Crazy SPICY BHUTANESE FOOD + Buddhist Monastery Hike | Thimphu, Bhutan

Love the flavors, textures. These red chilies are phenomenal. Good morning everyone. I hope you're all doing well. This is David Hoffman from David's Bin here coming at you from Thimphu, Bhutan. Today I'm going to take you to eat a traditional Bhutanese breakfast right here at typical Bhutanese resto and bar. We're going to have some rice and some dried beef. Then after this we're driving 30 minutes north of Thimphu to an area to go hiking for an hour to a temple and then there we're gonna have a picnic lunch by the river. I'm so excited. I can't wait. Morning. Morning. How are you? I'm good. You? Tired man, tired. And here we go. Typical Bhutanese. Yes. Oh more chilies. Oh yeah we got easy. We had dry beef. Let's try beef. It's a Bhutan dry beef. I think it's all for me. My friend here loves to put a mountain of rice. Look at this huge amount of rice. Oh I'm just gonna grab a piece of beef. So let's just try beef. Ready to talk? I'll show you how we eat. So this is a very very small restaurant. It's about a three minute walk from my hotel, the Peddling Hotel in the smack center of the city and yeah we got some rice, we have some chilies, so I'm gonna go straight for that. Super spicy. So good though. Basically chili but this one is overload of chilies. So I need the milk tea. I always go with milk tea. I personally don't love the buttermilk. Milk tea is my favorite. Chai chai, Indian style. Do I have any beef? No. Okay just grab my hands. Okay so pick it up, put it here. It's tough. So how do I do the egg? Just break it up like this. Get some more chili, some egg. Super super hot chilies though. Dude this is the hottest easy I've had. You definitely need the rice to come on the heat though. I like the beef a lot. At first it's a little hard but then you know you soak it up in your mouth your saliva basically breaks it down. Get some more of that. Delicious easy. It's so hot. You're gonna have to make more man. This egg is a little different though. It's just like straight up the outside layer of the egg you know. Oh there's the egg. Mine was just the outer piece like the burnt piece. You should eat different. It's hot right? Yeah. If I do I won't be like able to do a hike to the monastery. Give me all the chilies man. Look at that. This is the hottest one. Now this is scrambled egg. The other one's just like like the side of it or something. It was weird. But here mixing it with chilies and beef. Basically like a boonies scramble. All of it. Some more beef. We're all like oh my god. My friend this is the hottest one. The chilies? Yeah. You guys love having chilies for breakfast though. It's like everywhere I go. Mostly breakfast will be with chilies and like only sometimes like we have the beaten beef or fried egg. Mostly people they eat rice and easy with butter cheese. That's it. That's it. Super hot breakfast. Oh man you feel it tingling. It's like it's like two different chilies here. It's like the hot one and the numbing one. Oh it's spicy all day. Maybe tonight when we go to the other place to have dinner I'll let you taste the round chili. The one which I said which I call the devil chili. If you like happen to eat three devil chilies you could even see your grandfather's marriage. This guy with the joker. What you call me? The spice man. The spice man. Nah it's good for you you know. It's good for your system. Spicy all day man. But if you put it like if you mix it all it's not so bad. If you eat it like almost straight it's too much. Oh man look at that. Obviously it's very filling because of the rice but the combination is fantastic. Some pieces of beef are a little too hard but after you bite into it a little bit let your saliva soak it up. Breaks down. Well I'm not really used to eating beef for breakfast but it's good. I think we needed this for the hike. If I happen to travel with you in Bhutan for like more than two months I will be bedridden for two or a week because of the spice. I never eat a much spice in my life. Just a little bit. It's enjoyable you know and because of how hot it is you definitely need more chai, milk tea. The best thing to combat heat is milk. That was so hot. So this is a real real local restaurant as you can see. Very small, four tables and over here there's basically the bar area. You can buy beer, whiskey, brandy all produced here in Bhutan and that's sort of how it works here in terms of bars. I mean you can find regular bars. They're just purely bars and nightlife but if you want to drink in Bhutan you have to go to restaurants like this if they're open and you can drink right here. So you can get a beer, some whiskey, brandy. They also have some other stuff for sale. Apple water, coke, cola and that's it. We're gonna go now for the hike. Oh man that was so hot. So so hot. We packed the lunch from this restaurant. Yeah. Great. It's not gonna be that that crazy easy right? They're not gonna give us chili like that? Chili and cheese. I mean chili and cheese is the best. Chili and cheese every day. Okay let's go to the car right? Let's go. We have a 30-minute drive north of Thimphu and this is Thimphu. It's waking up right now. Everybody's coming out. Before we were here about an hour ago it was empty. Usually the shops