I slept very well with the addition of a hot water bottle that the kitchen kindly provided. I had to get up at 1 AM to visit the facilities and felt a little weird wandering around in my silk long johns alone in the dark with the possibility of a tiger carrying me off. Fortunately one didn't and we got up at 5, stumbled around and got to the kitchen tent for biscuits and hot chocolate. Laser, our dog friend, had spent the night jammed next to David's tent door and joined us for the morning birding. We spent the next six hours driving/walking back and forth on a three mile stretch of dirt road near our campsite.
We started out in heavy fog which lightened a bit and even got sunny occasionally. We were looking for two birds in particular: the Himalayan Monal, a beautiful pheasant with iridescent blue back and a green and red head, and the Satyr Tragopan, also a pheasant, the male of which is brown on the back with beautiful red-orange on the breast. We saw the Monal pretty readily although birding from the bus made photographing it quite difficult. Laser scared out a Royale's Pika, a small rodent-like mammal.
We returned to the tents for a late breakfast, packed up, said goodbye to Laser who returned to his owner who runs a small crafts hut near the summit. Dogs are amazingly well-taken care of in this country. They appear universally quite healthy, friendly and non-threatening. There is even a government program to sterilize strays - a strong contrast to every other third world country I have ever visited. I even saw a sign proclaiming "Be Kind to Dogs Day!"
We spent the rest of the day in horrified amazement at the construction and mess of the massive road widening project . There don't seem to be any supervisors overlooking the different crews, there is much evidence of shoddy materials being used, and the road is quite dangerous. Bhutan is an incredibly mountainous country of very steep slopes bisected by narrow valleys. The original road is one lane in most places, but with enough room for most cars and trucks to pass with care. But in order to make it suitable for two lanes, massive amounts of hillside have to be removed. Eventually it will be covered with vegetation and look somewhat better, but for now, with crews working everywhere and traffic moving in both directions with no one directing the vehicles, and a very soft non-compacted edge overlooking thousand foot drop offs, it's surely scary!
Our" Road"
Our wonderful driver, Wangdi, is very careful and we felt in good hands even while looking down on tiny rivers way below! In one spot we were stopped for 30 minutes as a large steam shovel removed huge boulders that had blocked the road, by dumping them over the road edge into a stream.
We stopped to bird occasionally and to view an interesting chorten (a place for offerings set up in places to ward off evil), the Chendebji Chorten, built in the 19th century by a Tibetan monk.
We eventually came to an overlook and could see the famous Trongsa Dzong across a river in the town of the same name. Our hotel is near it, but because of the topography, it took another hour to get there. We had to wind way up the river and finally cross the narrow gorge. Our hotel, the Yangkhil Resort, is a charming place with nice rooms. We cleaned up and met in the dining room for dinner with wine supplied by David to make up a little for the stressful day!
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