Riding the Public Bus in Bhutan: From Punakha to the Phobjikha Valley, Part I

Phobjikha Valley, at 3000 meters (10,000 feet) was muscled out of the slate Black Mountains in Western Bhutan by glaciers, leaving a wide, flat, somewhat marshy landscape unusual for this country of deep and alarming gorges.  The valley is known for two things: Gangtey Monastery, the oldest Nyingma Monastery in Bhutan, and the black-necked cranes who fly thousands of miles over the Himalayas from Tibet, to summer here to avoid the harsh winters of the Tibetan plateau (it is winter in Bhutan now, too, but the winters here are so much milder than in Tibet that this is where the cranes fly to holiday).  They have chosen only three valleys in Bhutan as their winter home, and are found in greatest number in the Phobjikha Valley.  This is why I went, and why my fellow BCF teacher Brick Root joined me.

Getting to PV from the Punakha Valley used to take days, as did travel to any valley beyond one's own. Today, one can follow the loosely defined road from Wangdi in two to three hours by taxi, travelling just south of Punakha and east towards Trongsa, the Dzongkhag that marks the beginning of Central Bhutan.  However, if one chooses to take the public bus, as we did, the adventure lasts five hours, and telescopes several insights into Bhutanese culture into one, long butt-numbing experience.

Bajothang, where one catches the bus to PV, is a planned town built in the past twenty years on the Tsang Chuu. Unlike most Bhutanese towns, it is laid out in a grid like a western city, and accommodates the businesses and services needed by the surrounding communities. It has a somewhat Wild West feel to it, maybe because of all the dust kicked up by the construction vehicles that gut its dirt roads, hauling sand and rock to the hydropower project on the river below or the new hotel being built on the mountainside above in Rinchingang.  The roads are paved, but only in theory, and the uncurtained windows of several buildings on the uphill side of Bajo reveal empty flats and storefronts.  It is peopled largely by Indian immigrants, brought to Bhutan on five-year contracts to do construction work or to teach in the schools.  Brick, who will be teaching in Gaselo, a small village across the river from Bajo and 11 km up the mountain, took a ride with his Vice Principal to Bajo early on Friday to explore the town that will provide him with most of his "modern" needs--hardware, an internet connection, chocolate eclairs, and beer (brewed in Bhutan).  He bought our bus tickets at 9 am for a 2:30 departure, and nabbed the 16th and 17th seats out of 20 available for 65 ngultrums each, or $1.25.  He was told we should arrive at the station at 2:00 in order to load the bus to ensure a prompt 2:30 departure.

I took a taxi from Kuruthang, the planned town that serves Punakha, to the Bajo Bus Station and met Brick a little before 2:00.  I had ridden the public bus in India: there, the famous Indian bureaucracy and the thousands of travel options make purchasing a ticket virtually impossible without a translator or guide. The impressive Victorian-era bus stations are crammed with families and their belongings and touts and old, leprosic beggars, creating a veritable carpet of humanity, punctuated by cows and the occasional official in his greasy uniform charging purposefully through the crowd but accomplishing nothing.  The buses are built for people of small stature so that when a taller person sits down, she must tilt her knees to the side in order to fit into the narrow metal seat which invariably abuts the only corpulent Indian man who chews paan and leans across to spit out the window.  Sudden stops along the route accompanied by unceasing honking, of which there are many, threaten the integrity of one's kneecaps and face.  Crushingly loud Indian pop music assaults (or entertains) riders from cheap, buzzing speakers.  A seat for two is filled with four, all redolent of sweat and curry or the rank oniony smell of meat-eaters; the aisle is crammed with luggage and people, and more hang off the sides.  Worst of all, no one is able to tell you when to get off for your stop--or rather, everyone seems to know when you ought to disembark, but none agrees.  Everyone is in a foul humor, yelling at one another in Tamil or Hindi as though they are furious, which they may be, but it is impossible to tell.  

At the bus station in Bajo, the bus sits in a vortex of dust in a huge, otherwise empty lot. A few languid dogs press their eyes closed against the wind.  The 'bus station' is a window in a small storefront in one corner of the lot.  Brick had no problem reading the schedule (though only departure times were listed, not return times), speaking to the attendant or purchasing the tickets.  Eight or ten people, with their luggage, sat patiently on rocks next to the empty bus, waiting for the signal to board.  

Brick and I stood away from the lot to avoid the sandstorm, finding ourselves, serendipitously, in front of the Shangri-La Bakery where we bought a huge piece of chocolate cake.  Precisely at 2:00, people began to board, so we dutifully joined them and took our seats which were nearly all the way in the back.  The process was somewhat orderly and everyone was pleasant.  Seated across the aisle from us was a family of three, their young daughter asleep in their arms.  As 2:30 approached, the aisle began to fill with extra passengers sitting on their luggage, but there was no angry pushing and shoving or unkind words spoken.  In fact, there seemed to be an unspoken etiquette applicable to how to accommodate and maneuver around people sitting in a bus aisle.  Several times, the six or seven aisle-sitters rearranged themselves, clapping one another on the back, laughing, helping the elderly, stepping on the armrests to walk up and down the aisle so as not to force anyone to get up and move.  Several fifty pound bags of rice were loaded into the aisle, forcing almost everyone to get off and then back on again.  Finally, at precisely 2:30, the bus driver climbed aboard, having tied down the preposterously large load on the roof, and drove out of the lot.

