I think it may be the case throughout Asia that travelers put their lives in the hands of drivers, whose car registration, experience, licensing, and capabilities may be only dimly perceived when the driver is hired. In our case, we have inherited the very able van driver who took the previous HVO family from Thimphu to Paro to meet their flight and is now taking us to Thimphu to take up residence there. His name is Passang, and he is quiet, apparently unflappable, and obviously very familiar with this mangled stretch of asphalt that serves as the road from Paro to Thimphu. We had a similarly trustworthy driver on my previous trip to Bhutan in 1993, a genial young man named Choifel, when it was a shock to ride with my 7-month old child in a car with no seatbelts or carseats on this road, but I note it has been significantly improved since then. Still no seatbelts, naturally, so the kids stretch out on the seats (even try back-seat surfing until I catch them at it) and I hold the sleeping Halle on my lap, as we swerve and rock side to side, by sheer maternal will. Cows straggle across the road, slow to respond to Passang's meep-meep. We pass the Dom Che monastery, perched high above the river on the opposite side, and Passang points out that the river here is bridged by an ancient iron-chain footbridge brought up from the eastern town of Trashigang. The iron-chain bridge is very, very old, but here is being re-installed both as a relic and as a functional river crossing. Thompson tells me you couldn't pay him enough to cross that river on such a bridge.
On the Thimphu side of the checkpoint, the road climbs again (now we are driving "upstream" the Thimphu Chu instead of downstream the Paro Chu) and then begins to descend, slowly, into the Thimphu valley. I begin to see roadside stands, ranging from a small girl under an umbrella tending a sleeping baby, with a basket of chilis at her feet, to a narrow wooden stall along the road with fruit, some water bottles, and the ubiquitous Coca-Cola. As we approach Thimphu, a large new chorten is under construction, and then Passang points out something even more interesting up ahead: a two-lane divided highway with streetlights, its brand new black asphalt pavement gleaming with the late afternoon rain on it. We are amazed. It runs right up to the concrete supports of a future bridge/overpass, and then picks up again on the other side. Although the bridge is not built, the road is being used by cars on either side of the construction, and it is the straightest road I have seen in Bhutan and the first divided highway ever. Signal of things to come, perhaps, or at least of the dramatic changes in Thimphu, which has filled its valley and is steadily creeping up both its hillsides with new construction (in some
what traditional-looking architecture at least) of housing, offices, and shops. (Photo was taken on the outskirts looking towards Thimphu)However, there is still no streetlight in Thimphu. Instead, there are two traffic circles ("rotaries" back home) in the downtown, each with a stone circular platform in the middle with a little wooden roofed tower built on it, in which a white-gloved traffic policeman directs the traffic at the rotary (and people obey!). Away from the circle, it is every Suzuki Maruti for himself, although the traffic looks and feels slow after the vehicular hell that is Bangkok, and we are glad to be ending our long arrival journey in a city that we have come to love as a kind of second home.
