We had biscuits and coffee at 5:45. I gave the nice manager a water color of the scene across the street (main east-west highway) from the hotel. We set off west, retracing our route and winding up to the pass at 12,200'. On the way we saw Golden-naped Finch and a family of Assamese Macaques. We also passed a crew oiling asphalt in metal drums and repaving the road surface. These road crews are from Nepal or Bangladesh and live in small tent communities - a pretty miserable job!
There was a fair amount of excitement amoung the people on the road as we found out that the old Queen Motrher was to appear in a town we had passed - our second brush with royalty!
We found our crew at the pass and had brunch under hundreds of waving pray flags and swirling clouds of mist.
We continued downhill and as we entered the Bumthang Valley, we turned onto a new by-pass which is supposed to save a couple of hours of driving. It was completed two years ago, but already has quite an lot of white markings indicating repairs needed. But it is two full lanes and was constructed without too much damage to the lovely landscape.
We came upon the two vans carrying our crew and found out the the luggage van had broken down. Fortunately our bus is only holding the six of us, so all of our bags could be crammed into the back of our vehicle; we are not sure what the crew is going to do about it!
We re-joined the main highway and came to the long section where the old highway is being converted into two lanes and there the situation is considerably worse. We had driven over this section in the dark six days ago, and didn't see how devastating the damage is. The old highway was well engineered with well-made stone walls holding up the road.
The new cuts are so large and the quantity of huge boulders and cracking on the road edge so extensive, that riding in the bus was pretty scary. I think I'd have to recommend that visitors wishing to visit Bhutan wait two or three years until the construction is completed and some vegetation has started to grow back.
We did have one nice sighting of a male Blood Pheasant, plus several more of other interesting birds before we approached Trongsa. The switchbacks are so extensive that Bob, with the aid of his GPS told us that the hotel was two miles away, then 3.5 miles, then two again! Back and forth!
We stopped briefly to photograph the Trongsa Dzong, one of the largest and most famous dzongs. Tomorrow we head south with three day of camping before we reach the Indian border. We have been informed that a large landslide has taken out a section of highway on our route south tomorrow. We were going to sleep in and see the Dzong in the morning, but the plan now is to get up early and try and beat most of the traffic and get through the slide. We'll see!
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