Our Bhutan Visa and to Thimphu

 More on the traditional dress later.

 On the side of a bus, a variation on the famous saying.

 A few local fruit and vegetable seller on the highway.

 The road.

 Our guide, Chimi .

 A row of small shops at our first stop.

 A couple of views.

A colourful local truck. The same as the Indian trucks, it says Horn Please on the back.

Sunday, April 15^th.

We headed to the immigration office first thing in the morning, only to find that they had electricity now but no internet which they needed for their systems. So, we returned and had breakfast and then we hung around in our rooms waiting. Finally, at 11:00 Chimi called us and told us to come to the office. There were now about 70 people waiting, but she had managed to get us to the front of the line. There were supposed to be two people on two computers, but only one was working. Wayne, Gae and I were processed. We had our photos taken and were finger printed. Then we went back to get organized for check out. The rest came back shortly thereafter, because the system had gone down again. So, we had lunch. As soon as we finished Chimi called us again and all the rest of the people went down to get their visas. We were finally all processed, checked out and ready to go by 1:00. So much for a nine o’clock start.

We have a large mini van that holds the eight of us, Will and Chimi comfortably and all of our luggage is inside in the back. Chimi is a lovely woman, very friendly and chatty. She loves her country and sharing the information with us. 

We set off for the 150-kilometre drive which would take six hours. It would be interesting to see how far it is by the way the crow flies. As soon as we left Phuntsholing we started climbing. We climbed for about two hours before it levelled off and then we were up and down a bit as we navigated over and around the foothills of the Himalayas. We have a driver who is excellent. The differences between here and India were immediately apparent: although they do use their horns a little as signals of intent, it is much, much quieter than India. The roadway was clean without litter and plastic everywhere. And there were only a few fruit sellers along the way. Like India, there were plenty of dogs laying about and a few cows, but not as many. We stopped four times for pee breaks, a view point, a restaurant for tea and snacks and a toilet again. We had to stop twice at police and immigration checkpoints. The views were great. I was sitting in the front seat by the driver and I could see how close we were to the edge and how far the drop was. Most of the road was pretty good, one lane each way and paved. But a few short sections were under construction and several fairly long stretches were a lane and a half wide where one or both vehicles would have to drive half on the road and half on the shoulder in order to pass each other. Or there was only one lane and one would pull over to let the other pass. Most of the traffic was truck traffic mixed with a few cars and taxis. All the drivers were very considerate of each other giving way to let faster vehicles pass, except one. A truck was approaching us and instead of stopping at the beginning of a curve and waiting for us to pass, he tried to pass us at the same time and we came with an inch or two of each other and both stopped. The two drivers yapped at each other for about ten minutes. It probably went like this: “You back up”, “No you back up” “I can’t I’ll go over the edge” “I can’t I’ll run into the rock face”. It took another driver who was now lined up behind us to come and tell the other driver to back up and let us pass, which he did. That freed up the two lines of traffic that were waiting for us to figure it out. Other than that, it went very smoothly.

We arrived at Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan and our beautiful hotel in the dark about 8:30. We quickly checked in, reassembled for dinner and then headed off to bed as we were all really tired from a long day.