in Thimphu will be open by 9 or 10 all of them. That was the hottest chilies we've had. The hottest ones. I feel it in my nose and in my throat. Oh. It's like it just it's just lagging like it's still there. Crazy hot. And he was telling me the chili and cheese he made it from the similar chilies. No. He had to right? The problem is some of those chilies 1 in 10 is like crazy hot. Yeah. You know? That's what you guys love so why not? My man you got the food You can't leave us. My driver's the best. This guy's so funny. He's very quiet but he's nice Let's go. As you can see Thimphu is waking up. It's nine in the morning. People are headed out right now. Shops are opening up and the downtown area is very small so 100,000 people in the entire city. Downtown area is you know two three main streets right? The one that goes through the whole thing it goes all the way up so it goes uphill and we're heading out of it right now so we're exiting Thimphu and we're about to cross a bridge right? We're crossing that bridge? Yes yes. Okay so we're gonna cross that bridge and then go left? And after crossing the bridge we need to drive for 30 minutes that is to the north of Thimphu and we need to hike up for around 50 minutes to the monastery. T you were saying that this road goes to the monastery we're gonna go to and then from there it's like another five point six kilometers deep into a national park but it's an unpaved road right? And then it's it it's over right? No more road? Yeah. Because you can't go from here straight north to Tibet there's no road? No road to Tibet. We have only a motor route to India not to Tibet so we don't have motor road to Tibet. So as you can see tons of housing out here and this is still all part of Thimphu. We're around 20 minutes in we just made a left and then a right and now the road has gone into the mountains and basically we're in the forest as you can see lots of pine, blue pine everywhere. We're going down and up into the mountain. We're gonna have to go to a certain place we're gonna park and then climb up. It's an uphill hike right? Uphill hike and then the car will be waiting for us there right? Yeah. Yeah great. We're not there yet but we stopped here at this Buddha. Dude this is a huge Buddha on a rock? What is this? Guru Padmasambhava who brought Buddhism to Bhutan in 8th century. Guru means master, Padmasambhava means the one born from the lotus flower. Look at his seat it is a flower, a lotus flower. This is really really beautiful. I've never seen something like this on the rock like that. Massive boulder with the Buddha and under it what are these like? It's a water prayer bell. Oh it's a prayer bell here so another one. Yeah you'll find that everywhere right? Yes. Every single time you you drive in Bhutan you'll always see small water prayer bells so the water flows through it and the prayer bell right? It's going going. So until you get close you don't really understand what this is. Look at this so they actually carved it and then they painted it. It's not just a painting they carved the rock as you see the lotus flower on the bottom just carved right out of the rock. Dude this is really really awesome. Wow. Let's go. Oh a lot colder up here. Must be like 40 degrees, 7 celsius. So this river does it go to Thimphu? Yes it does. And what's the name of the river? Here it's called Dodena and the river when it flows through the town of Thimphu, the city of Thimphu it becomes Wa Chu. Wa Chu. Chu means river, Chu means water. The monastic education for the monks they have like primary studies of buddhism and they also have higher studies of buddhism so the higher studies of buddhism is for nine years the monk they come here in order to complete their nine years studies of buddhism and they also do masters of masters in buddhism in this monastery. So there's like a monk university? Yes. Okay. University for the monk. Wow it's big, big campus. Yes. Look at that really really big grounds you know. So the monastery we're going to is right up there so we have to hike all the way up the mountain. Incredible. Wow I thought it looked like a village but you're saying it's a monastery. Yes. Every building there is part of the monastery? Yes. And the monastery it was built in section 20 by the unifier and in section 23 he started the first monastic school the monastic body and now the monastery is used as a meditation center. We made it. Jinjindorji National Park. Is that how you say it? Jinjindorji National Park? You should go and check over there you could also see tigers in the park. What? Tigers. There's tigers in this park? Yeah. Over a hundred tigers in Bhutan. Oh wow look at this. Valley of tigers. Valley of tigers that's what it's called? Yeah. Jinjindorji National Park. Center route valley of tigers. So to get to the other side of the river we have to cross on this bridge. Beautiful wooden bridge. Oh man look at that. Peace. It's peaceful. It's so peaceful. The air quality and it's so much colder here. It easily drops like 10 degrees. You said we're how high? 8,350 feet not meters. So this is like another temple right here. So it's basically just a stupa with the hand prayer bells? Yeah. 108 like always? Yeah. Recently? Okay. No I mean it just looks old. The structure itself. And the hike starts right