Rainbow Photo Tours Bhutan Overview

Our modern SUVs carry two traveling companions, an English-speaking guide and driver. We leap-frog across the countryside and witness non-stop culture of all forms: dance, song, art, farming, archery (the national sport), wildlife, religion, weaving and textiles. Past participants have all been avid photographers who enjoyed rising at 5 a.m. to catch the fog lifting from a castle dzong, but also enjoyed participating in an archery match, catching a trout for dinner, riding a pony to a monastery, taking a hot stone bath, eating lunch at a Bhutanese farmhouse, hiking through a forest, and many other special events not listed on other Bhutan itineraries.

In addition to these special events, the Festival Tour will attend two masked dance festivals in Ura and Domkhar and the Cross Country tour will go to a small temple in Phongmey for an exclusive mini-festival put on by the nomads of Sakten and Merak. Both tours spend two nights in Ugen Choling where our guides and drivers (you too! if you want to) engage the villagers in an archery match. We also erect personal prayer flags, visit farmhouses, and have special access to the museum and temple where only our tour is allowed to take photography. Plus we visit all of the usual sites: National Art School, cheese/beer factory, paper factory, national museum, weekend market, textile museum, main post office for collectible stamps, and the endangered Takin reserve to see the national animal.

We welcome all levels of photographers--digital and film, pocket point-and-shoot, SLR, large format, etc.--and non photographers who want to become photographers or just want to tag along on these incredible itineraries.

The main difference between this tour and others is our mode of transportation--cars, not a bus. As a photographer on tour, you may have found it difficult to take the time necessary to capture good images because you were holding up the bus and other tour participants while you worked a great scene.

On this tour, you will be in a car with one other photographer (or your traveling companion) a Bhutanese guide or photography student, and a driver who is ready to stop at a moment's notice. This way, you will have the freedom to ask the driver to stop as frequently as your photographic eye demands. You also have the freedom to break away for the day and go somewhere else—all things are possible when you travel in your own car. Your personal guide and driver are eager to carry your gear, set up your tripod, and serve as a cultural guide and interpreter, answering your questions about his homeland.

Bhutan is not for travelers who expect five star accommodations and world-class cuisine, but rather for adventurers who are hardy and flexible. We will stay in first class Western-style hotels in Paro, Thimpu, and Wangdi, but as we move further eastward and stay in typical Bhutanese guest houses you should expect comfortable but “rougher” accommodations, as the Lonely Planet guide suggests. In the East, beds are thin foam mattresses on wooden platforms. Bathrooms are simple and showers are sometimes nothing more than a hose with a shower head protruding from the wall and a cement floor with a drain. At one 16th century monastery guest house on top of a mountain, a plastic pail of hot water is delivered to your room for a morning sponge bath. (It's worth it--you'll love interacting with the little-boy monks in training, who will meet you at the bottom of the hill to carry your luggage!)

Dinner and breakfast are Bhutanese food, always hot and served buffet style in hotels--lunch is usually boxed sandwiches and boiled eggs. Special diets are impossible to obtain. Vegetarians will enjoy abundant vegetables since ninety percent of Bhutan's 700,000 citizens are subsistence farmers. Fiery hot chili peppers are served as a vegetable entree and not mixed with other entrees. (In fact, many travelers find Bhutanese food to be quite bland.) Fresh fruit is rarely served but frequently available at roadside markets.

It is said that the single mountainous road that traverses Bhutan turns every 9 seconds on average, and while it is paved, road repairs cause frequent slow-downs from the usual 30 mph. This road is also the main foot path and domestic animal trail--there are no bathrooms along the way, but plenty of bushes for your convenience.

Altitude sickness has not been a problem with any of the past participants. Altitudes range from 7,200 feet in Paro to 8,500 feet in Ura, with some passes at 12,000 feet. We move through the passes within a few hours and that's not high enough or time enough for altitude sickness to take hold. A few travelers complain of motion sickness but we have suggestions to keep that at a minimum.

Tours are limited to 16 participants.
Non-photographers welcome too!