Tashi Gyeltshen

I apologize for the late reply but coming back home after many days implied a lot of things to be done so  I was extremely busy. I was ( and am..) really enthusiastic about my trip because I discovered an incredible country so rich in nature and culture as very few other ones I ever visited. As I told you I was definitely not happy with the hotel in Punakha which was less than a second choice but for one  night it was ok. Also chuumey was not so impressive but the place itself was very nice. All the other ones were good Running from the ( obvious…) excellence of Naksel to the fantastic location and structure  of Gangtey palace and so on, but what was really fascinating and lovable was the friendliness and the attention in service which I noticed and remarked in everybody . From the staff in each place : this is something I didn’t find very often in my travels. As for Tashi and Fren they were extremely nice and friendly , helpful and always trying to help in solving little problems and inconveniences which might occur. I would definitely recommend both of them for future customers. 

It’s really a pity that the country is not so popular for tourism (Many friends asked me WHERE was Bhutan…) even if for me  it was great like that since I hate big tourist groups… But for the country in itself I think you should try to make it more popular as a destination because more people should be able to enjoy its treasures…
For my part I will try to encourage people to go there !

OUR PACKAGE FROM 15TH APRIL 2018 TO 21ST APRIL 2018 WAS ASSISTED BY MR. RAJAT GUPTA, NEW DELHI. HE WAS EXTREMELY HELPFUL AND TOOK GOOD CARE IN SELECTION OF HOTELS AND ITINERARY. THANK YOU SO MUCH MR. RAJAT GUPTA.
OUR SPECIAL THANKS TO TASHI, GUIDE AND THE VAN DRIVER WHOSE NAME WE HAD FORGOTTEN. TASHI WAS MORE LIKE OUR FAMILY MEMBER, VERY WARM AND FRIENDLY. HE WAS WITH US ALL THROUGH OUR TRIP FROM START TO FINISH. HE MADE THE TRIP EXTREMELY MEMORABLE. HE ALSO SHARED HIS LUNCH WITH US WHEN WE WERE TREKKING TIGER NEST. WE ENJOYED HIS COMPANY AND MISSED HIM WHEN WE RETURNED TO INDIA. OUR HEART FELT GRATITUDE TO HIM. GOD BLESS.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE IS 10 ON 10.

Wow! I had the very best holiday.

Thank you enormously. There were pleasant surprises in there and plenty of support.

It took my a while to get into the swing of being a traveller again. And I think it would have been difficult to foresee all the adjustments I needed to make.

Flight was good, and Bhutan’s guide and driver were exceptional. On the first day, I went for good walk from the fort to my hotel. Everything about the hotel was good, it was a great introduction to Bhutan. Alas, the next morning, my Right knee had blown up and was sore throughout the trip, though it didn’t stop me in what I wanted to do.I rode a horse up to the canteen on the way to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, which is as close to it I got. The wealth of knowledge Tashi, the guide had was incredible, so each Dzong was a joy to visit. The Thimbu hotel was lovely and i could listen to the bells as the prayer wheels were turned. The weaving display, the memorial temple were very impressive and generally just being amongst the crowds was good. Panakha Valley was interesting too, and I went to a nunnery to listen to the chanting at 6.30am before driving to Bumthang. The roads certainly are an education, and it was so wonderful to see the respect of cows and dogs, even if they were in the middle of the road. Bumthang was a good place to spend some time, though as you know the flight was cancelled and I had to return by road to Paro.

The homestay, such a historically rich place, was great. I was sorry I couldn’t have stayed longer. Very smooth sailing leaving Paro.

And the wonderful Business class seat where I saw the Himalayan  mountains in between mouthfuls of scrumptious food. Thank you the view was one of my highlights.

So Jen a big thank you, you excelled in the arrangements. It was a wonderful trip.

Kind Regards,

Paula.

We visited Bhutan once again with Wind Horse. The trip was excellent and personalized as we travelled further into the Haa valley where we would have gladly stayed longer. We had a very dedicated and intuitive guide, Tashi, who teamed up with driver Pema. Both were well-versed in Buddhist interpretation of temples and sites (a significant plus!). Small is definitely beautiful – Bhutan, roads, hotels, gardens, shops. Truly a delight.

