THE HIGH SPOTS - BHUTAN

THE HIGH SPOTS – BHUTAN
Ajit Chaudhuri

Visited: January 1988
Written: November 1995

It is indeed strange that a travel addict such as myself has seen so little of such a large part of the country, the east, and I consider my education incomplete for this. It was as a student that I last went that side, a field assignment to northern Bihar in the winter of 1987-1988 to provide some management support to a village-based organization there.

Anyone spending ten weeks in Bihar would need some diversion, and I was no exception. The holding of the Jawaharlal Nehru football tournament in nearby Siliguri provided me with the necessary incentive to make some excuse and bunk off towards Patna, meet up with some fellow enthusiasts and then head to Siliguri to watch football.

There will be those among you who feel that this is not sufficient reason to abandon one’s duty for a 2-week period, and I think I would agree with you today. In 1988, however, the Nehru football tournament was still a prestigious affair and countries sent their best teams. The USSR would be coming with the team that would represent them at the Seoul Olympics, and watching them was definitely worth it. And so, three of us headed from Patna to Mokamma by train and onwards from there by bus to Barauni, where we managed to procure reservations on the Northeast Express to New Jalpaiguri.

The train arrived late, and at night, and with all Barauni quota berths occupied by unauthorised general passengers, no uncommon occurrence in these parts. We strode into our compartment and, in our loudest and most commanding voices, proceeded to wake everyone up. By the time the travelling public realised that we were neither mafia lords nor naxalites our berths were clear and we slept peacefully until NJP the next morning.

It was due to there being a long gap between USSR vs. Bulgaria and USSR vs. China, the two matches we wanted to see, that the idea of heading towards Bhutan was mooted. The main attraction was the adventure of foreign travel without the necessity of passports, visas, foreign exchange and any planning – just hop into a bus for a few hours and hey presto, you are abroad. But Bhutan has a lot more to offer than just being an easily accessible (if one is in Siliguri) foreign country.

Tickets were booked from Siliguri to Phuntsholing on a Bhutan transport bus, our first experience of a foreign bus service. The journey was standard fare, through thick forests and stops at little roadside joints with a breakdown at a breathtakingly beautiful place in the middle of tea gardens for which the bus was repaired by tying parts of the engine to each other with borrowed hankies – just like India.

It was India! Only the last five minutes of an 8-hour journey was spent abroad, when we crossed a huge gate that brought us into Bhutan and its border city, Phuntsholing. After conducting formalities befitting the occasion of one’s first steps on foreign soil such as kissing the ground and putting some dust into our pockets, we set off to explore.

It was here that the difference between India and Bhutan was most obvious. The Indian town of Jaigaon and the Bhutanese city of Phuntsholing are a continuation of each other, forming a single urban area separated by a border gate and a drain, with free movement from this side into that and vice versa. Jaigaon, however, is a typical dirty little town with potholes, rubbish all over and poor drainage whereas a step across takes you into this clean city with good roads and an organized look about it.

It was also here that we learnt the golden rule of foreign travel – stay away from Indians. We initially ignored all the fancy looking centrally located hotels to find some sidey Indian-owned joint, where the fellow immediately tried to crook us by charging more for less while acting as if he was doing us a big favour because we were fellow countrymen. So it was back to one of the fancy centrally located hotels, where we spent a thoroughly comfortable two days at half the price.

Enquiries revealed that a journey to Thimphu was possible on Toyota vans run by the government. The peasantry, however, did the journey at one-third the cost on the three Bhutan roadways buses that plied daily between the two cities, imaginatively referred to as the first bus, second bus and third bus.

It was only on the morning of our journey, well after we had reserved tickets on the third bus, that somebody mentioned that we needed permits to go beyond Phuntsholing. Some desparate measures were undertaken – running off to India House, the issuing authority, and then running after the babu and kissing his backside – and we were able to board the bus with the necessary documents.

