Last Day In India

Tea pickers.

 A bike being loaded up with about twelve live chickens.

Truck traffic.

 A tree full of bats.

 Roadside vegetable...

 and fish shops.

 Traffic through towns was chaotic.

 The look and the saying says it all.

 My last Indian face.

 The Hotel Druk in Phuntsholing, Bhutan.

Our group with our scarves given to us by Chemmie (on the far right).

Saturday, April 14^th.

We were up and off by 8:00 this morning, after breakfast and saying goodbye to our wonderful hostess at the hotel. She was a delight.

We drove in two jeeps for three hours back down from the Himalaya foothills to the plains at the town of Siliguri. When we got there, we switched to a different two jeeps for the drive to the Bhutanese border. Our first stop was in the Darjeeling Mall (which is in Siliguri, don’t know why it has that name) where we had lunch. This was an upscale modern four storey mall, that was very different from anything we had seen so far in India. A group of us had a Subway foot long sub.

Then we drove for about five hours. It was hard to take pictures out the window of the truck because of the speed and the weaving and bouncing around we were doing. The driver of our van seemed hell bent on passing everything on the road and didn’t seem to like driving on his side of the road. After a particularly scary pass on a blind turn, Will made the comment that Indians seem very confident in the concept of reincarnation.

We arrived at the Bhutanese border about 3:00pm and had to check out of India. We found the immigration station, which consisted of two policemen in a small car garage where we had to enter our particulars in a ledger, and a small office with one immigration officer. We got stamped out and then reboarded our jeeps for the drive across the border and into the town of Phuntsholing. We were driven right to the Druk Hotel where we met our Bhutanese female guide, Chimi , who will travel with us for the whole trip. She gave us all a Buddhist prayer scarf and a cup of tea. Then we got settled briefly in our rooms before we all walked with her to the immigration office to get our official Bhutan visa, but the power was off in the building (but nowhere else in town). So, we walked to the local temple and Chimi told us some of the history of the country. It became a monarchy in December 1907 and the first king was the great great grandfather of the current one. He is 39 and has a 29 year old wife and a young child. His father ruled for 30 some years before stepping down in favour of his son. The country is mainly Buddhist, but there are small populations of Hindus and Christians. Then we had an hour to walk around the small downtown area of the town.

The change from India to Bhutan was obvious as soon as we crossed the border. There were no blaring horns, there were no vile smells, there was very little litter, it was very clean, there were no cows and their associated droppings, there were very few dogs, there were no small shacks selling everything or street food. It was a very welcome change for all of us. It was wonderful.

We walked around enjoying the cool evening and the sights of this small town. Then we stopped in a local café and had a mango slushy before heading back to the hotel for dinner. Dinner was a buffet of Bhutanese and Indian food. All meals are included in the trip price in Bhutan and will apparently be buffets. This is dictated by the Bhutanese government. We had a beer and after most people went to bed, Will, Nico, Judith and I stayed up and had another while having a good talk, before heading off to bed about 9:30.