I have stood amongst the neon lights of that country only once, have driven in the tarmacs in that country only once, but there have been numerous strange almost comical instances where I have crossed over the boundary in more primeval settings.
September, 2007
Three days into our second high-altitude trek in Arunachal, the landscape was beginning to turn absolute desolate and stunning. We had camped inside a natural rock shelter by the side of a huge lake the previous day. The air was thick with mist and scent of the Rhododendron bushes all along the fringe of the lake. This morning, to save time from going via the circuitous yak-routes, we climbed the murderous slope by the lake side and kept on climbing higher and higher till the lake below seemed like an emerald speck. Treeline ended soon and at around fifteen and a half thousand feet, the landscape resembled a martian surface with table sized boulders strewn allover and only some hardy moss carpeting the scree. Dripping sweat and trying to jump from boulder to boulder, I came across one of the most extraordinary high altitude plants. From a distance, it almost resembled a man wearing a bright rain jacket and hunching over. Giant Rhubarb, at five feet tall with bright yellow alien huge petal like things neatly arranged in a pedestal, was a shocking contrast in the drab desolate landscape. Having had my fill posing with this anomaly of botany, I trudged along and soon found myself standing on a ridge top from where I could see five lakes down below. One was emerald green, one absolute aquamarine, two ruddy brown and one eluded description. If this was in the middle of nowhere, I did not want to be anywhere else.
While the first and almost two-week long trek had taken our motley crew near the Tibet border to a fantastic valley called Potok, I had no idea where this trek was ending. Lungpo-Muchat Community Conserved Area, second one in our CCAs to be surveyed, stretched all the way to Bhutan but instead of taking the more traditional yak routes, we were cross-cutting across trails and trekking along seldom-traveled paths all the while to save time. And we were in a hurry to wrap this trek up. Pijush Da, our Arunachal WWF guy had some other assignments and I had to go back to Sikkim.
The end result was that among the huge contingent of guides and porters, even the most senior one, a guy with ancient creases allover his face and ancient wisdom sparking in his eyes, had only gone on this “shortcut” route only once and needed some consulting in deciding the next stretch. It was raining most of the times but still nothing could stop me from being awestruck in my first true-high altitude trek.
The next tow days also passed along in this awestruck daze. We encountered a fleeting Himalayan Thar, I got extreme close-up shots of a group of 15 blood pheasants, the trail crossed a huge 45 degree dripping wet shiny slope which we had to be almost carried across. The last stop was a small crumbling yak-herder shed (The grand old man must have decided this is as far he had gone) with spectacular views all around. The distant hills with the icing-sugar like first snow of the season, were Bhutan, I was told.
The return trek was no less interesting but there would be another time to elaborate on them. The most interesting part of this piece happened long after I was back in Sikkim. While trying to plot our route in Google Earth with our collected GPS points, Pijush Da had a somewhat startling revelation. I got a phone call from him telling that according to Google, we had halted well within Bhutan in our last stretch!! Obviously with a place like we had been to with absolute no human settlements and only very occasional army patrols, no discernible and demarcated boundaries exist. To add to the doubts, Google Earth has its own fallacies in depicting international borders but I hardly gave them a thought. It was magical to think that unknowingly, we had stepped into another country and spent the night there!
Google might have rectified its Indo-Bhutan boundaries by now but I would still consider it as my first brush with Bhutan.
January, 2008
Early winter in the dense subtropical jungles of Pangolakha, the famous sanctuary near the WestBengal-Sikkim-Bhutan tri-junction in East Sikkim. The third camp was pitched at a strange place with a stranger name called Line dara (Probably because of the water pipeline supplying the villages lower down). Like Arunachal, we had a big contingent of porters but the survey was more focused, searching for signs of the elusive fire-cat, the red panda.
This had been only a middle-elevation trek but no less interesting. We had lost our way surveying in smaller groups twice in the previous days. There was a place called Nunthale, our second camp, where all four surveying groups had lost their way and returned quite late. Though not presenting with any difficulties coming with a high-altitude trek, surveying was still tough because of dense vegetation, trails overgrown with weeds and because the damn red panda only loved the most impenetrable bamboo forests.
