A passage to India - the road to Phuentsholing

It is hard to explain the feeling of wonderment at arriving at the border between two nations. It is nothing to people who have lived in frontier towns, but to me, a Mumbaikar born and raised on the sea, and having lived either in cities in the hinterland or on the sea in various countries in the world, it is kind of momentous. We were off to Phuentsholing in southern Bhutan, a town on the India-Bhutan border. I had in the past driven across borders in Europe and the US, yet I felt once again the same stupid thrill I had felt then, at the sheer awesome simplicity of just driving under the Bhutan Gate, and finding myself in the town of Jaigaon in West Bengal, India! As simple as that, given that it is a peaceful border between friendly neighbours!

Driving due south from Thimphu which is at an elevation of some 8,000 feet, our journey to Phuentsholing, just 500 feet above sea level, was a study in botany, sociology, economics, geography, strange weather systems, and more.

Southbound to Phuentsholing!

Taking the road to Phuentsholing at the Chuzom (the confluence of the Wangchchu and Parochhu), we drove by Watsa village, still quite high up, and not long after leaving Thimphu. Looking across the valley, the mountains were a gentle kaleidoscope of muted auburn, russet, orange, brown, gold, yellow and green bushes. The play of the morning sun and shade picked out and showcased tracts of this foliage. 

Mountain slopes awash with the colours of autumn

Isn't the contrast of the rust, yellow and gold with the evergreen in the foreground just beautiful!

The lushness and greenery grew steadily as we moved southwards. It thumbed its nose at the autumn, growing into a riotous, dense and almost tropical forest cover of banana trees, ferns, climbers, large leafed trees and strangely even palm trees as we neared Phuentsholing.   

While this southern highway is very good for the most part, the Project Dantak people (who have worked tirelessly since 1961 to improve road connectivity in Bhutan) are working on completely eliminating and bypassing a small single lane stretch, thereby upgrading this entire artery to a double laned road and also cutting the travel time between Thimphu and Phuentsholing by a whole hour! At Chukha, about two hours into our road trip, we saw men at work on this project.

I'm not sure if it is because the innumerable hairpin bends in mountain roads help digest what you have eaten faster, but I was more than ready for the quaint little Dantak Canteen by the side of the road when it beckoned us as we arrived at Takti. The cooks are Nepali but you wouldn't know that from the quality of idli, dosa, wada, sambar, and choley bhature they served us! Do stop and enjoy the hospitality and ambience of this super eatery if ever you find yourself southbound in Bhutan!

Dantak Canteen - the super eatery

The little VIP room of the Dantak Canteen - even His Majesty the King of Bhutan stops here on his way south!

The sky was a beautiful autumn blue so far, but I could easily have believed it was the monsoon or even the height of a dank winter as we moved towards Gaeddu. Lying in a peculiar fold of the mountains, which stretches about 7 kilometers after Takti, Gaeddu is where the famous Gaeddu College of Business Studies is situated. Ghostly mists enveloped the mountainsides allowing a visibility of just 25 feet from the road in some places on this stretch. Trees by the roadside took on grotesque shapes, prayer flags looked forlorn as they flapped about shrouded by the thick mist, and nothing appeared to exist beyond the road as the mountain slopes fell away into an abyss and were swallowed up by an opaque milkiness.

Forlorn prayer flags flap in the misty wind

Visibility of around 25 feet - even the trees by the roadside are covered by the thickening mist

An opaque nothingness falling away from the roadside

An eerie sky at midday!

Coming out into the bright sunshine at Kamji was like coming out of a tunnel in a slightly sinister dream! Notwithstanding Gaeddu's unpredictable and often dreary weather, the college campus itself was lively and pretty, with stunningly beautiful marigolds still blooming everywhere. It was clear to see that the Director General of the college was easily its life, its soul, its driving force, the reason behind its good reputation and undoubtedly among the most inspirational leaders in higher education in the country! He had managed to mobilise almost everyone on the campus to come out and welcome us in a colourful Chipdrel procession, followed by the Marchang ritual. 

