Journey 01 · Bhutan
Twenty-Six Rolls North
The Snowman, Paro to Sephu
Published 21 Mar 2025 · Travelled 24 Sept – 17 Oct 2024
- 9 moments
- 24 days
- 266 km
- Autumn
- Bhutan
- 35mm · f/5.6 · 1/250
- 27.4728° N, 89.6390° E
- Frame 02 of roll one, Portra
- Thimphu
- 07:15
- 12°C, clear, cold morning
Thimphu at seven in the morning is one long queue of traffic on one road with mountains on both ends of it. I shot this out of the taxi window on the way to Paro because I wanted one frame of the ordinary thing before three weeks of the extraordinary one. It is the frame I look at most.
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 27.4300° N, 89.4160° E
- Frame 19 of roll one, Portra
- Paro valley
- 10:40
- 16°C, clear
Paro valley in late September is barley going the colour of the wood the houses are built from, and after this there are no more houses for eleven days. An old woman was on the roof turning chillies. She did not want to be photographed and I did not photograph her, so this is the house instead.
03 · The load list, written at Sharna Zampa
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 27.8300° N, 89.2800° E
- Frame 07 of roll six, Tri-X
- Below Jangothang
- 11:05
- 7°C, thin cloud, hard sun
Everything we ate for twenty-four days walked in on the backs of these animals, and they go faster uphill than any of us. The bells are so constant you stop hearing them, and then one afternoon a pony goes lame and the whole train stops and the silence is enormous.
- 35mm · f/11 · 1/500
- 27.8600° N, 89.2100° E
- Frames 22 and 29 of roll nine, Portra
- 35mm · f/11 · 1/500
- 27.8600° N, 89.2100° E
- Frames 22 and 29 of roll nine, Portra
- Nyile La
- 13:30
- 1°C, wind, clearing
You come up to a pass and there are flags on it that somebody carried up here on foot, and the wind is going through them at a speed that makes your eyes water. Then you drop four hundred metres and there is a herder's tent with a fire in it and a woman who gives you tea before she asks your name. Both frames, same afternoon.
- 35mm · f/2 · 1/125
- 28.0800° N, 89.7200° E
- Frame 12 of roll nineteen, Portra
- Laya
- 16:10
- 9°C, cloud coming up the valley
Laya sits at 3,800 m and is the last village until Lunana, and everybody in it knows exactly how long you have been walking. These two attached themselves to us for an entire afternoon and asked, repeatedly, whether the camera could see in the dark. I said no. They were disappointed and stayed anyway.
Overheard · Lunana · 19:30
"How many pictures now?" — "About six hundred." — "And how many good ones?" — "I do not know yet." — "Then why are you carrying them?" I did not have an answer for four months, until the scans came back and I found that I did.
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 28.1000° N, 90.2000° E
- Frame 33 of roll twenty-four, Tri-X
- Below Gophu La
- 09:20
- -4°C, overcast, still
At this height the water has no colour of its own — it takes whatever the sky is doing and gives it back colder. I had eleven frames left on the roll and I used four of them here, which at the time felt reckless and now seems obviously correct.
- Dochula
- 16:40
- 8°C, mist in the trees
- Last frame
One hundred and eight chortens on a pass an hour and a half from my own front door, and after twenty-four days on foot I arrived at them in a car, which felt like cheating. On a clear day you can see the whole eastern Himalaya from here. It was not a clear day. I took it anyway, on the last frame.
- 35mm · f/4 · 1/125
- 27.4900° N, 89.7480° E
- Frame 36 of roll twenty-six, Portra
The route
9 stops
Journey completed
Twenty-four days, nine stories
- Distance walked
- 316 km
- Frames exposed
- 936
- Rolls carried in
- 30
- Rolls exposed
- 26
- Rolls ruined by damp
- 2
- Passes over 5,000 m
- 7
- Favourite moment
- Frame 12 of roll nineteen, which I did not know I had taken
- Best food
- Ema datshi at 4,200 m, cooked over yak dung, so hot I could not speak