However, the star of the show definitely had been Tara Daju, a pocket sized ex-hunter turned conservation enthusiast and someone who by his own admission, knew these jungles like the back of his hand. However, on the previous day only, while guiding me uphill a dense slope to reach a pokhri, Tara Daju reached the ridge top, stood with his fingers tapping his chin and after five minutes of introspection said, it seems like the pokhri has moved!!
By reaching Line Dara, we were very near to the Bhutan border. “It is just in the ridge top above our camp”, mentioned Tara Daju. After the mobile pokhri, I was a little suspicious of his estimates but we would be finding out nest morning only, as our planned survey route would take us directly near the supposed border.
Next morning after a hurried breakfast of rice and onions, we started on the exhausting vertical slope like a strange traveling theatre group with people of all shapes, sizes, ages and mobility. Tara Daju’s smile soon was there however as he finally recognized the trails with conviction. We neared the ridge top, passed through an amazing natural bamboo tunnel, found some fresh red panda scats and then came to a sort of level ground.
Lying there was a huge ancient tree trunk with an arrow etched over the bark pointing to the other side of the ridge. “This is it” Tara Daju said, with an air of finality. This was it?? I felt quite strange. 15000 feet at Arunachal, one would not expect barb wires and bunkers but this was just a day’s trek from the nearest roadhead! Inspecting the tree trunk further, I found that this really was it. Somebody had etched “BHUTAN” in smaller fonts just below the arrow. The ridge, the jungle and people just down from the ridge were in a separate country! I got a strange feeling again. The trip was completed with formally crossing the border and posing inside foreign soil.
October, 2008
This started my love affair with North Bengal and Doors, which would last for the next five months but would get me hooked for life. We were about to kick start my famous Tiger Conservation Plan work in Buxa- Jadapara however it was still the planning phase. Dr. Johnsingh, the grand old veteran of Indian Wildlife Research had been flown in from Bangalore and he, along with me, my boss and the top Forest Department honchos were supposed to pen down (or key down) the plan for the months to come.
Buxa was still an alien territory for me but I liked it already. Along with the daily excruciatingly boring discussion sessions, we were having some field trips where the Field Directors and Deputy Field Directors were eagerly showing off “their” areas. It was during one of these trips, traveling with a car full of old men that I came to Sankosh, a forest range near the famous river with the same name.
Sankosh was mesmerizing with a huge, wide gurgling flow of blue water and distant blue mountains. The pastures and hills on the other side, I was told, were in Assam and Manas was not too far! Trying to grasp this fact, I suddenly remember that Sankosh supposedly had the West Bengal-Assam-Bhutan tri-junction too. I thought of asking about the Bhutan border but then did not for some reasons. The query was answered shortly,however on our way back. Though I don’t remember now whether we were going back directly or had taken a small detour, the fact remains that’s on this wide road flanked by dense mixed deciduous jungles, we came across a strange stone structure.
It was by the side of the road, around 2 feet tall and shaped like an upside-down bowl. From a distance it had seemed like we had chanced upon a half buried Trycerotops egg!. The mystery was soon solved by one of the Forest Officers and he revealed that it was the West Bengal- Bhutan border. No inscriptions of any kind, a stranger might come to place a million times and still not get the fact that he was crossing into another country. However, what was border was border and so we drove back after a while after almost erasing the foreign soil marker in our vehicular emission.
December, 2008
My feet had almost walked a hundred kms of Buxa soil by then, second month into my tiger sign surveys. These days were a déjà vu of the Corbett times, living alone, planning alone and enjoying alone. The entire Buxa Tiger Reserve shares its northern boundary with Bhutan and a very small part of Assam, so it was no surprise that surveying would eventually land me up near the border and may be slightly beyond. And it did, many times. Out of those encounters, a couple is more memorable than other for some reasons.
I woke up in that small classroom bench along with my two partners from the forest department. The classroom benches in that ancient primary school were only of average size and I had to assume a fetal position to support my width. Somehow the small FM receiver was on during the entire night and now it was cheerfully airing bhajan after bhajan.
