Postcard from Bhutan: Pillars and Prayer Flags
![](https://www.geoex.com/app/uploads/2019/07/bhutan-postcard-prayer-flag.jpg)
The highway winds slowly through and around the steeply cut valleys pushed up by the Indian subcontinent. Small streams and rivers carve deeper V’s in the valley floors. I am reminded of the woods where I grew up in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, and for a moment, I forget where I am. Then the bus rounds a bend and I am greeted by thin, towering pillars with fluttering prayer flags reaching towards the sky, and a farmhouse with wooden shingles pitched at a shallow angle weighed down by large stones instead of nails. Houses with whitewashed earthen walls interrupted by sturdy, hand-cut window frames dot the landscape. Cows and yaks emerge from tall rhododendrons and lope lazily onto the road, looking for a tasty patch of grass to graze on. “This is Bhutan,” I find myself thinking. “I’m really here!”
Artwork pictured above by Colin Christy: Prayer flags in the Bumthang region.
To get ideas for travel in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, explore GeoEx’s Bhutan journeys.