Continued...
The journey from Phuentsholing to Thimphu took 7 hours even though the distance is only 165 km; reason: mountain roads. And on top of that, the Royal Bhutan Police stopped the bus at the first checkpost out of P'ling for an hour going through all the bags and checking the bus and our permits. Again, the reason being: tobacco! The Kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world that bans the import and use of tobacco inside its borders. If you are found with tobacco in Bhutan, you are branded a smuggler and thrown out of the country, or worse, thrown in jail. The price of keeping the country happy, I daresay!
The journey on the Phuentsholing - Thimphu highway was astounding as the bus climbs up 2000 metres in altitude through layer upon layer of clouds, through winding layers of ghat roads, surrounded by beautiful Bhutanese people, or as the locals calls themselves, Druks.
As the sun started to set, we entered the valley of Thimphu and the beautiful Bhutanese capital with its night lights took our breath away. The bus dropped us off at the bus station and we hailed a taxi to the main street of Thimphu - Norzim Lam 1 also called Clock Tower road. We checked into an awesome hotel on the south end of the lane, the name of which I cannot remember now, but it starts with a 'D'.
We had good rice and chicken curry for dinner, at a restaurant below the hotel - Yak restaurant - tasty food they've got; and went to sleep under our heavy Himalayan rugs. The next day was an important one as Lucky had a plan for a trek and she and I were going througha couple of trekking guidebooks that we bought in the market. We had two options - Haa valley trek and the Sinchu La Trek; but keeping our time in mind, we narrowed it to Sinchu La trek. We were so excited about the trek, little did we realise, how big a torturous adventure it was going to be.
The next morning, we woke, got readied up, went to the permit office for an extension. The reason for this being, the permit that Indians get from Phuentsholing is only for the Dzongkhak or Districts of Chukha (P'ling), Thimphu, and Paro; but the Sinchu La trek requires our crossover into the district of Punakha, hence the permit extension. We applied for the permit, and were asked to come after an hour, by which time, we set out to find food at 1000hrs in the morning.
We finally found a coffee shop / bakery called Busy beans and got off to chomping down on deliciously baked pasties, burgers and momos. By the time we were done with our food, our permits were ready, and we picked them, hailed two taxis (as taxis strictly cater to only 4 people, and we were 5), and were off to Chumina village, north of Thimphu on the Dechen Lam Road, slightly off of Pangrizampa monastery.
The taxis dropped us off as far as they could go, and then we came across a Mitsubishi off roader who agreed to drop us off till the trail of Sinchu La starts.
The Sinchu La trek that we were attempting was the old foot road between Thimphu, the present capital, and Punakha, the ancient capital, and the trail is 20 km long and it required 3 days to be done - a fact that we were blissfully unaware of, until it was too late.
To be continued...