It was a bright blue morning in Chunabhati, lying on a hill between the roadhead at Santrabari and the Butan border at top. We had trekked up from Santrabari the day before and had slept in the classroom for lack of any other accommodation. The inhabitants of Chunabhati, mostly Dokpas (A fact again indicating the proximity with Bhutan) were supposedly very wary of strangers and it was only because of my companions being friendly with many of the houses that we were given co-operation.
A fabulous breakfast of rice and pork cooked only with red chillies and oil later, we were starting on the winding trail leaving the village, entering the jungle and climbing all the way to the border and beyond. Gradually with gaining altitude, the vegetation started to change slowly and at one point my GPS read almost 6000 feet! The area was almost identical to similar areas in Sikkim, dense, moist, with rolling mists and a profound variety of trees and shrubs. I was thinking no tourist coming to the other familiar places of Buxa would ever believe such a place exists. We were in a tight schedule however, so I could not spend much time there and had to trudge along.
Eventually we reached pukhri, a small seasonal pool which was now all but dried up. The staff had found tiger pugs here during the last year’s census but obviously the tiger (or whatever) had not kept the appointment this time. What I had failed to notice till then was a small pillar like structure nearby. Nobody had to tell me what it meant and I came to know that the nearest settlement in Bhutan was just down the ridge and the roadhead was also nearby. The urge to just climb down to the Bhutan road for the heck of it was very strong but it was already afternoon. We had a long hike back to Buxa duar this time so I had to leave the place and the now mist covered pillar quite soon.
A couple of days later, we were getting ready for another expedition, this time a full on camping trip with tents and porters. From Lapchakha, a knee-wobbling descent and we reached the wide Katlung river. The plan was to hike upstream, camp and survey a stretch where staff had seen tiger pugs last year. Katlung was coming down from Bhutan, so I knew upstream meant nearer to the border.
The entire valley had boulders and gravel of myriad hues and spectacular colour combinations. In places with sulphur rich sediments, the soil was bright yellow and the surrounding boulders were deep grey, almost blue. Though the gravel meant chances of finding an imprint were almost nil, I was enjoying like anything. We hiked, waded through the knee deep water at some places, jumped from boulder to boulder and finally reached our camping grounds. We had to camp there as there was a scarcity of level ground either upstream or downstream.
A very narrow patch of gravel by the river and slightly inclined towards it so our tents seemed almost sloping down from a distance. Ration was bought from Buxa duar and our cooks started about their work only to have an interesting revelation immediately. We had bought everything apart from something which the chefs always advise “to taste”-plain old salt! After the blame game, one poor porter was sent in the fading light to fetch some from a cattle shed which we had seen at least a couple of miles downstream.
The others got around to some interesting work in the meantime, serious fishing. A small stream like portion was partially dammed with rocks, boulders and what-nots, the staff moved around like pond herons, snatching fish from the shallow pool! Despite my initial suspicion about the effectiveness, it worked like anything! Within a couple of hours, we had mugs and pots full of small prawns, carp-like fishes and an army of catfish like things with bottom suckers!
The salt-seeker had come back by then and the chulah was in full swing. Some of those strange almost catfishes were crisp-fried and served to us as another Bhutan link was giving us company- a bottle of black mountain whiskey. Glasses obviously were in a shortage, so some bamboo containers were improvised from the jungle in the backside. The full moon night, gurgling river and the breeze it brought, embers from the wood fire and the Bhutan Spirit with the Bhutan hills at the backdrop-everything was perfect about that night and it has been forever etched in my memory. After my companions had retired inside the tent, I stayed up for sometime just listening to the river, sitting by the dying fire.
Next morning the real survey began after breakfast and we hiked further and further upstream. Like it happens in all mountain streams, further upstream you go, bigger the boulders become and the slope gradually rises and so it was happening. After a couple of hours, we came across the spot where the last census had seen success. Amazingly, near a heavily disturbed patch by a cattle trail, there were some very old scats which got eyes fixed to them. Though old, they were still intact enough to show that the defecator had been bigger than a leopard. Yay!! Success at last and my first confirmed tiger sign in Buxa! After almost clicking 20 photos, we went a little further upstream and came across this truck sized boulder in the middle of the riverbed with strange inscriptions.
