One of the great things about travel, especially to a place like Bhutan, is that it gets you out of your comfort zone. It challenges you. And if you’re willing to experience both of those things, travel rewards you.

For example, by visiting Bhutan instead of, say, Paris, you get out of your culture, which can challenge your assumptions about where you come from and what the rest of the world is like. And this is a good thing.

You can also challenge your body by trekking in the Himalayas or walking up 3,000 feet to an ancient monastery like the Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan. And, according to a fine article we just found about that walk, you can also earn merit, which can reduce suffering in the next world.

The Buddhist monastery, with its white-washed walls and red fluted roofs, is perched like a giant swallow’s nest on a ferocious looking mountain that looms 900m above Paro, a small town in the west of forest-laden Bhutan.

Paro is already (7,480 feet) above sea level so the climb today will take us to well (9,000 feet) – above the elevation where one can be punished by altitude sickness.

But suffering from terrible headaches would no doubt result in more merit, my guide would say.

Read the rest here.

Taktsang is the popular name of Taktsang Palphug Monastery, a prominent Himalayan Buddhist sacred site and temple complex, located in the cliffside of the upper Paro valley. A temple complex was first built in 1692, around the Taktsang Senge Samdup cave where Guru Padmasambhava is said to have meditated for three months in the 8th century. Padmasambhava is credited with introducing Buddhism to Bhutan and is the best known deity of the country.

The most famous landmark, the Taktsang Monastery (Tiger’s Nest), stands on a granite cliff about 3,000 meters above the valley. The hike to Taktsang takes around two and half hours.