First of all I apologise for the delay in my review. I got back to Australia a few days ago.

I am very pleased with my trip to Bhutan.

First of all your reactiveness was great, every time I had a request or a question you would reply to me in a few hours, it was great tot know that you were onto it.

I did find it a bit difficult to use the kimkim platform, maybe because I only had phone. I did not receive the attachments you send on kimkim and I was unable to upload documents (I had to get my partner to do it for me from Australia).

The flights were good. Landing in Paro I was struck by how fresh and crips the air was (compared to polluted Kathmandu!), it was the best feeling.

My guide Tashi was very nice, knowledgeable, and friendly. I learned a lot, about Bhutan and Buddhism. Every request I had he would try his best to fulfil it. He organised a Hot Stone bath at his family’s house. It was great to meet his family and enjoy a traditional Hot Stone Bath, especially after hiking the Tiger’s nest that morning.

The first day did feel a little rushed, but the rest of the time the schedule was well paced. I wish I had time to go a bit further than Punakha. It was very convenient to have the car and drive (I am sorry I forgot his name), to stop where ever I wanted to, giving us flexibility.

The accommodation was great. The Bhutan Suites in Thimphu was very comfortable and helpful staff.

I really enjoyed the homestay at Chimi Lhakhang. My hosts were very friendly, they spoke perfect english, let me cook with them. I felt welcome and it gave me a deeper understanding of the culture. I am glad I stayed there two nights. Gangtey Palace in Paro was amazing. The building is quite impressive, beautiful views on the Dzong and mountains, the room big and comfortable. The only disappointing part was the weak wifi connection from my room (but hey, that’s ok). I was lucky though, as on my last night there, they hosted a special event and I could see traditional dancing (which I wouldn’t have seen otherwise).

The food was tasty and fresh, especially at the homestay as I got to cook with my hosts and witness how meals are shared. After the second day, lunches were disappointing as I realised it was always the same buffet (veggie noodles, rice, veggies, spinach…). I wish I could have ordered different options.

In a way it was good to be one on one with the guide but I do wish the tour included other people. It is always nice to discover new places with people to share your impressions with and I was a bit lonely in the evening as the tour finishes quite early in the day (4/5pm).

I enjoyed the hikes and visiting temples (even though it did feel like a lot of temples by the end of the week). I am glad I got to see the archery competition. The Hot Stone bath and the Tiger’s nest hike (great to do early in the morning) as well as the home stay were the highlights of my trip. I feel like Bhutan is a country like no other. I am delighted I got to experience it. The tour was great. I understand and appreciate the bhutanese approach to tourism. I had a great time. Than you very much for your help and organising it all for me. I would love to go back one day and visit the East, I will let you know when 😉

Dear Anand,
Please excuse this belated note. My husband Andrew has been quite busy with work, so I decided to respond on my family’s behalf.
All in all, our 7 days in Bhutan were truly remarkable. The pastoral and rugged beauty of the country will stay with us for a long time.  Our guide Tashi was the ideal match for our family of three. He was engaging and informative without being garrulous. Also, he was so thoughtful to arrange a birthday cake for our daughter on the day of our arrival because we landed in Bhutan on her 13th birthday. The royal baby was born on the same day as well, which was an unexpected honor for her!
The restaurants Tashi selected for us were fantastic; we ate very well. Also, our driver Yamraj was the consummate professional. He focused on his driving and made us feel quite safe despite the treacherous terrain. We are not sure how he maintained his calm as he drove over 6 hours from Gangtey to Thimpu on an unpaved, rocky road.

