Day 1, lunch break @ funky chorten
So far, 531 tourists have trekked the Paro-Jomolhari trail this year, according to records with TCB.
2008
so 1000/year to jomo base camp, how many to lingshi and beyond, not sure maybe less than 1/2, so 250/year may do this trek?

telephoto view from Soi Thangthangkha, Camp 2, Day 3

the kiwis, where the trees start to thin out, and i first saw a yak and yak calf, on way to Jangothang Camp

Finally @ Jangthang, next day, rest day, and day hike to foot of the goddess mountain

one of 2 or 3 'terminal morraine' the end of previous glacier debris fields, we climbed up this one on the 1st days partial day hike up to the mountain from jangotang campground. the british dr.tom and his wife alex

Jomolhari Base Camp, 15000 feet plus

jichu drake appears for few seconds, last village at top end of paro valley, climbing out from jangothang, up to the 1st high pass, nyile la, no turning back if altitude sickness occurs

Blue Sheep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_blue_sheep

last scree slope up to nyile la, looking back towards jomolhari

NYILE LA, 16000ft+ HIGH PASS IN GOOGLE EARTH LINK, CLICK ME
After Ngile La, I started to notice that my eyes were getting better, the pain and swelling lessening. For the first time I found myself dawdling, the beauty of Bhutan confronting me at every turn. Gaping beauty that only seemed to get more transcendent the farther I went. I'd think I'd seen it all, couldn't possibly take in any more, only to climb the next hilltop, turn round the next bend, and see something even more spectacular, more dizzying to the senses. My mind wanted to capture it all somehow. And so my futile attempts to take pictures, to preserve it and take it home. But I just ended up cursing my camera. A one-dimensional photo could do no justice to the country, couldn't make any of it last.

Then I saw the tiny fortress, Lingshi Dzong, sitting on a hilltop before the great audience of the Himalaya. I stopped. For some reason I never quite understood, I sat down and wept. Maybe it had something to do with the starkness of the distances, with the dramatic vying of sunlight and storm. Or perhaps it was subtler, harder to explain. As if, in that ancient dzong—that speck of human proclamation sitting before the indifferent valleys and rise of the Himalaya—it was my own voice calling out into the void. I found myself making an appeal of grief about my brother, who'd had his own history, his stories. What would happen to them now? Where do they—where do any of our stories—go?

Lingshi Dzong—for centuries a way station for weary travelers and Buddhist pilgrims, a defense against Tibetan and Mongol hordes—just sat there fearlessly proclaiming its own story to the vast, empty indifference before us. A rainbow erupted from it, arching over the valley and reaching toward the mountains opposite. Such indescribable beauty. But no way to keep it.

A few days later, near Lingshi Dzong, the Snowman would take its first casualty of the year: A 42-year-old American woman, trekking in the group just behind ours, succumbed to altitude sickness. Our guide would later say someone should have seen the signs, known how to save her.

kiwi mike and his chugo-eating brokpa wife

Economy of Yak Herders, Bhutan Studies