Flying the Chute

Coming from Bangkok via Kolkatta I was pretty excited to make this flight since I had seen the flight on Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" and while descending into the valley I saw that the plane had to make many turns. As we crossed into Bhutan we could see the Himalayas and Mt. Everest out the window. I'd only seen this once before when flying in Nepal and it is quite unbelievable that even from hundreds of miles away the mountains seem so close. 

As we came through the cloud cover and into the valley by Paro the plane began to make the banking back and forth between the low mountains to the flat section of the valley and Paro airport. It was really fun, a bit scary, but neat to experience and nothing went wrong. Arriving at the airport we were a bit surprised at how small it was and it kind of reminded us of the airport in Bagan where we'd been the previous winter. We were then told that Druk air, the only carrier allowed to fly into Bhutan, only has like 6 planes or something, so the airport has just a couple flight a day coming in. Pretty easy job for air traffic control if you ask me. The tower looked more like a staircase than an air control tower. In fact, I'm not even sure if it is enclosed or someone just climbs to the top and stands there, exposed, directing planes.