Our only regret was having asked Tashi to switch our itinerary at the end of our visit so that we could climb Taktsang the day before the scheduled date. We wanted to visit the National Museum in Paro on our last day because the museum would be open. The previous day it was scheduled to be closed due to a national holiday. Anyhow, Tashi accommodated kindly but had us still tour Thimpu rather than driving us straight to Taktsang. Anyhow, we started our hike up the mountain at 2:00pm; of course, our climb down coincided with nightfall and was quite scary for me and my daughter.
Besides the climb down in the dark, we cannot fault Tashi because we asked for the schedule change. Other than the poor timing, we had the most wonderful trip and feel fortunate to have been paired with Tashi and Yamraj. I particularly enjoyed Paro for its flowers and temperate climate; our daughter loved the chill and snow in Gangtey the most.
Thank you for arranging an unforgettable, lovely trip for us.

Review of Bhutan Trip
Hey Everyone,
I recently returned from a 6 day tour in Bhutan with Windhorse Tours. This was actually part of a larger itinerary that included Nepal, Beijing, and Tibet as well, but since this is the Bhutan forum I guess I’m only supposed to write about Bhutan. To start, I found it hard to choose a tour company since there are so many reviews here, but decided to make an inquiry with Windhorse as I’ve seen their name mentioned on here multiple times with positive experiences. Nobody asked me to write this review, nor was I compensated for it (I only mention this because I have seen some negative backlash by other people commenting to those who have posted reviews in the past). Anyways, after my initial e-mail I was called by Ugen to talk about the type of trip that I wanted and he offered suggestions about where to go and what to do. After some e-mails back and forth I decided on an itinerary that featured Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. Communication was great all the way through, I’d only usually have to wait a day or two before hearing back from either Ugen or Jambay. Whenever you send anyone a large sum of money and you don’t hear back for a week that’s always a little worrisome to me, so I appreciated their prompt responses very much. Any questions I had along the way were answered to my satisfaction, all supplemental materials were sent to me as promised, and I was left with confidence that I had made a good decision in choosing them to help plan my trip. It really is the little things that add up when you’re traveling, and I have to say that I very much appreciated that Jambay was kind enough to meet me in person in Thimphu where he gave me a hard cover 150+ page book about Bhutan.

Anyways, as for the actual trip itself, the entire journey was excellent from start to finish (including Nepal and especially Tibet). I’m sure most people will have a good experience going to Bhutan with whoever they choose to book with, I don’t see how you could have a bad time there to be honest. This is something that seemed evident while talking to other people who were there with other guides, either sitting next to others on a plane or simply chatting up other travelers at any of the main sights in Bhutan. And because I had these conversations with other travelers about how their trips were going, I can say with confidence that I believe my trip was just that much more enjoyable than the people I met along the way. Not to say anyone I met was having a bad time, everyone was very happy, but I was lucky to have an amazing guide who always went above and beyond what I expected during the entire stay in Bhutan. My guide’s name was Tashi, and he really did do a fantastic job. My driver’s name was Loday, and he too was great (especially navigating the bumpy and muddy roads of Dochula Pass).

I saw all of the locations I wanted to see, something that I’m sure every other traveler sees as well, but what really set my experience apart was the friendship I had with Tashi and all of the other activities he offered me to experience while he was under no obligation to do so. This is in addition to the fact that he was a great guide from a technical standpoint; for example, he spoke good English, was very personable, was extremely knowledgeable about each location we visited while also conveying that knowledge to me in a way that was engaging, and also made an effort to get to know me as a person, not just a customer. I could write a lot about every location I saw but I’m sure that information is redundant on this forum, and I really wanted to focus this review on the services of Windhorse. I will say one quick thing though, the Tiger’s Nest lives up to the hype, and it is a must see if you go to Bhutan.

