This is
part 2 of the series. You can read the earlier part here.
Phuentsholing is a small border town on the Bhutan side of India,
while the Indian side of India calls it Jaigaon (Apparently, India ‘phunds’ 2/3rd of Bhutan’s annual budget).
Phuentsholing is pronounced as Phun-Show-Ling by tourists and Phun-sleing by
the natives – it requires heavy practice. The practice sessions starts every
morning at 5, requiring you to take a dip in the swimming pool and breathing
out the word underwater. Be warned that the chances of you drowning are more than
you ever getting it right. The road leading from Jaigaon is plundered by
potholes to meet a grand border structure beyond which it looks like the Middle
Zealand of The Lego movie with happy people. You may even start humming
“Everythiinngg is awesome!” automatically (especially if you have crossed over
from a town in India). The only difference between Middle Zealand and Bhutan is
that, in the latter, the happy people are real! Construct a similar smooth road
in India, there are likely to be more cases against which Salman Khan will be,
obviously, acquitted.
Phuentsholing is a small town with a couple of straight roads,
equal numbered smiling Bhutanese and polite, down-to-earth and decent behaving
Indians. The latter are likely to be loud and boisterous raccoons if you put
them on the other side of the border. The Phuensholing Bhutanese are easily
distinguishable. They are the lovey-dovey pink-cheeked people who can speak a
little bit of Hindi (of course, better Hindi from Tamil people) and
words-strung-into-sentences-English (the competition here, with our Tamil
people, couldn’t even hold a candle!) and can be extremely courteous. They can
be so courteous that the British would be put to shame for their courtesy.
It took us a bit of lazy, aimless walking to find a place to
crash. But for 700 bucks, we found an amazing place overlooking the Permit
Office. We were time-travelling by half hour between India and Bhutan and every
time we entered Bhutan, we got out pockets checked for cigarettes. Bhutanese
cannot carry-in any tobacco products and any foreigner (we forgot that we were
foreigners too) has to pay 100% duty on the value. A maximum of 5 packets of
cigarettes are allowed. Public smoking is banned (like, really banned, no way
around the law) and if caught with cigarettes without the duty receipt,
cleaning tables in the drive-away restaurant might be the most sought after
career option.
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| The Royal Army (Dantak) of Bhutan welcomes you |
Prashant and I were under the assumption that
momos are a delicacy here (apologies for being racist), but the ground
realities were different. There WERE momos alright! And they came in two types
– cheese and beef momos. The cheese momos may be made with yak milk cheese, sure
you wanna try? When it comes to food in Phuentsholing, almost everything you
order is make to order – meaning fresh, soft, supple and edible. We had an
Indian dinner (the last one for a very long time) and the prices were
comparable to Jaigaon’s. So we paid in INR. Phuentsholing is the only place in
Bhutan where our 500 Rs. notes would be accepted. Due to high instances of
counterfeit notes, transaction in 500 Rs. notes were banned. Not like the
cigarette ban, the transaction would be at the Bhutanese’s risk. So, it was
time to convert our 500s to 100s and it became a huge burden to carry them.
With almost no ATMs and no card swiping services, Bhutan makes up for the lack
of technological development with evolved social traits of honesty, sincerity
and low (almost nil) theft and crime rates.
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| In the streets of Phuentsholing |
Good morning Bhutan, it was 11th of December 2012. Ten days before the
world was prophesied to come to an end (Remember 21st December 2012?). If I were to die, I
thought, I will die in the happiest country in the world. With a copy of our
driving license/voter’s identity card/passport, we were the second in line that
was waiting outside the Permit Office, at 8 a.m. The office opened at 9. We
submitted our documents, got our photos clicked and left for breakfast. As we were
leaving, there was an exodus of Indians (mostly migrant labours) waiting for
their photographs to be clicked. Almost all the laborious work for
developmental activities is carried out by Indians, while the masters are also
Indian contractors under the contractual employment of the Bhutanese
government. We came back after an hour to get our permits and I was left
greatly disappointed that my passport still remained a virgin. No stamping on
the precious Indian passports - Bhutan’s policy - in exchange for preferential
treatment in terms of zero processing/visa fees, freedom to roam around without
a guide with the exception of the birth right of every Indian to spit anywhere.
