Background | Itinerary | Travel Planner
Tour Includes: Tour costs, based on double occupancy, are $4,395.00 per person, and include stipends-honorariums for the five spiritual Teachers, and “dana” contributions for the monastery spaces where the talks will be held.
The price for the Tour also includes the $40.00 Bhutan visa, which we obtain, once you send us a color copy of your photo Passport page. Note: Bhutan requires that you have a minimum, remaining six months valid on your Passport – meaning six months past date of departure from Bhutan. Also includes all lodging and meals in Bhutan, all land transportation in Bhutan, English-speaking guides, admissions to temples, museums, and monasteries, and also the daily fees paid per person to the government for its Sustainability Fund, which underwrites free healthcare/medical, and education, for all Bhutanese citizens.
For individuals traveling alone, who might prefer double occupancy, we will endeavor to find you a roommate. Four weeks before departure, we send out a detailed questionnaire, so we can source your preferences and any limitations you wish to share with us.
For those of you who wish to have a roommate, we use this information when seeking compatible roommate matches.
Single Supplement is $720.00
Participants outside the USA can make international bank wire payments. Contact us for details.
Pricing Excludes:
- Travel Insurance and International airfare to Bangkok, the tour gateway city. We can recommend a number of trusted travel insurance companies. We recommend you use frequent flier points to Bangkok, if you have them.
Obtaining Travel Insurance when you purchase your international airline tickets might be the most effective and affordable coverage. You may also look into what travel insurance your credit card offers.
- Airfare. The following three (3) flights, with discounted Group fares from Druk Airlines will be payable to Two Truths LLC., eight (8) weeks prior to departure, to reserve passenger seating:
- Round Trip Bangkok-Paro-Bangkok $791.00
- One Way Paro-Bumthang $206.00
- One Way Yonphula-Paro $225.00
You would pay this total, $1,222.00 separately, to Two Truths LLC, and we would obtain your flight tickets.
Pricing excludes your time in Bangkok, our exotic, vibrant inexpensive Thai gateway city.
The family-run boutique Orchid Resort (62 Soi Ladkrabang 48 Onnut-Lat Krabang Road, Lat Krabang, 10520 Thailand) is approximately $39.00 per night and includes breakfast, is close to the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport, and provides an airport shuttle
We recommend going online with www.booking.com to reserve your rooms, and we suggest you arrive 2-3 days before the Tour begins, Sunday, October 6th, to accommodate time zone acclimation and also days to play in exotic Bangkok.
The Orchid Hotel is located close to the metro train, for sightseeing in Bangkok. We will be providing a list of Bangkok activities a month before departure. Typically, small groups buddy-up to explore Bangkok sites of interest.
Deposits. Deposit of $1,800.00 is due before July 15, 2024 per person for double occupancy. For Single Supplement, deposit of $1,500.00 due before July 15, 2024 to reserve your place.. Final payments are due before August 20, 2024.
Payments. Checks are to be made out to: Two Truths LLC and mailed to: 2651 West Sunkist Road, Tucson, Arizona 85755.
Other methods are: PayPal, where you can possibly gain travel insurance and mileage points through your credit card via PayPal payments. We simply send an Invoice to your email address, and PayPal makes your payment to our bank account. Another option is “Wise” Wise.com, where you simply register, and make payments to our account via www.wise.com for a very nominal fee to Wise.
Please note that we will be competing for limited Bhutan airline seat reservations, (Bangkok-Paro and also our two in-country flights), and limited Bhutan hotel space during busy September-October popular travel time – as it is both temperate weather, and also the time of the rare sacred Mask Dance festivals.
Note: We are requesting the airline flights (Bangkok-Paro-Bumthang-Yonphula-Paro-Bangkok) be paid to Two Truths LLC by August 1st, so we can wire timely payments to Druk Airlines in Bhutan.
Return international flight information. For your return planning purposes, as you shop for roundtrip flights to and from Bangkok, Thailand, please note that for our group return from Paro, Bhutan on Saturday, October 19th, we will arrive back in Bangkok in late afternoon-early evening. Although many international flights arrive in Bangkok at 11pm … we suggest, for planning departure from Bangkok, to schedule your return flight out of Bangkok the next morning, Sunday, October 20th.