there? All the way up. One hour. Super steep. We're going to the top of this mountain. Oak trees. The brown oak. The hardwood. Yesterday we had been like walking through the pine trees. So today mostly we will be walking inside the oak tree. I'm already tired. Just straight up man. Look at this. This is no joke man. Out of breath already. I can't even believe it. And you were saying Tiger's Nest is the same right? But Tiger's Nest takes two and a half hours minimum to get to the top. This is an hour. I mean it's not bad. Luckily on the way down it's like 20 minutes because you're just lying down. Luckily we're going to take a few breaks. That's why you have time. Take your time. Go slowly. This is definitely for more experienced walkers I guess because it's really uphill. I think I already see the monastery but look at this entire mountain. And the path is really rocky. Lots of holes. Dirt. You know rubbish like leaves and stuff. Oh it's crazy man. It's cold but because we're hiking my body's hot. A rock staircase. This thing though Bhutan is all about hiking. Every day you can do a hike and if you want you can do a multi-day hike. You can travel from Thimphu to Paro. I think it's a four-day journey. Thimphu to Paro is four days right? Yeah? It's intense. So if you want to do that you can do it. I'm good with hiking four days. I do my one hike every other day. It's fine for me. So halfway mark is basically this stupa right here. Yes. And you can see the monastery right there. So would you consider this one of the harder hikes? I would say no. No? No. Like you guys say piece of cake. This is like piece of cake for us. What? I mean if I know the tires that's gonna be a lot harder this is because it's almost triple the distance. Yeah. Yeah definitely be in shape before coming. Don't come to this country if you're out of shape. If you want to you can take a rest right here with this view at the pagoda. You know halfway mark. Relax. You know catch your breath. Drink some water which I need to drink for sure. Super thirsty. Don't forget your water and bring comfortable hiking shoes. We have both sneakers but that's good enough. It just gets steeper and steeper. Good exercise. Oh man this is great. Do this in the morning. It's 10 30 in the morning. Overcast. Nice and chilly. No sun. Bring a wool sweater for sure. When you're taking photos on any hike in Bhutan don't take photos right from the edge. You can easily slip and this is a big drop. You won't survive. We did it in record time. 45 minutes. Oh right here. As you can see the monastery is under restoration. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go up to this stupa right here and then from here get a view of the monastery. Oh he's so cute. Look at him. This monastery it was built in 1620 by the Tibetan scholar who came to Bhutan in 1680. So only in 1623 he started the first monastic body in Bhutan and right now you area you could see a small small small hut. It is a meditation house. So the monks after completing nine years of higher studies then they choose to go for the three years meditation. And you were telling me now it's not as strict as it used to be before. They couldn't see anybody. Couldn't talk to anybody for three years, three months, three weeks, and three days. Now it's a little more When they do the meditation sometimes the monk, the meditator, go for a very strict meditation where they are not allowed to meet with anyone. And sometimes we have a month where the family members can go meet with the meditator, their son. Then all the rations for the meditators are being supplied by the family members or friends. So we just entered the monastery ground, temple grounds. You can see there's renovation happening behind me and this is what is this area they're restoring? Actually in this area it's a room for the monk. And here the monastery inside we have a stupa which is called as a memorial stupa. The father of the unifier, the Tibetan scholar who came to Bhutan in 1616 passed away in Tibet and they brought the dead body to Bhutan. They cremate the dead body. They left over ashes and some bones. They made a statue inside. And again like in every temple you can't film inside. So we're going to walk around the temple and we're going to go up to the top to where the unifier meditated for three years. But before we do that, whoa look at this view. And right here to the right we actually have some mountain goats. They're a little different from the goats we just saw. And over there we have the university for the monks. Wow what a beautiful valley. Now let's go up all the way to the top. More steps. And right here we have the rooms for the monks. Beautiful. And this was the first temple built by the unifier in Bhutan. Oh wow. Dude I love how they built it into the mountain. Look at that. So we're climbing up this stairs all the way up there and that's where that's the room he meditated. Please do not talk here as there are some so when we talk let us talk very softly. Ah Steve's staircase. Can you see a small hut house on that rock? It is a meditation hut. This is where they do the meditation. And what about the gold? So usually for the monastery temple they will be having a golden tower. If you could see a golden tower it means an important place is there where you need