Miriam R x 02 : 01-08 November 2010

Hi Ugen, I have now been back for a few days from my wonderful trip to Bhutan and started to settle back in. It is important to me to take a moment to thank you, Wind Horse Tours and your great team for allowing me to enjoy such an amazing experience. I’d also like to congratulate you to your very professional team of guides and drivers: Sonam was a delight to have as a guide and trek partner. He was fun to be around while teaching me fundamental knowledge about Bhutanese history. He was the perfect trek guide – providing guidance and ensuring that I had a safe & pleasant time, while also allowing me the space I seeked to be alone out in nature. Pema’s warm and kind personality provided a taste of how welcoming Bhuatnese seem to be towards foreigners. I took great pleasure in seeing him again and again during my trip towards the East since he is such a wonderful person to be around. I can well imagine how he could be a tremendous asset to your line up of guides.

Guddu is simply a rock star driver. I did not flinch once when he drove us through the infamous ‘Namling Cliffs’ which means a lot when coming from a ‘control freak’ who always drives herself almost anywhere in the world. (Please feel free to forward to Guddu since I do not have his email.)

I probably do not have to tell you much about Jambay who clearly is a seasoned guide with tremendous knowledge, but most of all patience! My curious mind must have thrown hundreds of questions his way which he was always willing to answer in-depth. So often we tortured him with the same question again and again in our eagerness to learn more about Bhutan. He was also very flexible to add sights to our itinerary as they arose our interest on the way. (And then poor Guddu had to drive us there!) Like wise Jambay was great to spend time with and I enjoyed his personality. Bhutan mesmerized me with its culture and architecture, but most of all its people. I appreciated to which extend I was made to feel welcomed, especially to the festivals. Bhutan opened and warmed my heart still long after I have left. I simply can not wait to return. I’ll be seriously interested in doing the Snowman trek in the 2012 season and have already started to discuss this with some of my mountaineering friends. I’d like to stay in close contact with you to discuss this endeavour should I find a few like minded souls. Otherwise I most likely return to explore some of the areas I have not seen yet. In any case, I’d be very happy to serve as a reference for Wind Horse Tours should you have a need. Also let me know if you ever make it to the Bay Area. It would be nice to meet you in person. Wind Horse Tours and specifically you did a very good job in providing information and setting expectations for the trip. There are however two things which I’d like to mention since they could help improve some of the information provided:

1. We only learnt once in Bhutan that 500 and 1,000 rupee notes are no longer accepted. It might help to add this to the information you currently provide so that travelers change larger bills before hand.

2. The multiple entry process into India was a little misleading. Perhaps you can reword the current information so that travelers do not expect to be actually handed a ‘waiver’. No waiver is given during entry. It seems they just make a remark in their system at best.

I hope this email finds you well (and everybody copied). I also hope that Bhutan will continue to succeed in its fine balance of development/modernization and preservation of its culture and heritage.