Our hike to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery was an adventure all by itself. Our guide said that it was extremely difficult and dangerous to climb to the Tiger’s Nest before the fire in 1998. He said that in the process of rebuilding it, they vastly improved the trail. I was grateful for that. The trail starts at around 8,500 feet and goes as high as 11,000 feet before going back down to the Tiger’s Nest at somewhat over 10,000 feet. The guidebooks say the hike takes around four hours, but we did it in around three. I suspect a great mountain hiker or a local could do it in an hour. We also stopped for tea at the Tea House on our way up, so that added some extra time.

The first photo was taken from low on the trail and I was in full zoom mode with my camera. I was excited at the prospect of reaching the monastery but also wondering just how difficult the hike would be.

The first leg of the hike was to reach the Café or Tea House. It was about half way up. Some people opted out of hiking the first leg in order to take a mule, as you can see in the second photo. Others of us hiked the whole way, while remembering to duck for prayer flags.

I’m at the Tea House or Cafe in the next photo. That makes it about half the way up to the Tiger’s Nest. The Tiger’s Nest looked a long ways away for my being half way there. Everyone in our group except Vicky and I turned around and went back down at this point. I can’t say that I blame them. It was steep climbing.

The next photo is a very nice photo of Vicky and me on the hike. We got another hiker to take the photo. But while it’s a nice photo of us, the Tiger’s Nest is hidden behind us in the photo. Oh well.

We made many stops on our hike. Some stops were to rest from the elevation change. Other stops were to see some interesting places along the hike. Below is not a great photo but I’m hiking up to the Lion’s Cave which was formerly a meditation place. The steps up to the cave were extremely steep, narrow, and also very small. The Bhutanese must have extremely small feet compared to me.