Along with many lines written in Tibetan script, there was an untidily written “Bhutan” near a strange sketch of a human form wearing something like a spacesuit. My companions had obviously seen this before and told me that this was it. So it was, nothing, stone bowl, stone pillar and now a boulder. The man in the stone almost seemed smiling and glad at our success. So I gave a final look to the hills across the border and started back, a happy and elated soul.
March, 2009
The most “civilized” of the encounters. Time found me this time in Jaldapara, having completed my surveys during the past month and a half. It had been an awesome time, following Torsha through the yellow grasslands, surveying on elephant back and the occasional booze sessions with Niranjita Di. During a free day, we found ourselves on a leisurely trip to Phuntsoling, the famous town across the Indo-Bhutan border at Joygaon. Amitabha Da, an acquaintance of Niranjita Di was visiting and he was keen on making the trip and we also did not want to waste the opportunity. In the end, we traveled in Niranjita Di’s vehicle only and soon reached Joygaon. Now this was a border town if ever there was one. Shops, people from almost everywhere, hotels, presence of security personnel and a proper check post.
Some minutes later, we were past the check post, crossed the huge gate saying Phuntsoling and touched down in foreign soil! Amitabha da was like a kid in a candystore and after getting down, he literally started to going to all shops including candystores. We strolled around downtown Phuntsoling, went to a nearby monastery, posed away to glory and bought some knick-knacks from the shops all having “phoreign” brands.
As I stood near the intersection with bright lights all around me and expensive SUVs buzzing past, I somehow remembered all the previous brushes with this dragon country. Seemed like I hade made a full circle and could write a book on “How to enter Bhutan”
However, like all travelers, it feels stupid to put a final word on any journey, especially as long and as varied as this one. The wind blows across the hills and the across the border and the rucksack awaits another encounter with a different kind of border.
I might eventually get an opportunity to leave the surface totally and fly to Bhutan for some vague official work. However, what fun would that be?
September, 2007
Three days into our second high-altitude trek in Arunachal, the landscape was beginning to turn absolute desolate and stunning. We had camped inside a natural rock shelter by the side of a huge lake the previous day. The air was thick with mist and scent of the Rhododendron bushes all along the fringe of the lake. This morning, to save time from going via the circuitous yak-routes, we climbed the murderous slope by the lake side and kept on climbing higher and higher till the lake below seemed like an emerald speck. Treeline ended soon and at around fifteen and a half thousand feet, the landscape resembled a martian surface with table sized boulders strewn allover and only some hardy moss carpeting the scree. Dripping sweat and trying to jump from boulder to boulder, I came across one of the most extraordinary high altitude plants. From a distance, it almost resembled a man wearing a bright rain jacket and hunching over. Giant Rhubarb, at five feet tall with bright yellow alien huge petal like things neatly arranged in a pedestal, was a shocking contrast in the drab desolate landscape. Having had my fill posing with this anomaly of botany, I trudged along and soon found myself standing on a ridge top from where I could see five lakes down below. One was emerald green, one absolute aquamarine, two ruddy brown and one eluded description. If this was in the middle of nowhere, I did not want to be anywhere else.
While the first and almost two-week long trek had taken our motley crew near the Tibet border to a fantastic valley called Potok, I had no idea where this trek was ending. Lungpo-Muchat Community Conserved Area, second one in our CCAs to be surveyed, stretched all the way to Bhutan but instead of taking the more traditional yak routes, we were cross-cutting across trails and trekking along seldom-traveled paths all the while to save time. And we were in a hurry to wrap this trek up. Pijush Da, our Arunachal WWF guy had some other assignments and I had to go back to Sikkim.
The end result was that among the huge contingent of guides and porters, even the most senior one, a guy with ancient creases allover his face and ancient wisdom sparking in his eyes, had only gone on this “shortcut” route only once and needed some consulting in deciding the next stretch. It was raining most of the times but still nothing could stop me from being awestruck in my first true-high altitude trek.