Refund Policy. For any reason, tour payments will be 100% refundable with written notice, prior to July 10, 2024, less $90.00 administrative fee per person.
If written cancellation notice is received between July 10th and August 20th, there will be a 50% refund, with also a $90.00 administrative fee per person.
Effective August 21st, payments are 100% non-refundable, as we are required to purchase your Bangkok-Paro-Bumthang-Yonphula-Paro-Bangkok air tickets as soon as your deposit is made, and these group air tickets are non-refundable. Our deposits to hotels and ground transport will already have been committed. Please note that airline seats and hotel rooms can be very limited in Bhutan, in September-October, their ‘high season’.
Why Bhutan?
Why Bhutan? Called the Land of the Thunder Dragon, the Kingdom of Bhutan is the last intact, completely Buddhist nation and society in the Himalayas. Sunday, January 13, 2013 in a New York Times article called “The 46 Places to go in 2013,” Bhutan was featured as #5, titled: “A pristine Buddhist enclave opens, with care.” And on November 2, 2014, the New York Times featured a 9-page article on the Kingdom . In 2018 Bhutan also made the New York Times’ list at #9 of 53 places in the world as “compelling and travel worthy.”
A pristine and serene land known for its profound Bhutanese hospitality, generosity, kindness and unique architecture, Bhutan only opened up to television and to the internet in 1999. Most Bhutanese speak at least three languages, including English, and so there is an ease, visiting and conversing with the locals, in markets, monasteries, and in the villages.
Three of Bhutan’s most important contributions for outsiders to experience are:
Their Gross National Happiness (GNH) concept and initiatives, launched forty years ago, which is now being pollinated and embraced in the world: it is the filter through which the Bhutanese assess all development projects and opportunities. The Bhutanese have rejected offers from the Chinese and Japanese, for tens of millions of dollars, to open mountaineering to their highest peaks. No amount of dollars or gold can change this society’s commitment to honor the sacredness of the Bhutanese Himalaya. Climbers are simply not allowed to climb peaks where the deities have lived for eons.
Bhutan’s very special and gentle “secular Buddhism” and approach to compassion and mindfulness, which has vast wisdom and secular applications for us Westerners, in finding The Middle Way. At the same time, Tibetan Buddhism is well preserved in Bhutan, has great strength and is practiced in all its full, rich complexity, and is available in an auspicious way, to all curious pilgrims and travelers to the Kingdom.
Bhutan’s stunning landscapes (three micro-climates: alpine; temperate; and sub-tropical) and vast national parks, are populated with lush, broad-leaf forests, cloud forests, immense bio-diversity: 300 species of medicinal plants, 5,400 plant species altogether; 46 species of rhododendrons; a great variety of birds, with 670 bird species recorded; and an abundance of protected mammals with wildlife corridors, including rare Bengal tigers, snow leopards, Himalayan Black bears, pandas, many varieties of primates, blue sheep, musk deer, water buffaloes, and yak. Yaks in the road … sitting and sunning themselves, on the “national highway.”
It has been said that “Bhutan could become just like any other country, but no other country could be like Bhutan.” Many of our past tour participants have characterized their experience with us in Bhutan as “transformational.”
Bhutan is a pristine place for retreat and renewal.
Situated in the Himalayan foothills between Tibet and India, it is well connected by cell phone and internet transmission. Many of our past guest-participants brought iPads and Wi-Fi phones and were able to conduct work, business, and family and other communications, daily. An English-speaking Kingdom with so many delights and lessons to discover, we look forward to talking with you about the Pilgrimage-Tour to Bhutan, the ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon.’
We will visit traditional weaving villages with the best direct prices for Himalayan artifacts, masks, ritual objects, textiles, and handicrafts, located in old growth forests. These have been favorite stops and shopping venues for many of our tour pilgrims during our previous pilgrimage tours.
Altogether, Bhutan has 84% of its land with forest canopy in tact, according to the World Bank, and is one of the countries with most forest cover and the world’s only carbon negative country, due to the Buddhist society’s commitment to both ‘spiritual ecology and also filtering all development through the lens of Gross National Happiness. Bhutan has built sustainability into its national identity.
We will spend several late afternoons hiking, journaling, and relaxing.