A beautiful mural at the entrance of Gaeddu College

The campus aglow with marigolds!

The Gaeddu-Phuentsholing run is just over an hour long. We began to see the flat and contiguous urban sprawl of the Phuentsholing-Jaigaon border area spread out below us almost half an hour before we actually entered the border town. Arriving at the Druk Hotel in Phuentsholing mid morning on a Thursday, we got to see perhaps the most bustling place yet in Bhutan. What luck that the Bhutan Gate is not even three minutes from the hotel. On one side of the road leading to the gate on the Bhutanese side is an immigration office where migrant labourers and other non Bhutanese from across the border were lined up in the hundreds for permits to travel to other places in Bhutan. On the other side of the road are shops and businesses. If I thought this place actually hustled and bustled, it was because I have lived in Thimphu for three and a half months and grown unaccustomed to the buzz of people hurrying, buying, selling, bargaining, pushing, jostling, rushing. It was in fact only as busy as an Indian street on a quiet day!

Bhutan Gate - Jaigaon in West Bengal is visible through the gate on the other side!

Driving through the Bhutan Gate into Jaigaon on the Indian side, the hustle and bustle took over my senses - the shops were overflowing with literally all kinds of merchandise from utensils to sweets to touristy souvenirs to clothing to home decor and furnishings, the traffic was chaotic, and the people were well......chaotic as well! I was in India, and I was fine.....everything was once again familiar within seconds - the chaos, the crowds, the noise, the buzz! Jaigaon market tempted me with its sweet oranges, mithai (Indian sweets), khoya (thickened, evaporated milk) and upholstery fabric and I succumbed, but left plenty unbought and still coveted for another visit! The outskirts of Jaigaon were more serene and surprisingly covered with tea gardens on both sides of the road as far as the eye could see. I had always thought tea only grew on hill slopes, but as far as I could see this terrain was flat as a board! Interesting!

The hum and buzz of the plains were great, yet, happily for me, I had recognized quite surprisingly that they were not something I had pined for in the time I had been in Thimphu. I had grown used to the mountains, the space and the pure air of Thimphu - it was time to head back, but not without another pit stop at the Dantak Canteen! From there onwards it was non stop to the capital and home, driving down to the Chuzom, taking the road to the capital, and driving into Thimphu City through the Thimphu Gate!

 

  

   

 

 

The Thunder Dragon in Fall in and around Thimphu

The Blessed Rainy Day, (which fell on September 23rd this year), officially marks the end of the monsoon and the onset of the Fall and harvest seasons in Bhutan. In reality though, it may continue to rain torrents till well after this date, as it has done in Thimphu. On the other hand, the crispness of Fall set in well before this date! The nighttime temperatures are dipping steadily now and there is early morning frost on the ground some mornings, but the days are as gloriously warm and sunny as promised to us!

The Thimphu Tsechu is a fitting celebration of the start of the season. Colourful and fun, it goes on all day for the entire three day holiday which ran from 3rd to 5th October this year. Deep, bass horns begin to sound from the Dzong early in the morning, continue throughout the day and can be heard far and wide in the town, acting effectively (to my mind) like a call to everyone to join in the festivities! While the official and traditional events which include pantomime, dance and music happen in the grand courtyard of the Dzong, the celebrations spill out onto the streets with people milling around, eating, drinking, shopping and trying their luck at various games stalls. Here are some scenes from the celebrations in the Dzong......
   
A comic, slightly slapstick play/pantomime started just as we entered and continued the whole time we were there.....take a look!

The space behind the yellow curtain acted as a makeshift green room for the pantomime participants....

It was a warm, dry and perfect day prompting the audience to shield themselves from the hot sun in the pic below. The orange clad group of people walking through the stands are the DESUUP, a volunteer group trained in leadership skills, disaster relief, evacuation and emergency services, disaster management, forest fire fighting and dealing with natural calamities.

Tsechu time is dressing up time for everyone including this little girl in her own little kira!

