Week 5of my adventures,
 I know it has been a few weeks but I have the perfect excuse I have been a bit busy with work, training and simply experiencing the sites cultures and people i work with.
In my first week I thought I should acclimatize as quickly as possible, to so I figured a couple of bike rides are just the thing to do. My first ride was up the side of some mountain, the road turned from a gravel road to a rough Logging road to a trekking trail. I suppose the fact that I saw more and more herders with their life stock and fewer tracks made by cars or trucks or even some other crazy biker should have told me that this trek is getting a little remote. The walks over obstacles and boulders became also more frequent and of course the thing air was starting to take its toll. A quick check on my bike computer told me I was at 3100 meter above sea level, a good time to turn around and enjoy a very bumpy and challenging down-hill ride.

The next day's ride took me past small villages and farms with traditional Bhutanese houses toward the Tibetan boarder, it ended at the gates to an Indian Army camp, about 15 km from the boarder, the Indian army helps to patrol the area between Bhutan and China. It was a much easier ride but yet still brought me all the way up to 2900 meters.
      
In the meantime I started the training with the pastry staff at the Paro lodge. A real eye opener for sure, being used to high tech equipment and of course endless supplies of materials and ingredients had me scratch my head for the first little while but with the help of the ever so cooperative and willing employees it did not take me too long to make sense of it and find my groove. We started up with some simple breads and how to use preferments and sour dough to enhance the flavor as well as help with the quality of the flour. It took a few tries to get used to the altitude and of course the flour which is of rather poor quality.

Next up were the desserts and some useful techniques which they will be able to apply long after I am gone. I helped them do make some positive changes to the existing menu and provided guidance with the plating aspects, using things that are readily available and easy to make.  
        
Of course we had some creative fun too and made a dead dough show piece which every one enjoyed contributing towards. I learned an interesting fact that very few kids learn to draw or are getting any type of arts classes in school, so most of them were a bit apprehencive in being creative and designing something. But the end result was still very respectable and excecuted with great pride. The show piece ended up being dslayed in the lodge’s living room.

I did do a few more rides during the 3 weeks in Paro, one of them or actually twice, was up to Chele La an almost 4000 meter high pass and the highest paved road pass in Bhutan. Another very scenic ride was a 200 km ride over Chele La pass down to Ha Valley and to Chuzom and back to Paro, which ended up being an almost 10 hour ride and incredibly stunning.
 

My time in Paro has come to an end and I have moved on to the next lodge Thimphu for 6 days. I will post some update a bit later , hopefully not another 5 weeks I promise>