One of the first things we noticed was the friendliness of the people. We needed directions to the hotel we were headed towards. The first man I asked was friendly enough, giving elaborate instructions. The next one actually walked us to the entrance to the street on which the hotel was located. Agreed it wasn’t far, but we were still impressed. And then it was the politeness and friendliness with which they would respond and try to be helpful. It was heartwarming. It led to Ramya’s second one liner, ‘I want Bhutanese citizenship.’
The hotel (Bhutan Hotel) was clean and cosy, the staff pleasant and friendly (again!) and reasonably priced. One of the men at the reception was particularly friendly and his English was excellent. His Bengali sounded equally good too. Bengali?! ‘I studied in India, in Siliguri. You have to learn Bengali when you are surrounded by Bengalis’, pat came the reply. He told me we would need our voter IDs or passports to get travel permits in Bhutan. We weren’t carrying either. We were carrying our PAN cards, and hoped they would suffice. The man wasn’t so sure.
We did, after all, sleep in Bhutan that night.
Dinner on the other hand, was another matter. By the time we freshened up and stepped out for dinner at about 9:15, everything seemed to have come to a standstill. The streets that were bustling with activity a while ago were now deserted, and we couldn’t find any restaurants open. The only one we did find had this to offer when we asked about vegetarian food, ‘chicken rice, beef rice, pork rice…’ We found one small place open though, on the Indian side, that did serve vegetarian food and with hot chapattis too. Wonderful! The food was decent, and accompanied by a Govinda film playing on TV, to an avid audience of several men. Ramya and I played a game of ‘guess the heroine’. He was sitting with his back towards the screen and trying to guess the identity of the actress from her voice. He didn’t succeed. I don’t blame him. I was looking at the screen and thought it was Farah, from the voice. It was only when a close up shot appeared could I finally tell that it was Madhavi. Oh well.
I did wonder at one point about these films from the 80s, and their strange sensibility. Ramya on the other hand said he quite enjoyed watching them as did millions of other Indians. As if to prove his point, one man at the restaurant told us he had seen the film a good twenty times already. Well, well.
The next morning I went for a walk, and had chai at the tapri from the previous evening. There were mostly men there, crowding around the tapri, and a lone woman having chai by the roadside all by herself did attract a few stares. There are absolutely no roadside chai shops in Bhutan, what a pity. Though all restaurants do serve tea. A short walk into Phuntsholing and I was at the bus station. The last bus for Thimphu is at 1:30, but there is also the option of taking a shared cab.
A little while later we were at the Bhutan tourism office trying to get our travel permits. The man at the hotel had been right ofcourse, they don’t accept PANcards. Will our trip to Bhutan be so shortlived? We weren’t willing to give up yet, so we asked if they would accept it if we got permission from the Indian immigration office (a suggestion from the friendly guy at the Bhutan hotel reception the previous night.) Yes, they would. A glimmer of hope.
On the way to the Indian immigration office, I came up with another idea. Perhaps we could call our respective families and get them to fax copies of our Voter IDs/ passports. Except that Ramya has neither. Not even a ration card. What the hell! I cursed him a bit, and reassured myself that we would find a way out of the situation yet.
As it turned out, it was a cakewalk. The guy at the Indian immigration office didn’t blink once, just asked for photostat copies of out PANcards, which we went out and got. Ofcourse Phuntsholing is a small place and you don’t exactly find photostat shops at every street corner. So when he decided to be a jerk, and sent us back for a Photostat of my driving license as well, for God-alone-knows-what purpose, I was all but ready to blow my fuse. Ramya sensed that I think, for he offered to go back for the extra photostat. After that it was quick. It helped that the man was from Delhi. Oh lord, these regionalisms amongst Indians.
Incredibly, Ramya later apologized for having stopped me from giving that man a piece of my mind. He thought it was justified and he should have let me. I thought his intervention saved us time and a lot of trouble. The man did our job, he could have held us up. This also led to a small discussion how this man managed to retain his unpleasant and unfriendly nature even when living in this beautiful, noise, traffic and pollution free little town, in the midst of the happy, friendly Bhutanese.
Back to the Bhutan tourism office. The man behind the counter there was amazing. He kept asking people to stand in a queue, and not crowd around the person whose picture was being shot. Ofcourse, Indians being Indians, there would always be some among the crowd who wouldn’t listen. So at some point he lost his temper, which is to say he spoke louder and commanded instead of requesting, and then promptly apologized. ‘You people don’t listen, you make me speak like this. I don’t like it.’ Adorable.
Next was a visit to the netcafe for Ramya and a temple for me, from where I called mom and loaded film into my camera. Our first Bhutanese lunch was at a restaurant called Capital (I think.) We started with trying out the local liquor, a shot of whisky for Ramya and gin and lime for me. I don’t remember another occasion when I drank at 12 in the afternoon but it wasn’t bad at all. For lunch we had kewa datsi, a preparation with cheese, chilli and mushrooms, and a curry with egg, I forget the name. Interesting, this datsi business. The ema datsi is the national dish of Bhutan, and made with chilli in cheese curry. That’s it, its just juicy big, green chillies, in cheese and salt and water! Made well, it tastes great. The chillies aren’t all that hot at all. Variants of this are kewa datsi and shamu datsi, made by adding potatoes or mushrooms to the same basic ingredients. Everywhere we went these are the options we got for Bhutanese vegetarian food. There really isn’t much choice for vegetarians.