A drive from Thimphu to Paro and back at this time of year and in this part of Western Bhutan sees the Bhutanese preparing for the winter and taking advantage of the drier days and golden sunshine, though as mentioned earlier it continues to rain for a while even after the Blessed Rainy Day. The road is dotted with splashes of red rooftops neatly spread with chillies put out to dry. The drying process, which is the same for sliced apples among other fruits and vegetables, is interesting......the rain comes, wets the produce, the sun comes and dries it out, only for it to get wet again.....the process continues till the rain stops and the sun finally does its job!

The picture below is taken in the bright mid morning sunshine (isn't it just so vibrant!), the one further down is taken in the fading evening light.

Nearing Paro, which is less congested than Thimphu and more agrarian, the season presents itself in all its abundant, golden glory of paddy fields standing ready to be harvested ....... 

No account of the Fall season in and around Thimphu would be complete without pictures of meadow upon meadow of wild cosmos. If other flowers begin to steadily wilt and surrender to the cooler temperatures, surprisingly the dainty and delicate cosmos proves to be a fighter, flourishing as it does all the way into the decidedly colder November nights!   

In keeping with the gentle pace of all things Bhutanese, the Fall colours on the trees take their time appearing, taking a gradually staggered approach as against the almost overnight leaf metamorphosis that results in their riotous and concerted change of garb in some places in the world! Scroll down to see a stunning rainbow of the first yellows of the season........

If the nights get steadily colder after the Tsechu festivities, if feels as if the sun will shower us with its warmth and radiance all through the impending winter .......it is the middle of November now and there are still days when it is too warm to don even a sweater, let alone a jacket. There are still flowers and vegetables and herbs growing in the garden where they are safe from the early morning frost! The skies are blue as ever, and the rain I am told will stay away from now till the end of the winter!  

A HAA-worthy valley!

Okay so I didn't exclaim HAA (though it most certainly is HAA-worthy!) as we neared this part of Bhutan, but I did remark to my husband traveling in the car with me that the mountains here suddenly looked very different from the mountains I had seen so far during my two weeks in the Land of the Thunder Dragon. I even remarked that these looked like the mountains in traditional Chinese paintings, individual mountains, not the rolling, continuous mountain ranges I had grown used to seeing. "Are we driving in the direction of China? Are we nearing it? These mountains look unlike others in Bhutan", I said to my husband. I had not studied a map or asked about the location of Haa or done any reading on it before we set off. Anyway,  I can't remember what he said in response to my question and I forgot all about my observation.

Half an hour later we are warmly received with traditional khadas (long white silk scarves) by our hosts and led into their quaint, beautiful, and impeccably maintained house. Haa gets very cold in the winter, and the houses are built to keep in the warmth. Made entirely of wood, decorated in traditional Bhutanese style with wood carvings and colourful frills and trimmings, the floor is springy and cushiony, lifted away from the ground as it is by probably a foot or more. We are treated to the famous richly coloured, shiny, chocolate brown Hoentoe or buckwheat dumplings, a speciality of this region. Hoentoe has more than twenty ingredients and happily for me these are completely vegetarian!

Between bites of the Hoentoe and during the conversation with our hosts I find out that the border with the People's Republic of China is as little as 30 kms away from where we are! Yippee! I feel elated that my instinct had been correct, that we had been traveling towards China, which is in fact quite close by to Haa Valley. However I am soon deflated when informed that Haa shares a border with Tibet, (which is admittedly technically China), and for this very reason has nothing to do with the mental images I had of the mountains of Guilin that I had seen in Chinese paintings. Tibet is a plateau and Guilin is far way. So much for my logic!

It had been a complete fluke that I had guessed we were near China. What had in fact prompted the question I put to my husband and struck me as different and interesting was the first sight of three distinctive and separate yet very similar mountains, that had I am told, drawn a delighted gasp of "HAA!" from the first visitors to this valley many centuries ago, and given it its name! I love this story of how this beautiful valley got its name - simple and beautiful!