Back to the actual review: like I mentioned earlier in my post, I’m sure almost everyone who goes to Bhutan probably has a great experience, but what I want to praise Tashi for is all of the extra things we did. We stopped at an archery field during the day to watch a match that was in progress, which was pretty cool, and when I asked him if it were possible to try it out if there was time, without hesitation he said: “Of course, I’ll schedule it when we get back to Paro” (and we did, and it was awesome). Every night he offered for me to come hang out with his friends after the daily planned activities were finished; and of course I jumped at the opportunity. Bhutan was a great place to visit, and the hospitality and unwavering generosity of his friends only added to my experience. When we were in Paro, he invited me to his home and small farm where I got to meet his sister, niece, and mother where I was again treated with great hospitality and good conversation. When we were in Thimphu (during the Thimphu Tsechu festival) he met me at my hotel at night to go walk around amongst everyone camped out in their tents for the festival, saying hi to people he knew, and offering me a number of local food choices to sample. The day of the Tiger’s Nest hike I asked him if we could leave extra early in the morning so we could be the first people up that day, and of course he was happy to do so. And even though he’s not a drinker, he was more than happy to take me to some local bars so I could enjoy some of the local beers. It definitely helped that we are both in our early 30’s, but I believe he would be great for anyone looking for a tour of Bhutan.

So whether it was taking a detour from one of our hikes to meet a family at a local village to eat fresh vegetables, stopping to eat at a roadside corn stand, introducing me to his friend who is a teacher along with her students, visiting the farmers market where his mom sells her fresh produce, giving me some money when I foolishly left my wallet at the check in station at Tiger’s Nest so I could donate while I was inside, and probably some other things I forgot … I just can’t say enough about this guy. If you’re ever planning to go to Bhutan, don’t hesitate to request Tashi Gyeltshen as your guide.

Thanks for reading.

Bhutan Festival Tour with Wangdi and Thimphu Festival, 2015
Hello to all –
Charlie and I had a fantastic time in Bhutan.  One of our best trips ever!!  We had wonderful fellow travelers and great guides and driver.  Sonam, Tashi, and Barleyman made our trip very special.Hope everyone made it home safely – or hope you are enjoying continued travels.

If you have some special pictures that came out extra good – please send them along to us at ……… Also – would love to hear about upcoming travel plans as travel is always of great interest to us.

Again – it was wonderful meeting everyone.   It was a wonderful holiday.
Tashi was a wonderful guide on our private tour of tigers nest.  I believe he took some pictures that day and it would be wonderful if he could forward those to us from his iPhone.

Again – we loved the trip and will recommend Windhorse.  Still hope to some day return to Bhutan.

TID 8757, May 17- 22, 2015, guide – Tashi Gyaltshen
Dear Ugen and Wind Horse Travel,

Our trip was wonderful. Perfect. Bhutan was indeed the happiest place on earth and it was truly beautiful. The only thing we regretted was we only had five days. If Bhutan were only a few hours flight from California, we would visit every year!

Tashi, our guide, and Tashi, our driver were wonderful, welcoming, friendly, accommodating, and enthusiastic about showing us the beauty of Bhutan. We wanted a balance between nature and culture and Tashi delivered exactly that. The hiking trails that Tashi picked for us were fun and adventurous. Tashi was very welcoming and friendly. On the very last day, he took us to an archery field, he taught us how to do it, and we played for an hour, before we had dinner at his family’s house! We took a bunch of videos playing archery and showed them to our family and friends. We really enjoyed our last hike to the Tiger’s Nest. It was definitely the highlight of our visit. We took hundreds of beautiful pictures of Bhutan and the monasteries.

All in all, our Bhutan trip was amazing. We both loved it. We would definitely refer Wind Horse and Tashi to our friends. Thank you!

TID 8650 March 25 – April 08, 2015 (Tashi Gyalteshen – Guide)
First of all, let me say that i enjoyed the trip very much.Positives were the beauty of the country and friendliness of people in general.I think a 14 day trip really is worth it and through your choice of sights offers a great insight of the country.
I  thought hotels in general were very good and the services of driver and guide as well. The car was always clean and the driving of the driver was very safe and skilful.
Tashi always explained the sights we were visiting well. Generally he provided answers to all our questions in a very sovereign and knowledgeable way. He also invited us into his home which was a highlight and very much appreciated.  Also Tashi’s calmness is a good asset.
In terms of potential improvement, I see three areas.
1) Considering the government charges a rather large daily fee they should definitely ensure better roads, especially in the east. Also, wifi network is quite bad. In most hotels, the connection was quite weak and the hotels claim this is due to the country’s network. Wifi often is the only means of contact with home and works better in every other country in Asia I know. I suggest to submit thesr suggestions to the tourist board
2 ) If you have a small group then i would book them into smaller boutique hotels in instead of thr big hotels where we stayed. Although quality of hotels was fine, they are quite impersonal and not very cosy. Same goes for restaurants. In addition i suggest to offer more special events, like a picnic or two (we had one picnic and that was great), more longer hikes, homestay dinner, sunrise visit to dzong and so on. These ideas would really lift your itineraries and just require a bit of creativity.
3) I understand our guide and driver knew each other and we did spend a lot of time in the car but they should be careful talking to each other continuously.  As a foreigner you don’t understand so it sometimes feels if they are talking about you especially if they talk amongst themselves after talking to you. I am sure there is no bad intention and of course they can exchange a few words but they should be careful.  In the western world, this is considered impolite! Other than that i would like to say once more i really liked the trip!!
Thanks, kristine

