Driving to Gangtey

Our hosts with their son and all of us.

A local grandmother, daughter and granddaughter on her back.

Stuck in the mud.

Road conditions.

The Jakar Dzong.

Dog protecting the Dzong from monkeys.

A little one looking on.

Part of the 1.5 km fortress wall.

The inner courtyard.

The Dzong in the background.

Waiting for the voting bus.

Even women sometimes chew bettle nuts.

Into the clouds.

Wayne capturing the Phobjikha Valley.

The beautiful Dewachen Hotel.

Friday, April 20^th.

It rained through the night and it reminded me of the cottage with rain on the metal roof.

We were up early and had breakfast with our host family, before posing for a group photo with them. They took one too.

Then we began our journey to our next destination, Gangtey. We stopped about an hour in to have a little walk through a local farming village and then continued. Today we had to retrace our route over those three mountains passes with the road that is under construction. This time I was able to get a few photos to show the condition of it. The road is full of twists and turns and is never straight.  I was concerned about the rain making the road over Yothong La Pass at 3350m between Bumthang and Trongsa more muddy and treacherous but, it didn’t seem to make much difference. However, it was muddy and we saw one jeep stuck in it.

When we got back to Trongsa we saw the colossal Trongsa Dzong that sits on a ridge overlooking the Chokhor Valley - with a circumference of 1,500 metres it is the largest dzong in Bhutan. We didn’t have a chance to visit it two days ago, so we had a tour of it today. It was beautiful but, seemed a little more run down than the other two we have seen. While we were there we saw a couple of dogs trying to chase away a macaque monkey, which are a big problem here as when they get in they make a mess of the monk’s quarters, or the temple. The monkey was not really afraid and stood his ground. The photo is from a little video I took of the action.

Today is election day in Bhutan, so all the shops and restaurants are closed, so Chimi had asked the farmstay family to make us a picnic lunch. While we were touring Sherba set it all up and we sat and ate on the grass on a little hillock overlooking the dzong.

Then we continued. We came across a group of people sitting under an ‘election advertising board’ waiting for a ride to the polling station. Then we crossed another pass on a very bumpy and rough road in the clouds. We turned off the main road onto a one lane road which took us into the Phobjikha Valley and Gangtey at 2900 metres. The view of the valley was lovely, it was all very neatly organized into farms which are bordered by the Black Mountains. When we got there, we found ourselves staying at the beautiful Dewachen Hotel and Spa. We all agreed we could stay here for the rest of the trip. We had a couple of hours of free time to catch up with e-mails and then we had dinner and a drink before heading back to the room for the night.