Bhutan Diary 7: More Coffee, no conversation, some disappointment

Having realized that we needed to plan our trip a little more than we had earlier realized, we began the next day by a visit to the bus station. This was when the bubble burst for us. There were several things we realized over the course of the hour that we spent there. One, for instance, was that there was indeed only one bus going to Bumthang and it didn’t leave until several days later. Except that we didn’t have several days. We had a very limited stock of cash. There was also the fact that buses in Bhutan usually left early morning, or latest by afternoon, depending on the distance to be covered. It made perfect sense, Bhutan is a mountainous country, ofcourse they prefer to drive during daylight hours. No matter what the length of the journey, even a 12 hour drive would begin at 7 in the morning, rendering meaningless our plans to sightsee by day and travel by night.

The bus station is across this bridge

The buses weren’t very frequent and were usually booked in advance. I could go on, but the gist is that we realized that going to Bumthang was not a possibility anymore. We took down notes about bus timings and went across to the Art Café to discuss the next course of action.

I sulked over this changed scenario for awhile, while a rather amused Ramya shot a million pictures of me in this quiet, unhappy mood, three of which I am posting here. Ramya is like the sea, always calm, atleast at the surface. He might have been upset too, but he didn’t really show it. His response was ‘Well, I’m coming back to Bhutan!’ So a couple of coffees later, I concluded that we had better make the most of the few days we did have, which could not be achieved sulking.



Sulking at the Art Cafe


Back to the hotel, and phone calls to Tsomo at Yamphel and Kuzang, the driver who had taken us to the Changangkha temple. I enquired about making a trip to Punakha. Both suggested a day trip to Punakha, leaving early morning and returning by evening, but given our propensity to rise late, I thought leaving the same day would be a better option. This I discussed with Kuzang, who was nice enough to drop by to talk to me, and brought a thin but excellent guide to Bhutan, published by the Bhutanese government.
We were keen on making our afternoon in Thimphu a productive one, and of the many options listed in the book, we chose the Royal Academy of Performing Arts. This isn’t exactly a tourist spot, but we were very interested in seeing any local performing arts, even if it was only students practicing. A quick lunch at Chopsticks later, we were on our way.
RAPA has four divisions, the Mask dance, Music, Folk dance and Drama. We reached towards closing time, so we only managed to catch a couple of those activities. There were some students playing a local musical instrument and some others dancing in the lawn. It wasn’t the season, and there didn’t seem to be any cultural activities on at the time we were there, but we were told that in the summer, around their festival time, there are a lot of performances all over the country. Of these the mask dance is perhaps the most popular, and best recognized. The masks worn at these occasions can be seen in all handicrafts shops. They are very colourful and feisty. It must be a sight, to see so many of these, and with equally colourful costumes, dancing along the streets.