Sanguine Aisle-Sitters and Strap-Hangers

Within minutes, we had pulled into a petrol station.  Several people got out and then others got in.  Neither Brick nor myself could see if the driver had actually put gas in the bus, but soon we began moving again, accompanied by crushingly loud music of all kinds including old hip hop (the driver seemed to have his finger on the scan button--we heard no more than a minute of every song) up the crazy, winding, pitted, road so characteristic of Bhutan, along a sheer drop of hundreds of meters, at the hair-raising speed of...perhaps 25 kph (15 mph).  The seats were wide enough and deep enough to get moderately comfortable, though the stuffing had long been reduced to a thin layer of compressed foam so that one could feel the metal through it.  We settled in for the allegedly two and a half hour ride to Phobjikha.

Perhaps the ride is in fact two and a half hours if one drives all the way without stopping, and if one maintains a speed greater than 25 kph, but the public bus in Bhutan stops for anyone who flags it down for a lift.  It stops for lunch, unannounced: suddenly, the bus pulled off the road at a tsongkhang (the small, locally owned shops that populate all of Bhutan), only about 20 minutes after leaving Bajo, and everyone got out to buy chips and mango Frooti and play an outdoor table game that looks like a combination of air hockey and snooker.  A very elderly man with a grey beard and a filthy gho spent the lunch break scavenging for wood and cardboard so he could fashion a proper seat for himself in the aisle. Then after about thirty minutes, again suddenly, everyone filed back onto the bus and the trip resumes.  

We were told that this road had timed road blocks to allow for trucks to be loaded by track hoe with rock that had been drilled from the side of the mountains to widen the road, and then to drive down to the hydro-project where it is used for fill.  We assumed we'd had the unscheduled lunch stop because of the road block, but in fact, not thirty minutes later we came to a long line of stopped taxis, tourist vans and the tiny boxy Suzuki Marutis with Tinker Toys for wheels that many Bhutanese drive.  This was the road block--it seemed to us if we had not stopped for lunch we could have easily missed it and saved over an hour of travel time, but no one seem bothered by this. Everyone sat on the bus, chatting, laughing, singing, yelling out the windows to people they knew.  We shared an orange with the girl next to us who had woken up for the lunch break.  At least forty-five minutes passed.  And then the line began to move.  No one cheered; there was no expression of relief or impatience or surprise.  As Brick noted, it was a perfect demonstration of Bhutanese compassion and patience and an opportunity for me and him to learn the same.  What a contrast with India.

We crested a 10,000 foot pass marked by a chorten and a lone yak and headed down into Phobjikha at about 6:00 that evening in the dark, so we could not see any signs for our hotel, or, in fact, anything at all since Phobjikha is not a populous place--there are no lights in windows or stores to indicate where the sides of the road or the buildings are.  Overhead, infinite stars peppered a black velvet sky, clearer than ever in the thin mountain air.  We asked our seat neighbor if he'd heard of our hotel, but he had not--clearly, he felt not need to prevaricate to save face.  We asked others nearby us but no one had heard of it, which made sense since it is a newer hotel and it is the off-season for tourists to the Phobjikha Valley since it is still winter (the Black-Necked Crane Festival is in November and celebrates the cranes' return from Tibet; we were told they arrive "on October 25."  Who knew birds had such a predictable schedule?).  I called the hotel, the Yueli Kiis, and asked how we would find it in the dark. "Just walk up the road five minutes.  Look for the sign for the Dewachen Hotel. We are below it."  This seemed easy enough, but when we finally got off the bus, covered with dust, our butts sore, our teeth loose from the rough ride, we felt we had been dropped into empty space: we could see nothing except a few lights dotting the mountains.  Our fellow passengers dissolved into the night like Macbeth's witches.  Brick turned on his headlamp and we started heading up the road, hoping we would see the sign for the Dewachen, but since walking on Bhutanese roads requires diligent attention to what is directly underfoot, we walked right past it.  Fortunately, the owner's 16 year old son had been sent to intercept us at the gate to the hotel.  We heard his shy voice in the night tentatively calling, "Hello!"  He must have heard our loud American voices.

After hiking up a short hill, we were brought to an enormous, beautiful room heated by wood stove, and were met by Lucy and Matt, two other BCF teachers who had come the previous day (also by public bus--notably, they chose to hike to Wangdue and take a taxi back to Punakha rather than get back on that bus). We had a delicious five course meal washed down with Druk 11000s, were given hot water bottles to stave off the cold in the night, and slept like babies.

We woke to the sound of cranes calling over the wide lap of the frosty valley.

Frost in the Phobjikha Valley (photo by Brick Root)