turning turning with the weight of centuries, each rotation sending mantras spinning into the thin mountain air where snow-capped peaks pierce the belly of heaven itself.

The dragon’s eyes fierce with enlightenment, its body twisting through realms of samsara while that QR code sits there like some modern mandala, digital dharma beaming straight into the 21st century, while the accordion-fold gate stands sentinel, all geometric and patient, watching the eternal dance of ancient and now, now and forever, forever and now.

Everything’s connected here.

This is Bhutan, crystallized in one corner, one moment, where the dragons still dance and the wheels still turn and the ancient wisdom meets the digital age in a sublime cosmic shuffle that’d make the Buddha himself snap his fingers in holy beat appreciation, digging the ever-flowing now of it all.