The next tow days also passed along in this awestruck daze. We encountered a fleeting Himalayan Thar, I got extreme close-up shots of a group of 15 blood pheasants, the trail crossed a huge 45 degree dripping wet shiny slope which we had to be almost carried across. The last stop was a small crumbling yak-herder shed (The grand old man must have decided this is as far he had gone) with spectacular views all around. The distant hills with the icing-sugar like first snow of the season, were Bhutan, I was told.
The return trek was no less interesting but there would be another time to elaborate on them. The most interesting part of this piece happened long after I was back in Sikkim. While trying to plot our route in Google Earth with our collected GPS points, Pijush Da had a somewhat startling revelation. I got a phone call from him telling that according to Google, we had halted well within Bhutan in our last stretch!! Obviously with a place like we had been to with absolute no human settlements and only very occasional army patrols, no discernible and demarcated boundaries exist. To add to the doubts, Google Earth has its own fallacies in depicting international borders but I hardly gave them a thought. It was magical to think that unknowingly, we had stepped into another country and spent the night there!
Google might have rectified its Indo-Bhutan boundaries by now but I would still consider it as my first brush with Bhutan.
January, 2008
Early winter in the dense subtropical jungles of Pangolakha, the famous sanctuary near the WestBengal-Sikkim-Bhutan tri-junction in East Sikkim. The third camp was pitched at a strange place with a stranger name called Line dara (Probably because of the water pipeline supplying the villages lower down). Like Arunachal, we had a big contingent of porters but the survey was more focused, searching for signs of the elusive fire-cat, the red panda.
This had been only a middle-elevation trek but no less interesting. We had lost our way surveying in smaller groups twice in the previous days. There was a place called Nunthale, our second camp, where all four surveying groups had lost their way and returned quite late. Though not presenting with any difficulties coming with a high-altitude trek, surveying was still tough because of dense vegetation, trails overgrown with weeds and because the damn red panda only loved the most impenetrable bamboo forests.
However, the star of the show definitely had been Tara Daju, a pocket sized ex-hunter turned conservation enthusiast and someone who by his own admission, knew these jungles like the back of his hand. However, on the previous day only, while guiding me uphill a dense slope to reach a pokhri, Tara Daju reached the ridge top, stood with his fingers tapping his chin and after five minutes of introspection said, it seems like the pokhri has moved!!
By reaching Line Dara, we were very near to the Bhutan border. “It is just in the ridge top above our camp”, mentioned Tara Daju. After the mobile pokhri, I was a little suspicious of his estimates but we would be finding out nest morning only, as our planned survey route would take us directly near the supposed border.
Next morning after a hurried breakfast of rice and onions, we started on the exhausting vertical slope like a strange traveling theatre group with people of all shapes, sizes, ages and mobility. Tara Daju’s smile soon was there however as he finally recognized the trails with conviction. We neared the ridge top, passed through an amazing natural bamboo tunnel, found some fresh red panda scats and then came to a sort of level ground.
Lying there was a huge ancient tree trunk with an arrow etched over the bark pointing to the other side of the ridge. “This is it” Tara Daju said, with an air of finality. This was it?? I felt quite strange. 15000 feet at Arunachal, one would not expect barb wires and bunkers but this was just a day’s trek from the nearest roadhead! Inspecting the tree trunk further, I found that this really was it. Somebody had etched “BHUTAN” in smaller fonts just below the arrow. The ridge, the jungle and people just down from the ridge were in a separate country! I got a strange feeling again. The trip was completed with formally crossing the border and posing inside foreign soil.
October, 2008
This started my love affair with North Bengal and Doors, which would last for the next five months but would get me hooked for life. We were about to kick start my famous Tiger Conservation Plan work in Buxa- Jadapara however it was still the planning phase. Dr. Johnsingh, the grand old veteran of Indian Wildlife Research had been flown in from Bangalore and he, along with me, my boss and the top Forest Department honchos were supposed to pen down (or key down) the plan for the months to come.