to wear the national dress, the formal dress. We made it to the very top and inside this building is the cave the unifier used to meditate for three years, three months, three weeks, three days. And right here we have a section where we sit down and just enjoy this beautiful view. So you can see the valley, the river. Over there we have the university for the monks. Over here we have some of the meditation huts. Over here is the monastery. Dude what a reward for hiking all the way up huh? And I can't even believe this guy he like meditated here with this view. So lucky. Yes when he had like meditated the temple has not been like this much big. It was just a cave where he has meditated. If you're afraid of heights or you have vertigo don't come up here. That staircase really scary. What a drop man. Okay so these are all meditation huts. These look actually really nice compared to the other ones I saw down there though. Those other ones are very very small. This one's like a real house it's like three stories. So you could like accommodate more meditators here but in other small houses you could only accommodate one meditator just one. Okay so we saw the temple the meditation huts. It was an epic hike. Now we have to make our way all the way back down. Probably take us like 20 minutes really quick downhill and then we're gonna go to the river and have some lunch. I won't lie dude I'm already hungry. I don't think I ate enough this morning to get down. We actually go in a loop so you don't have to go down the same way you came. You go on this way. The staircase is basically a dirt staircase so be a little careful you know just take it slow. All right we made it down. That's it. The hike actually was like 15 minutes really fast to get down and here we have the donkeys, the stupa, prayer bells. Let's cross the bridge. Let's go to the car. From here we're gonna drive like 10 minutes deeper to a different spot of the river. We're gonna set up shop and have a picnic. Bhutanese picnic lunch. Oh I can't wait man. I'm hungry. Hungry and chili, chili, chilies. Chili cheese. Drove for three minutes and we made it here to the stupa. River's right here and there's a little area here that you can eat right. It's a little picnic area. I like that. This little picnic area is super super relaxing. Look at this. All the flags, the buddhist flags. You have the river. Oh the breeze. Man this is, this is the spot. I'm so happy we're eating here. Oh man more chilies. Chili and cheese. Super spicy. The chili here, it's Indian chili. And cabbage. This one is dry beef, chili and squash mixed with squash. It's so good. Chili and cheese. Crow beans and cheese mixed with chili. So we have dry beef, we have wet beef, we have chili cheese, we have rice, and we have beans. I'm gonna try the beans first. I'm using my hands traditional Bhutanese style. Use hand sanitizer, clean them. Oh nice, light, creamy. Oh these chilies are great. So it's dry red chili and it's not spicy. So dry beef is the thin long one. It's dry but also a little moist on the outside. It's almost like beef jerky. And then here we have the wet beef with chilies. That one's a little too tender for me. I like the dry one. So now let's grab a bunch of this. So you said we have a turnip in here. Some chilies. This is not hot at all. So nice. The beans are so moist. Oh wow. Love the vegetables here in Bhutan. The best vegetable is the red chili. Get some of the rice. It's a little hot. Just a little bit. Nothing compared to this morning. This morning was the hottest. It's too hot. Even now it's hot. So guys you don't have to eat beef you know. You can go straight veg if you want. Do it the Indian way. If you guys don't know how to eat Indian style, in the hands. Three fingers. My friends here ate so quick. Well I'm working. You mix the red chili with dry beef. It's the best. Love the flavors, textures. These red chilies are phenomenal. Well that's it guys. We had an epic day. We started off with delicious authentic traditional breakfast. It was the spiciest easy I had on a trip so far. Super spicy. We had dry beef, we had eggs, we had rice, but just too much. The chilies were just like they were on the next level of heat. Almost like a ghost pepper. And after that we drove 30 minutes north of Thimphu to this monastery. We hiked about an hour up. It's a pretty intense hike. I mean just super steep. Takes an hour. We did like a 45 minutes you know. I did it really really quick. Once we got there we explored. We saw a few of the meditation rooms. Really beautiful monastery. It's the first temple built by the unifier so you have to come see it when you're in Thimphu. I mean you should definitely take the morning to come see it. I highly suggest doing that. You know the hike isn't insanely hard, but it's intense. And then once we were done there we came down here right next to the river and we had this phenomenal lunch. Picnic Bhutanese lunch. We had dry beef, we had moist beef, and we had phenomenal red chilies man. Phenomenal. Guys if you love this video please give me a thumbs up. Give me a comment below. Subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content. I'll see you in the next Travel Food Adventure in Bhutan. Whoa the chili is catching up on me. I've had a lot. You could always have more.