Holiday in India & Bhutan (8): journey to Bhutan
Wednesday was totally a travelling day. In our convoy of six SUVs, we left the Mayfair Hotel in Darjeeling, India (where we had spent three nights) at 8.45 am and finally arrived at the Phuntsholing Hotel in Phuntsholing, Bhutan (where we will spend one night) at 6.30 pm India time and 7 pm Bhutan time – a journey of almost 10 hours.
We did stop three times: a comfort stop at the delightfully-named Mungpoo, another comfort stop somewhere between Anywhere and Nowhere, and lunch at resort called Sinclair’s Retreat in the town of Chalsa.
The real problem came shortly after we left Chalsa. The road we intended to take was closed by the police and we had to take a massive detour though a succession of tea plantations.
When we made it to Jiagon on the Indian side of the border, it was already dark. Here we had to show our India visa again, have a departure stamp in our passport, and then have the passport examined by a second set of officials. Both sets of officials wrote our details in notebook and there was no computer in sight.
We pushed our way through a local market and then, miraculously and mysteriously, we found an entry point in a wall which took us to Bhutan passport control, where we had to show our Bhutan visa and passport (they used a computer to note the details) before entering the country at the border town of Phuntsholing where it was raining and there was thunder and lighting.
It was all a bit like ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ – but we are here.
The people of Bhutan call their nation Druk Yul which means ‘the land of the Thunder Dragon’ because of the constant storms which roar in front of the Himalayas. The United Nations only recognised Bhutan as a country in 1974 and Bhutan only allowed (limited) television and internet access in 1999. It is the only country in the world that measures Gross National Happiness.