There is only one road running east to west across the
country and now and again there’s a stretch of more than 50 metres without a
bend, pothole, climb or descent. Dorje laughs
and tells us that we’re approaching the straightest bit of road in the country
and it lasts about 400metres. We cross
a number of 3000m plus passes, one at 3750m which is just over 12,300ft and my
ears pop twice going up. I read that at
8000ft there’s about 25% less oxygen in the air and that at 35,000ft it’s 75%
less than at ground level, so at least when we go trekking at the end of the
trip we will have spent a decent time at altitude. That will reduce the risk of altitude
sickness which if you don’t know can very serious, possibly fatal. The only remedy is to get lower fast and there
seems to be no discernible reason why some people suffer and others don’t. How our aged muscles will cope with going up
mountains having about 30% less oxygen to play with we’ll find out.
Our target today is the Phobjikha Valley which is one of the
few over-wintering grounds for the highly endangered Black-necked Crane which
spends the summer high on the Tibetan Plateau.
About 300 or so arrive here each winter usually at the beginning of
November so we don’t expect to see them.
The valley itself is a classic glaciated U shape, although a little
flattened into more of a deep dish (just right for a pizza). After a walk we meet our car and a bird is
flying across which looks a bit gull-like but I can’t tell what it is. As I track it right to left, across the
bottom of the lenses appear two large black and white birds. We’ve seen the first two arrivals of the
winter. They mate for life and this
pair is the advance party. At the
hotel, the first we’ve ever stayed in where our room had its own wood-burner,
the staff are really excited that the cranes have arrived as we’re the first to
tell them. We learn from someone else
that they flew in at around 3.00 and we saw them at 4.30. These birds are culturally important to the
Bhutanese and as a commitment to conservation they put all us westerners and
particularly our short term vision governments to shame. The valley floor is closed to everybody
while the cranes are present, the electricity supply to the whole valley has
been run underground and the maximum penalty for killing a crane is a life
sentence. There is a lot more impressive
conservation commitment like this but this isn’t the place to bang on about it.
Just near here is a village which has all supplies pulled up
from the valley floor in a wooden box on a cable. The box is about 10 feet by 6 feet and twice
a day it takes half a dozen or so people at a time to visit the village. I know that many of you think we’re mad to do
some of the things we do but we’re not that mad. Dorje has done the trip with tourists who
were mad enough and apparently it was terrifying.
Our first serious walk of the trip is how we leave the
valley. Starting at 2,900m which is a
little under 10,000ft, we climb to 3,200/3,300m and then go down and down to 1,450m. This as a drop of about 6000ft and about as
stiff a test for my knees as can be imagined.
It is very steep in places and has slick red clay where rain has fallen,
just right for what H calls Bhutanese Skiing.
Driving here is
pretty considerate, the whole road is used, overtaking is a bit wild but
vehicles always pull across to allow passing if the horn is used. Indicators are used to inform the driver
behind if it is safe to pass, left turned on means clear, right turned on means
not clear. They drive on the left just
like India and on the only dual-carriageway which is near the capital the
Bhutanese do keep to the correct side. My
theory about continental drift is that it was probably not plate tectonics at
all that had the whole of India crash into Asia and begin to form the Himalayas
but merely a foretaste of collective Indian driving.
I know I mentioned schools at one point but we’ve found out
that as part of the free medical care schools are visited by Opticians,
Dentists and Doctors for the children to get check-ups. If for instance glasses are needed, they’re
provided. It is all more disciplined
than we would expect to see and the teaching sounds a bit different too. There’s a country wide curriculum and
according to Dorje, teaching is not popular because “people get bored doing the
same thing day after day”.
A few days after we saw the cranes we came across the
English language newspaper for the day after we saw them. The arrival merited a half page article.
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