The day’s journey revealed much about Bhutan. A small country with just mountain, forest and little pockets of human habitation in between, unlike our other neighbours people here have a positive attitude towards India and Indians. The special relationship the two countries share is in evidence everywhere, the roads and hydel projects are Indian built, and Indian currency is universally accepted and in fact even preferred. While foreigners experience severe difficulties in obtaining the necessary permission to travek around, for Indians it is relatively easy.

Food habits here are quite different from mainstream India, the standard fare being pork and beef, with vegetables (and vegetarianism) completely absent except in a few ridiculously expensive Indian owned eateries. Tibetan style cooking is popular and Momos and Thukpas are available everywhere. The local Bhutanese delicacy is a dish called Ematachi, a sort of chilli curry that we had only when we felt brave (and did not have to travel the next day). Booze is cheap, freely available and widely consumed.

The final leg of the journey involves negotiating a windy pass into a long valley at the end of which, surrounded on three sides by snow capped mountains, lies one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Thimphu is small and well planned, with perfect roads and a distinctive architecture.

One of the vagaries of tourism is that the more tourists a place attracts, the more unattractive it becomes to tourists. There is nothing more putting off to the holidaymaker than to make for this beautiful destination and find that one is sharing it with a large number of other holidaymakers. In Bhutan you will have no such problems. As a policy, the government actively discourages tourism by putting various obstacles in the way of would-be visitors. The result is that those such as us who do make their way into the country find the perfect destination – a land of stunning beauty with few modern eyesores littering the landscape and people in whom the ‘make a buck off the tourists while you can’ attitude is completely absent.

It says something about a place when you can find a cheap clean room in the heart of town with a view of snow from two windows and the sound of a stream running 24 hours a day, as we did. An additional facility was a movie hall just outside, with ‘Meri Jung’ running for three shows a day to packed crowds. Thimphu, unlike Phuntsholing, is in the heart of the mountains and is freezing cold in winter. While snow had not yet fallen in the valley, the minimum temperature was –3 centigrade and necessitated a peg of the local brew, Saunfi, as soon as one emerged from the razai in the morning and onwards.

A place, no matter how beautiful, is only as pleasant as the people who live in it. And this is where Bhutan scores another plus. People here are normal, friendly and unagressive. Thimphu being a small place, one met quite a few of the same people while roaming around, and we made friends. Our exploratory visits to the mountains around enabled us to meet the same sort of people – people unafraid to open their homes and introduce their families to three strange men.

There were quirks, though! One was the aversion to queues in Thimphu. As there were only three buses plying daily back to Phuntsholing, we felt it would be a good idea to book in advance. The ticket window, however, was a complete free for all, around 15 to 20 people pushing, shoving, grunting and groaning to get a hand into the window slot, with the spirit of free competition not vitiating a good-humoured atmosphere. For half an hour the three of us took turns at getting into the crowd and using our height and weight advantage only to be shoved out red-faced. Then we hit upon a plan, using the principle ‘when in Rome’ and copying the technique of the successful ticket buyers, of making it a team effort with me getting into the crowd and the other two pushing me so that I got into the gaps. We soon got our tickets and the feeling of satisfaction was great.

The return trip came only too soon, back to Phuntsholing and from there to Siliguri where we watched the Soviets beat the Chinese in a furiously-paced match.

Much water has flown down the Ganga in the seven years since that journey. The Soviet team we travelled all that distance to watch play beat the Romario-led Brazilians in the final for the gold medal – a match the three of us watched together on TV. Today, the Soviet Union does not exist! Bhutan too has undergone social tensions within and is not the Shangri-La one saw in 1988. And one of the friends who accompanied me is no more, having passed away in a drowning accident a few months ago.

But if I get the opportunity to go there again, I would accept in a flash – no added incentive of football in Siliguri required. There are places that are still names on a map to me, such as Paro and Haa Dzong. And I have miles to go before I sleep.