Buxa was still an alien territory for me but I liked it already. Along with the daily excruciatingly boring discussion sessions, we were having some field trips where the Field Directors and Deputy Field Directors were eagerly showing off “their” areas. It was during one of these trips, traveling with a car full of old men that I came to Sankosh, a forest range near the famous river with the same name.
Sankosh was mesmerizing with a huge, wide gurgling flow of blue water and distant blue mountains. The pastures and hills on the other side, I was told, were in Assam and Manas was not too far! Trying to grasp this fact, I suddenly remember that Sankosh supposedly had the West Bengal-Assam-Bhutan tri-junction too. I thought of asking about the Bhutan border but then did not for some reasons. The query was answered shortly,however on our way back. Though I don’t remember now whether we were going back directly or had taken a small detour, the fact remains that’s on this wide road flanked by dense mixed deciduous jungles, we came across a strange stone structure.
It was by the side of the road, around 2 feet tall and shaped like an upside-down bowl. From a distance it had seemed like we had chanced upon a half buried Trycerotops egg!. The mystery was soon solved by one of the Forest Officers and he revealed that it was the West Bengal- Bhutan border. No inscriptions of any kind, a stranger might come to place a million times and still not get the fact that he was crossing into another country. However, what was border was border and so we drove back after a while after almost erasing the foreign soil marker in our vehicular emission.
December, 2008
My feet had almost walked a hundred kms of Buxa soil by then, second month into my tiger sign surveys. These days were a déjà vu of the Corbett times, living alone, planning alone and enjoying alone. The entire Buxa Tiger Reserve shares its northern boundary with Bhutan and a very small part of Assam, so it was no surprise that surveying would eventually land me up near the border and may be slightly beyond. And it did, many times. Out of those encounters, a couple is more memorable than other for some reasons.
I woke up in that small classroom bench along with my two partners from the forest department. The classroom benches in that ancient primary school were only of average size and I had to assume a fetal position to support my width. Somehow the small FM receiver was on during the entire night and now it was cheerfully airing bhajan after bhajan.
It was a bright blue morning in Chunabhati, lying on a hill between the roadhead at Santrabari and the Butan border at top. We had trekked up from Santrabari the day before and had slept in the classroom for lack of any other accommodation. The inhabitants of Chunabhati, mostly Dokpas (A fact again indicating the proximity with Bhutan) were supposedly very wary of strangers and it was only because of my companions being friendly with many of the houses that we were given co-operation.
A fabulous breakfast of rice and pork cooked only with red chillies and oil later, we were starting on the winding trail leaving the village, entering the jungle and climbing all the way to the border and beyond. Gradually with gaining altitude, the vegetation started to change slowly and at one point my GPS read almost 6000 feet! The area was almost identical to similar areas in Sikkim, dense, moist, with rolling mists and a profound variety of trees and shrubs. I was thinking no tourist coming to the other familiar places of Buxa would ever believe such a place exists. We were in a tight schedule however, so I could not spend much time there and had to trudge along.
Eventually we reached pukhri, a small seasonal pool which was now all but dried up. The staff had found tiger pugs here during the last year’s census but obviously the tiger (or whatever) had not kept the appointment this time. What I had failed to notice till then was a small pillar like structure nearby. Nobody had to tell me what it meant and I came to know that the nearest settlement in Bhutan was just down the ridge and the roadhead was also nearby. The urge to just climb down to the Bhutan road for the heck of it was very strong but it was already afternoon. We had a long hike back to Buxa duar this time so I had to leave the place and the now mist covered pillar quite soon.
A couple of days later, we were getting ready for another expedition, this time a full on camping trip with tents and porters. From Lapchakha, a knee-wobbling descent and we reached the wide Katlung river. The plan was to hike upstream, camp and survey a stretch where staff had seen tiger pugs last year. Katlung was coming down from Bhutan, so I knew upstream meant nearer to the border.
The entire valley had boulders and gravel of myriad hues and spectacular colour combinations. In places with sulphur rich sediments, the soil was bright yellow and the surrounding boulders were deep grey, almost blue. Though the gravel meant chances of finding an imprint were almost nil, I was enjoying like anything. We hiked, waded through the knee deep water at some places, jumped from boulder to boulder and finally reached our camping grounds. We had to camp there as there was a scarcity of level ground either upstream or downstream.