Dear Anand, I apologize for my slowness in answering your letter. Since our return from Asia some 10 days ago, we have been busy doing chores.

We loved our trip! It was everything we had hoped for. The itinerary allowed us to see many parts of your beautiful country and interesting culture. Attending the Tharpaling Thongdrel, while in the itinerary, was an unexpected highlight.

Tashi, our guide, and Sonam, our driver, were excellent. Tashi and my husband liked to joke with each other which made our hikes and walks extra enjoyable.  Someday we hope to return to Bhutan to visit the eastern portion of the country and would again want to use Tashi and Sonam.

Thanks again!

Sincerely, Margaret – TID 8634 (26 Feb – 11 March)

Village Tour of Bhutan for Ms. Susan Thomas & Son TID 8626: Dec. 21 – 29, 2014

I just returned a few days ago.  Bhutan was part of a 2 month trip.  I do plan to write a review on Trip Advisor.
Both Tashi and Sonam were terrific. I have hired guides and drivers around the world and they rate with the best.  We loved the entire trip, especially the Haa Valley.  Lechuna Heritage Hotel is a gem.
The only problem we encountered was with Tashi Namgay Resort.  We stayed there our first night in a new room with radiant heating in the floor.  It was a lovely room so we were really looking forward to spending our last 2 nights there.  Unfortunately we had a terrible room on our return.  It was very large which would have been nice but it was below zero (fahrenheit) and they had one pathetic heater that you could put your hand on when it was “working.” Tashi immediately ordered us another heater which was much better.  Unfortunately, the electrical system couldn’t handle two heaters so it blew a fuse during the night.  Not knowing a fuse had blown, I spent the last half of the night shivering.  Tashi got us another room for the last night which was better as it had electrical blankets.  The fault was entirely the hotel’s.
I will post my review in the next few days.  My name on Trip Advisor is Engphile.

Dear Wind Horse Tours,
Please excuse this belated note concerning our Paro tour 30Nov-03Dec 2014, as we have been quite busy since our trip to Bhutan. We are writing just to let you know how very much we enjoyed our 3 days in Paro and how well-organized everything was. We managed to pack quite a bit into our time, including visits to several temples and monasteries, hiking to the nunnery near Chele-la and to Tiger’s Nest, and a wonderful visit to our guide’s farm near Paro. Our dinner the last night at a restaurant in Paro was fabulous. Although the Tashi Namgay resort was quite lovely, the restaurant at the hotel was not good and the wi-fi was a problem, so we would not recommend using that hotel again.

Finally, we must give the highest recommendation to our guide, Tashi Gyeltsehn, and his assistant, whose name we have lost. Both were very attentive to our needs, wishes, and comfort. They were very knowledgeable and gracious. We particularly appreciated the visit to Tashi’s farm and meeting his welcoming family, who served us tea and refreshments. Our driver filled in for Tashi when we climbed to Tiger’s Nest and he was very careful with us old folks. We can’t say enough good things about both guides. You our lucky to employ them.
Once again, thank you for all of your planning, which made our entire trip to Bhutan very enjoyable. We have recommended Wind Horse Tours to other doctors for their trip to Bhutan.

Sincerely,
Bob and Linda W