The Lhakhang (monastery) Karpo in Haa Valley is under renovation. The living quarters of the monks around the temple are being rebuilt but the temple itself is open for visitors. Legend has it that while the idol of the Buddha in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple was being built, and when the body had been completed, a monk turned up with a Buddha head that fit perfectly on the torso! Having handed over the head, the monk apparently just disappeared into thin air! Another legend associated with Lhakhang Karpo (White Temple) tells how it got this name...... a sacred white pigeon from Tibet landed on the spot where a temple-monastery complex came to be built, which was given the name Lhakhang Karpo! 

Driving around the valley, the buckwheat fields of pretty and delicate pinkish-peachish flowers flanking the road force me to stop and take pictures. Here is just one of the many I took. 

As we drive between the buckwheat fields I get the feeling I seem to be seeing more traditional Bhutanese houses in Haa Valley than anywhere else I have seen in Bhutan. But then I have not seen much of the country, right? Anyway, the top storey of a traditional dwelling is reserved for drying chillies, corn, hay, meat, vegetables. This top storey is covered by the roof but has no walls and is open to the wind and air under the eaves. The bottom storey originally used to be meant for the animals, but lately in the interest of hygiene and health the animals have been moved out. In the old days however, the middle storey which was meant for humans remained insulated, sandwiched as it was between the animals and the drying food!

Driving back from Haa to Thimphu we take a different route from the one we took on the way up. This time we drive all the way up to Chelela pass, down the other side of the mountain to Paro, then down to the Chuzom (the confluence of the Paro River and the Thimphu River), from where we take the road back to Thimphu. (Check out my earlier post to read about the Chuzom at  http://himalayangembhutan.blogspot.com/2014/08/hello-bhutan.html)

Chelela Pass is cold, windy and cloud covered. Hundreds of prayer flags stand fluttering amidst the ghostly clouds. This is the highest point on this road. The Pass closes down in the winter, hence our eagerness to make the return journey using this route while we are still in the summer. On a clear day I imagine the view down from Chelela Pass must be phenomenal!

So what are these prayer flags? When a relative passes away, prayer flags are hoisted in high, sometimes remote and difficult to access places that are also likely to be windy. The prayer flags are inscribed with prayers and chants to ward off evil, and to help the soul of the deceased to free itself. This is one of the explanations I have been given. I am sure there more.... 

After Chelela the road winds itself to the other side of the mountain and steadily downhill to Paro. We stop by the roadside to take in a bird's eye view of the Paro River and the airport. For the first time we see how narrow the valley is and how tricky it must be to manouver between and around the mountains in the top left corner of the picture below and land a plane on this airstrip!  

Tempted though we are to see a plane come in to land, we don't linger too long here and are soon on our way home ..... I need to get back to unpacking the hundreds of cartons lying around waiting for my attention, and more importantly to prepare for a royal visit to the Residence the next morning!!!!!

     

     

Hello Bhutan

4 August, 2014

8.30 am IST - We set off for the airport with our 14 pieces of baggage and two Men Friday. We were assisted at the airport by a protocol officer from the Bhutanese embassy in Delhi, and escorted through immigration, customs and onto the aircraft. In about an hour after take off we landed in Katmandu. And then the aircraft was airborne again for our final destination – Bhutan.  

We had asked for seats on the left of the aircraft so that we would have a good view of the mighty Himalayan peaks over the clouds.  I have a fascination for all mountains and feel completely humbled and awestruck by them. Yet there is something different in my awe and feeling towards the Himalayas vis-à-vis some of the lofty peaks in the Alps for instance. I feel a little sentimental about the former, which have shaped our history, our culture, our sensibilities – for better or for worse, and made our geography so distinctive. I was keeping a keen eye out for some of the highest of the Himalayan giants and quite soon after take off from Katmandu, the first one I spotted was Mt. Everest, gleaming and glinting hard and solid amidst and above the puffy soft white clouds – both the former and latter are white, yet what a difference……can’t ever mistake a peak for a cloud! Next we saw Kanchenjunga, the river of gold, and not long thereafter we were descending for our landing. 

