Happy New Year

It was a quiet night for us…dinner with our guide and driver and a couple of bottles of ‘Druk 11000’ beer, then back to the hotel where we had a bottle of Indian ‘champagne’ (called Zampagne) chilling outside our room.

Note to self, the French have Champagne…and champagne by any other name (Zampagne or otherwise) is still not champagne!  Let’s just say it was really, really awful tasting!  

I don’t think I was completely surprised.  The bottle was purchased from a small liquor store in Paro earlier in the day and the dust on the bottle either suggested it was a vintage bottle recently pulled from the dusty cellar…or…it had sat on the shelf for so long that even the shop keeper never expected that anyone would ever buy it…except some crazy tourist on New Years Eve!  Yes, one sip, one toast…for 700 Nu (about US$17).

It was not the bigger celebratory New Years of previous years, but still…to be in Bhutan on this day…we’re not complaining at all!

Strangely enough, there isn’t a countdown on television for Bhutan New Year’s Eve celebrations.  No Times Square, no Anderson Cooper, no Nathan Phillips Square, no fireworks…but the people in the room beside us were definitely from India, as they chose to begin their celebrations at 12:30am (time zone difference) and it was the Indian New Year countdown that was the only one I could find broadcast on TV.  So, we did the countdown for 12:00am and 12:30am…why not!?

When we arrived at the Paro airport the following morning, the New Years Eve celebrations were still being shown on television, but this time it was CNN coverage of NYC Times Square, then Nashville,… well, you get the picture.  Yes…we were there for quite awhile.  Our flight was delayed due to fog (snowfall last night).

The crowds got a little antsy, the airport staff brought in lunch for everyone, and finally 8 hours after getting to the airport, we finally boarded our flight back to Kathmandu.  Whew!  A New Years like no other.