“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley

I woke up around 8 in the morning. Today, we were to start our return journey. I had a wonderful breakfast of Bhumtang cheese sandwich and Chinese tea. After the breakfast, we roamed around the city trying to buy some souvenirs to take back home. However, we found that there was little in Thimpu to shop around. Most of the goods come from India and only some handicraft items were of Bhutanese origin. These handicrafts were quite costly and would interest only those who have a taste for such items.

We then went to the General Post Office of Bhutan and bought some postage stamps to take as souvenirs. We then moved around most of the small shops that we saw along the road. One particular thing which we noted in Bhutan was that most of the businesses were run by the womenfolk. Whether it be shops, restaurants, hotels, or even bars. I wondered where the menfolk were engaged in. A restaurant, bar and a lodge are a single business unit. That is the norm in here. The people looked beautiful, especially the kids as they looked like cute dolls. The city was indeed distinct in its architecture. We could find only 2, manned junctions in the city and the traffic police used unique gestures to control the traffic. Clicking pictures, we moved around.

We had booked our bus tickets to go to Phuentsholing in the last bus for the day at 4:30pm. Surprisingly we found the bus to be only half filled. I wondered why it was so. We moved on in the same wonderful route on our way back. As the darkness fell, the area was covered with mist, making it difficult to drive. Hence we were going at a slow pace. And to make things worse, it started raining too. As we were just 25kms from Phuentsholing, I could see fresh landslides that should have happened in the last 24hrs as we did not see them on our way up. But somehow, we managed to wriggle past them. Just 10min later, we hit a roadblock caused probably by the landslides. It was 10pm and we had to wait in the bus. Time passed by, but still no hope of an end to the traffic block was in sight. With a hope that atleast, we would not have to walk our way down, I waited inside.

berT

Location: Thimpu – Phuentsholing road, Bhutan

Date: 18.06.2010