Handicraft School: We started our last full day in Bhutan by visiting the traditional handicrafts school in Thimpu. The students typically spend 4-6 years at the school, depending on their choice of study. While there, we saw classrooms for Weaving, Sculpture, Boot Making, Traditional bowl making, Embroidery, Drawing, Painting, Doll Making, Slate Carving, Wood Carving and Silver Smithing. There was also a 1-year program on Fashion Design, a relatively new course of study where students learn to use traditional fabrics to design and make non-traditional clothes for sale outside Bhutan.
Mountain Hike: Late in the morning, we returned with auntie to the communications tower where we got such great views of the city, ready to hike up to the mountain ridge. The going was tough and after a little over an hour we reached the first monastery on the trail. Instead of continuing up the mountain, we revised our plans and headed for a second monastery on another part of the mountain, which was just as well since it started raining shortly thereafter.
We had lunch after reaching the second monastery and then headed back toward the communication tower and our waiting car. We even had an unexpected guide in a bull part of the way, who left us when we passed a small group of cows. Shortly before reaching the car, we heard a distant rumble of thunder, which is very unusual in Bhutan and believed to be the voice of the dragon, which is why the country is sometimes referred to as the Land of the Thundering Dragon