Listening to the announcements on the aircraft as we were preparing to land, I couldn’t help thinking how sweet and soft the Bhutanese language (Dzongkha) sounded, and that I would like to learn it if I could. Rolling hill upon hill was thickly covered with trees as we came in to land, and suddenly we were flying past a most amazing circle, the lower half of which was etched by the bowl of the green valley we were flying over, the upper arc of the circle being formed by a huge white cloud that hung over the valley in that instant! As we flew past this circle of green and white I realized that there were still a few minutes to go before we reached Paro airport and that sadly we were not going to have to go through that circle! What was so remarkable about the green cover on the hills below us was how evenly it was spread ......no clumps of trees, no bare patches, no ravaged and quarried hillsides, no charred fields, no dead, lightning stricken tree stumps! 

I had heard a lot about the tricky landing we were going to experience in Paro, but was not particularly worried about it. It was a beautifully clear day as we came in to land in the narrow valley and we seemed to be in very competent hands. I advanced my watch by 30 minutes as soon as we landed, and got ready to step into the pure, fresh air to begin what promised to be a memorable posting! 

Two separate reception parties, one of officers from our own embassy and the other consisting of officials from the Bhutanese foreign office were lined up and waiting on the tarmac as we disembarked. We were greeted warmly and quickly whisked off to a building where tea, snacks and fruit kept us busy till our baggage had been identified and collected, immigration formalities completed and the cars that would drive us to Thimphu lined up. 

Accompanied by a bright, young protocol officer from the foreign office we were driven to Thimphu in the protocol car. Ahead of us went a pilot car with lights flashing on its roof, bringing passersby including school children to their feet as a mark of respect for the VIP they surmised would be following the pilot car – a result of their training and culture we were informed by the young officer with us. Almost all along the drive to the capital we had the faithful, gurgling company of the Paro river (Pachhu). Over the confluence of the Paro (Pachhu) and Thimphu (Thimpchhu) rivers we crossed a bridge which was an interesting crossroads – one road from this point went to Phuentsholing, one to Paro (we would now leave this road), another to Thimphu (which we would now take) and yet another to Haa. 

Our companion along the way to Thimphu, which we entered about half an hour later,was the lovely Thimpchhu. Fifteen minutes or so into the capital we spotted a signboard saying “India House Estate”. Going slightly downhill from this point we entered the sprawling 67 acre estate and arrived at the Residence of the Ambassador of India to Bhutan at 5 pm Bhutan time. There was an enormous and gorgeous looking cake waiting for us in the grand lobby of the Residence – a welcome gesture from His Majesty the King of Bhutan himself. Hubby and I cut it jointly, had some of the staff assembled there plate it up, and asked His Majesty’s messenger to convey to him our heartfelt appreciation of his kindness and thoughtfulness. Well our day was not over yet. One of our officers at the embassy very kindly and graciously hosted us for dinner that night and then we crashed as early as we could knowing that the next day was to be a momentous one - my husband the Ambassador Designate would present his credentials to His Majesty the King of Bhutan!  

It's been just about 84 hours since we got here, but so much has happened in that time that all of that will have to be in separate posts folks! So do look out for more entries here in the days and months to come and thanks for taking the time out to read my ramblings thus far.     

Bhutan mind map

Okay, so this was the sum total of  what Bhutan was for me in all of my fifty plus years before we found out about five months go that we stand posted to this little Himalayan kingdom!

It's funny how when you become interested in something, there are plenty of sources of information about it all around you, and not just the ones you go looking for specifically (a lesson and message in that for all of us in that I guess - "Get interested"!), or those that come looking for you for that matter! 

Anyway, that's exactly what happened to me in the days after we got our posting orders. Amazingly I began to notice information about Bhutan in practically every newspaper everyday from that day on! The information started coming at me faster and thicker till in just a few days this is what my Bhutan consciousness looked like.....

I would need a huge space to fit in my Bhutan consciousness today so I won't even try! But instead I will post full fledged entries about this Himalayan gem right here on this blog from now on......... that's a promise!