A very narrow patch of gravel by the river and slightly inclined towards it so our tents seemed almost sloping down from a distance. Ration was bought from Buxa duar and our cooks started about their work only to have an interesting revelation immediately. We had bought everything apart from something which the chefs always advise “to taste”-plain old salt! After the blame game, one poor porter was sent in the fading light to fetch some from a cattle shed which we had seen at least a couple of miles downstream.
The others got around to some interesting work in the meantime, serious fishing. A small stream like portion was partially dammed with rocks, boulders and what-nots, the staff moved around like pond herons, snatching fish from the shallow pool! Despite my initial suspicion about the effectiveness, it worked like anything! Within a couple of hours, we had mugs and pots full of small prawns, carp-like fishes and an army of catfish like things with bottom suckers!
The salt-seeker had come back by then and the chulah was in full swing. Some of those strange almost catfishes were crisp-fried and served to us as another Bhutan link was giving us company- a bottle of black mountain whiskey. Glasses obviously were in a shortage, so some bamboo containers were improvised from the jungle in the backside. The full moon night, gurgling river and the breeze it brought, embers from the wood fire and the Bhutan Spirit with the Bhutan hills at the backdrop-everything was perfect about that night and it has been forever etched in my memory. After my companions had retired inside the tent, I stayed up for sometime just listening to the river, sitting by the dying fire.
Next morning the real survey began after breakfast and we hiked further and further upstream. Like it happens in all mountain streams, further upstream you go, bigger the boulders become and the slope gradually rises and so it was happening. After a couple of hours, we came across the spot where the last census had seen success. Amazingly, near a heavily disturbed patch by a cattle trail, there were some very old scats which got eyes fixed to them. Though old, they were still intact enough to show that the defecator had been bigger than a leopard. Yay!! Success at last and my first confirmed tiger sign in Buxa! After almost clicking 20 photos, we went a little further upstream and came across this truck sized boulder in the middle of the riverbed with strange inscriptions.
Along with many lines written in Tibetan script, there was an untidily written “Bhutan” near a strange sketch of a human form wearing something like a spacesuit. My companions had obviously seen this before and told me that this was it. So it was, nothing, stone bowl, stone pillar and now a boulder. The man in the stone almost seemed smiling and glad at our success. So I gave a final look to the hills across the border and started back, a happy and elated soul.
March, 2009
The most “civilized” of the encounters. Time found me this time in Jaldapara, having completed my surveys during the past month and a half. It had been an awesome time, following Torsha through the yellow grasslands, surveying on elephant back and the occasional booze sessions with Niranjita Di. During a free day, we found ourselves on a leisurely trip to Phuntsoling, the famous town across the Indo-Bhutan border at Joygaon. Amitabha Da, an acquaintance of Niranjita Di was visiting and he was keen on making the trip and we also did not want to waste the opportunity. In the end, we traveled in Niranjita Di’s vehicle only and soon reached Joygaon. Now this was a border town if ever there was one. Shops, people from almost everywhere, hotels, presence of security personnel and a proper check post.
Some minutes later, we were past the check post, crossed the huge gate saying Phuntsoling and touched down in foreign soil! Amitabha da was like a kid in a candystore and after getting down, he literally started to going to all shops including candystores. We strolled around downtown Phuntsoling, went to a nearby monastery, posed away to glory and bought some knick-knacks from the shops all having “phoreign” brands.
As I stood near the intersection with bright lights all around me and expensive SUVs buzzing past, I somehow remembered all the previous brushes with this dragon country. Seemed like I hade made a full circle and could write a book on “How to enter Bhutan”
However, like all travelers, it feels stupid to put a final word on any journey, especially as long and as varied as this one. The wind blows across the hills and the across the border and the rucksack awaits another encounter with a different kind of border.
I might eventually get an opportunity to leave the surface totally and fly to Bhutan for some vague official work. However, what fun would that be?
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