And Robin Boustead did the reverse – from Trashiyangtse to Haa. Both covered some 600 miles across the country. Robin wanted to observe the sights and sound of rural Bhutan.

A trekker and a writer from Australia, he started his journey from the east on 2 May and reached Haa on 10 June. It took him 40 days.

A man, who is no stranger to the Himalayas, he wanted to travel from the east to west, because he wanted the sun on his back.

 “I find it easier to walk from east west rather than west east because I start off at seven in morning and can feel the sun rays behind, which indeed makes me easy and comfortable  to walk,” said Robin.

In an average, he walked five hours a day and crossed 18 passes, and had to do 40,000 meters of ascending and descending the mountain sides. 

He had been trekking all over the Himalayas from Arunachal to Pakistan and other parts of Himalayas as well. The walk in Bhutan is the part of the much bigger project called ‘The Great Himalaya Trail’.

He started researching new trekking routes through the Himalaya in 2002.  Through such research, he has been trying to create a network of walking routes in the entire Himalaya trails so that the local communities preserve the values of nature and cultural heritage.

 “During my stay in Bhutan I learnt a lot,” said Robin.  He said, he has always heard that Bhutan’s approach to tourism is different from other countries. But he personally didn’t find it very different. He thinks the only difference he found was that the people here choose to live with the natural environment.

Speaking to Bhutan Times, Robin said, “Instead of competing for space and resources at the extreme level like in Indian and Pakistan, here the people are more willing to compromise and more willing to take into account the needs of the natural environment in a much higher level in our life. That has been a big surprise for me.”

 Talking of the people during his trek, he was full of warm feeling for his hosts along the route, “I have come across many people living in the high mountains. They are very happy people, satisfied with their lives and I love being part of their lives.”

“Bhutan is lot more developed than I expected it to be,” said Robin. “There is power, schools, health (facilities). In Lingshi, there is a small school with four teachers and 30 students, boarding schools, colleges… really fantastic level of education and it seems too easy.” The only thing he was concerned about was the stray dogs.

 But then he felt that this was all a part of living in harmony with the natural world.

“There is tranquility, peace, sense of harmony that exist here that you can merge yourself into ….all of a sudden you are very calm and happy. I think, Bhutan will quite easily be a role model for other region and that is something I want to see,” he said.

According to him, the people he came across were confident about the special nature of the county that they were living in.  “It was a great opportunity for me to experience the peaceful atmosphere unlike in other countries,” said Robin.

He had different experiences in different Himalayan regions. He didn’t realize it would have been different from what he had experienced earlier. But he found it different from other Himalayas and that is what he liked about the trek in Bhutan.

His companion during the trip was Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck’s book ‘Portrait of Bhutan.’

For him the biggest challenges were logistic. “If there was a topographic map then I could plot the routes,” said Robin Boustead.