Kuzuzangpola!

The Old Sign Board: A Legend Unto Itself

Kuzuzangpola.... (May your body and mind be in robust health) is the traditional Bhutanese greeting and with that, we bid you a fond Kuzuzangpola!

Welcome to Adventure Roots. Here at Adventure Roots, we believe in the casual yet timelessly embedded search of the seeking wanderlust best depicted in so many classics of the beat generation and those preceding it and yet those still seeking it out. The Alchemist is, in so many ways, the absolute want and need to find out just what it is about travel that sets so many millions on the move almost on a daily basis. Whether it be jet-hopping, planned vacations, exotic jaunts or good old fashioned back-packing, the essence has been the same as it was during the times of the great Marco Polo, to a writer for whom the road was the life, Jack Kerouac.

Postcards carry about them a cheer an email seldom does, if it does at all. From the travels and travails of exalted figures such as the Shakyamuni Buddha when he was still Siddhartha, to a carpenter’s son called Jesus, and from the monstrous conquests of men that forged history such as the great Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, to memoirs of recent history in the form of one Mohandas C Gandhi, who left South Africa to take up the mantle of freeing his homeland, and back to the very beginning of our time with the naval journeys of Christopher Columbus and Captain James Cook, the one constant motion they were all set forth in was that of traveling.

More Than a Quarter of the Kingdom's Area is Protected

An excited and bewildered Charles Darwin at the Galapagos Islands, to the ever endearing story of Alexander Supertramp and his desire to simply walk, hitch or just make do with whatever the changing landscape offered before him just less than 23 years ago is a testimony of that unyielding DNA wrought in the very nature of man- that we are most alive when we travel.

Its then in that exalted yet simple and free spirited frame of mind that we believe not only in Adventure, but farther yet the seeds from which they and so many hundreds of millions have sprung or plant to make the spring, and leap unto a world and a place that will forever, as a simple hand carved wooden board stands witness to at the bottom of one of the holist monasteries at the northern base of Thimphu, the little known capital of the Kingdom of Bhutan. It is in one of the entrances to the Jigme Dorji National Park. Next to an old traditional bridge that leads up to the sacred site of Cheri Buddhist Monastery, and a wet trodden path, hangs an old wooden board now weathered with time and the elements, but not the symbolism as it simply reads. 

“Take Nothing But Memories; Leave Nothing But Footprints.”

Bhutan today has 10 formally protected areas covering 16,396.43 sq. km, which is more than a quarter of the country’s total land area.

This is both the spontaneous prayer and the instinctive plunge we have been taking, and hope to do so with as many of you as possible in discovering what is truly one of the purest realms still unencumbered by that jack-hammer called globalization.

Lunana Paranoma By Karma Tshiteem, Secretary, Gross National Happiness Commission

We are proud Bhutanese, and as such, would find it an honor befitting many of those illustrious travelers, voyagers, wanderlusters, in truly welcoming you and being your traveling hosts, companions and friends during your time here with us.

Rest assured, you are in good hands and hearts with Adventure Roots.

*For The Spirited Traveler