Mountains of Bhutan to Plains of India.

This is the first post for a few days due to a complete lack of energy and slow Internet. We have had to camp for the previous 2 night before arriving in India on the final night of the Thunder Dragon Rally.

3 days ago:

We left the festival town of Mongar for the 100 k drive through the hills to Trashigang for an over night stop with half the rally have to sleep in tents due to the lack of accommodation in town for a couple of reasons. It was festival time in this town as well and the East of Bhutan doesn’t get a lot of tourist so a big group like ours puts a lot of pressure on the available accommodation.

The drive this day was under clear skies with clean air so the views were stupendous. The valleys and mountains of this drive was a lot dryer as indicated by the vegetation. It was another day with many road works as Bhutan try’s to improve its road network for Tourism and transport of the required material for the many hydro projects under construction.

On our arrival in town we had the choice of going to the last of the 3-day festival or extending our driving by continuing up the valley to the town of Trashi Yangtse. Julie and I opted for the extended 44k drive up the valley and back as she had had a special time at the Mongar festival the previous day she wanted to see this remote part of Bhutan that very few tourist visit. Penny was the only car to go all the way to the top and back and what a great drive it was. As we got higher the valley got narrower and the road got thinner with the drops steeper with a few places that the next thing over the edge was Splash when you would have landed in the river a couple hundred metres below.

On arrival in Trashigang late in the day we visited town for a quick look before setting our selves up in the tent for the night.

2 days ago:

After another buffet breakfast we set off for the 180k drive down to the border town of Sandrup Jongka ready for our exit into India.

Early in the morning we stoped at a local weaving centre where cloth for Kira’s and Gho’s is hand woven, this process is only just faster then hand knotting carpets in central Asia.

This drive ended being one of the drives of the trip, we great clear weather again, but the big thing was the drops got bigger in places with the road being even narrower at times. Where the road construction was finished the driving ws smooth but still full of bends, a new road is just wider and smooth but is still narrow in places from the never-ending landslips. The majority of the road widening work is being down by Indian labourers that live in small Shanties built on the side of the road out of flattened old 44 gallon oil and tar drums. I had been told by the Police Chief Commissioner that I’d taken for a drive at Punakha, the Indians get work permits for up to 5 years work on road and power projects.

Our overnight camping stop was in the grounds of a Monastery just above Sandrup Jongka. This was another great camp setup with fantastic catering for dinner. Prior to dinner we gathered in the courtyard of the monastery around a nice log fire while being entertained with some national songs and dance from a local group. Some of our group joined in with the dancing with all different levels of success.

Yesterday:

We left camp and dropped the last few hundred metres off the mountains of Bhutan to the border town for very quick processing into India. This was all thank to our Bhutanese guides who had done so much of the paperwork for us the previous day by having the passports stamped out of Bhutan and the carnets for getting the cars into India already completed. We just had to find the immigration office for a Indian entry stamp in our passports.

Then it was off into the mayhem of Indian traffic, in comparison to the previous 2 weeks in Bhutan it seemed like a total assault on our senses with the endless amounts of Tuk Tuks, Bikes, Lorries, Cars and Pedestrians to dodge while watching for the uncountable amount of speed bumps that the Indians have found a knack of hiding in the shade of a tree for camouflage ready to catch the unweary motorist. But amongst all this today I used 4^th gear for the first time since entering Bhutan 2 week ago.

Entering Guwahati we travelled along a dual carriageway for about 30ks. This experience isn’t the stress free drive you’d expect it to be. Being a dual carriageway one would assume that all the traffic would be going the same direction; WRONG the local will drive against the flow similar to on an ordinary road instead of going correct way to do a U-turn through the medium strip. So we meet numerous bikes, a couple cars and trucks plus a JCB backhoe heading the wrong direction. So when the truck in front moves to the left lane, don’t thinks he moving over for you to pass and start accelerating, this may have you looking at a truck heading towards you the wrong way. Very much an OMFG moment.

The last of the chaos we encountered was the queue of traffic as we approached the single bridge over the Brahmaputra River into Guwahati. The next crossing upstream or downstream was at least 80ks away so the congestion was about a mile long, stop go traffic in the Indian heat gave heating problems to a couple of cars. We had spare water to share with them both.

Every one arrived at the Radisson Blue hotel, which is absolute luxury for the end of the Thunder Dragon Rally.

Only 2 cars failed to complete the rally, one from axle failure and the other due to passport problems with the passenger.

I did a couple small jobs on Penny ready for stage 2 of our journey as we depart with Ross and Frank for places between here and Bangkok at 0900hrs on the 24^th of November

The rally finished with a wonderful Banquet on the rooftop lawn beside the Pool. We were entertained with some great Indian music and dance while enjoying the first meal that wasn’t a buffet since leaving Kolkata 23 days ago.

After the meal we were all presented with Bhutan dance masks to remind us all of the great time.

The night finished with swapping lots of rally tales and everyone talking about the next time we may all meet on some great adventure.

Julie has uploaded some festival and bad road Video so pop to her Blog http://juliestephenson.net/journal/ to see them.