By two we were armed with our permits but the last bus had left. We didn’t find any others going towards Thimphu either, so we ended up shelling out 1400/- as cab fare. We tried to pick up books or literature on Bhutan or Buddhism, as we had in Siliguri, but found nothing.
(To be contd)
The hotel (Bhutan Hotel) was clean and cosy, the staff pleasant and friendly (again!) and reasonably priced. One of the men at the reception was particularly friendly and his English was excellent. His Bengali sounded equally good too. Bengali?! ‘I studied in India, in Siliguri. You have to learn Bengali when you are surrounded by Bengalis’, pat came the reply. He told me we would need our voter IDs or passports to get travel permits in Bhutan. We weren’t carrying either. We were carrying our PAN cards, and hoped they would suffice. The man wasn’t so sure.
We did, after all, sleep in Bhutan that night.
Dinner on the other hand, was another matter. By the time we freshened up and stepped out for dinner at about 9:15, everything seemed to have come to a standstill. The streets that were bustling with activity a while ago were now deserted, and we couldn’t find any restaurants open. The only one we did find had this to offer when we asked about vegetarian food, ‘chicken rice, beef rice, pork rice…’ We found one small place open though, on the Indian side, that did serve vegetarian food and with hot chapattis too. Wonderful! The food was decent, and accompanied by a Govinda film playing on TV, to an avid audience of several men. Ramya and I played a game of ‘guess the heroine’. He was sitting with his back towards the screen and trying to guess the identity of the actress from her voice. He didn’t succeed. I don’t blame him. I was looking at the screen and thought it was Farah, from the voice. It was only when a close up shot appeared could I finally tell that it was Madhavi. Oh well.
I did wonder at one point about these films from the 80s, and their strange sensibility. Ramya on the other hand said he quite enjoyed watching them as did millions of other Indians. As if to prove his point, one man at the restaurant told us he had seen the film a good twenty times already. Well, well.
The next morning I went for a walk, and had chai at the tapri from the previous evening. There were mostly men there, crowding around the tapri, and a lone woman having chai by the roadside all by herself did attract a few stares. There are absolutely no roadside chai shops in Bhutan, what a pity. Though all restaurants do serve tea. A short walk into Phuntsholing and I was at the bus station. The last bus for Thimphu is at 1:30, but there is also the option of taking a shared cab.
A little while later we were at the Bhutan tourism office trying to get our travel permits. The man at the hotel had been right ofcourse, they don’t accept PANcards. Will our trip to Bhutan be so shortlived? We weren’t willing to give up yet, so we asked if they would accept it if we got permission from the Indian immigration office (a suggestion from the friendly guy at the Bhutan hotel reception the previous night.) Yes, they would. A glimmer of hope.
On the way to the Indian immigration office, I came up with another idea. Perhaps we could call our respective families and get them to fax copies of our Voter IDs/ passports. Except that Ramya has neither. Not even a ration card. What the hell! I cursed him a bit, and reassured myself that we would find a way out of the situation yet.
As it turned out, it was a cakewalk. The guy at the Indian immigration office didn’t blink once, just asked for photostat copies of out PANcards, which we went out and got. Ofcourse Phuntsholing is a small place and you don’t exactly find photostat shops at every street corner. So when he decided to be a jerk, and sent us back for a Photostat of my driving license as well, for God-alone-knows-what purpose, I was all but ready to blow my fuse. Ramya sensed that I think, for he offered to go back for the extra photostat. After that it was quick. It helped that the man was from Delhi. Oh lord, these regionalisms amongst Indians.
Incredibly, Ramya later apologized for having stopped me from giving that man a piece of my mind. He thought it was justified and he should have let me. I thought his intervention saved us time and a lot of trouble. The man did our job, he could have held us up. This also led to a small discussion how this man managed to retain his unpleasant and unfriendly nature even when living in this beautiful, noise, traffic and pollution free little town, in the midst of the happy, friendly Bhutanese.
Back to the Bhutan tourism office. The man behind the counter there was amazing. He kept asking people to stand in a queue, and not crowd around the person whose picture was being shot. Ofcourse, Indians being Indians, there would always be some among the crowd who wouldn’t listen. So at some point he lost his temper, which is to say he spoke louder and commanded instead of requesting, and then promptly apologized. ‘You people don’t listen, you make me speak like this. I don’t like it.’ Adorable.
Next was a visit to the netcafe for Ramya and a temple for me, from where I called mom and loaded film into my camera. Our first Bhutanese lunch was at a restaurant called Capital (I think.) We started with trying out the local liquor, a shot of whisky for Ramya and gin and lime for me. I don’t remember another occasion when I drank at 12 in the afternoon but it wasn’t bad at all. For lunch we had kewa datsi, a preparation with cheese, chilli and mushrooms, and a curry with egg, I forget the name. Interesting, this datsi business. The ema datsi is the national dish of Bhutan, and made with chilli in cheese curry. That’s it, its just juicy big, green chillies, in cheese and salt and water! Made well, it tastes great. The chillies aren’t all that hot at all. Variants of this are kewa datsi and shamu datsi, made by adding potatoes or mushrooms to the same basic ingredients. Everywhere we went these are the options we got for Bhutanese vegetarian food. There really isn’t much choice for vegetarians.
By two we were armed with our permits but the last bus had left. We didn’t find any others going towards Thimphu either, so we ended up shelling out 1400/- as cab fare. We tried to pick up books or literature on Bhutan or Buddhism, as we had in Siliguri, but found nothing.
(To be contd)
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