It's raining and in the 40s and we're at 11,160' at 8:30 PM. I've just visited the camp toilet - a hole in the ground above which is a chair with a toilet seat set in a small tent that was billowing around me in the wind!! I managed to make my way back to Bob's and my tent picking my way between yak droppings and rocks.
Our tent accommodations
This was after a delicious dinner manufactured somehow by our amazing kitchen crew and cooked from scratch In a little tent. It turns out that this is Nancy's birthday, and Scottish David, her husband, brought a bottle of Moët Champagne to celebrate! This was followed by a bottle of local rum supplied by David Bishop, our leader. So I was feeling very little pain. We had a very jolly dinner capped off by a delicious birthday cake also cooked in the cook tent over a tiny stove!
The day started with my alarm going off at 3:30; we set off on the bus at 4:45 and returned to the confluence of the Mo Chhu and Pho Chhu rivers by the Punakha Dzong. This time we drove up the Pho Chhu (the male river) which is much more open with wide plowed fields leading down to the water. We were in search of the very rare White-bellied Heron.
There was a sign on the road proclaiming the country's dedication to the cause of protecting this bird. Unfortunately some politician has let a gravel dredging operation take over part of the river, thus making any success in the heron recovery less secure. We drove, stopped, and scanned the river over and over, but with no success. We encountered a birding group from India who also was unsuccessful. I was able to watch a family plow their field with a team of oxen which was picturesque and interesting.
Farm House Detail
We returned to the Punakha Chhu which is the name of the river after the two smaller ones merge. Nancy suddenly pointed out a family of Smooth-coated Otters splashing across the river in the rapids. We watched them as they swam, diving and leaping for a quarter mile - a really great sight!
We finally left the river and one of last chances of seeing the heron and headed up onto the main east-west Bhutan road. The road used to be smaller but the government of India decided to fund the enlarging of the road if it could be done within five years....so every inch of the road is being blasted, torn up, and worked on, making driving on it a real hazard and not much fun. Our driver skillfully maneuvered around construction equipment and oncoming traffic. After several hours, we turned north toward Pele La, a high mountain pass. At 10,000' we started seeing beautiful displays of rhododendrons - white, red and luminescent pink.
David directed us to an area of dwarf bamboo to see some special birds, but we found that yak herds had been brought to the area and, like goats, they eat everything in their path, so the area was mowed pasture instead of an interesting botanical area.
It was starting to rain and getting dark as it was past 5 PM as we drove to Pele La, a pass at 11.000' . David suggested birding the kilometer down to our campsite...but I figured I needed to get to my tent so the van took me there.
When the others arrived, they had a very nice black and white dog along. David found that Laser, as we named him, loved chasing David's green laser pointer that he uses to point our bird locations for us. The dog loved it and we were vastly amused.
A Yak
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