Day 3 – Climbing the Chele La and Descending to Haa

Paro’s elevation is 2235m. On the morning of Day 2 we’d been at Delhi whose elevation is 233m. By the middle of Day 3, we’d have climbed to the Chele La at 3822m; La means a moutain pass. That’s a lot of elevation gain for 36 hours, and the expectation of suffering was warranted.We gathered for 7:30 AM start. It’s only 50 something miles, why are we starting so early? I would learn.

As usual, I started last. And at first, I dropped further behind. The sky was overcast. There was a threat of rain. As the road wound along the river briefly and then began its 4.5% climb for, ummh, let’s see, that’s (3882-2235)m=1647m, 1647m/(4.5%=45m/km)=37km. There was a lot to stop and photograph.

School Children Outside of Paro

 

Terraced Rice Fields

 

Shanties of Itinerant Road Workers

 

Prayer Flags and Clearing Weather

 

A mid-morning tea stop. Hot tea, nuts and dried fruit, biscuits and chocolate.

 

 Film actors from Thimphu with perfect English, about 4km from the pass

You know, for 4.5% grade, this was really a lot of work. Someone amongst us must have a photo of me lying on the ground, contorted and looking half dead. Honestly, I was only stretching my back.

The final marker, and the pass’s prayer flags in the distance

 

By this time I had shed every shred of clothing I could, just to cool me off, and it had begun to drizzle, but I didn’t put on a shell.

Chele La 3988m?

 

David and I rode in together. The benchmark read 3988m, or over 13,000′, quite a bit higher than we’d been expecting. Anyhow, the bus was there so we could easily add some layers, and there was a fire, and it felt like we’d just finished an epic slog. What a relief, for me. David was more affected by the altitude, and it got the better of him, but then he felt better. There was a ridge leading up higher; worth the walk we were told, so we took it.

When we all showed up, it was well past what we’d think of as lunch time, but there was no place to get really warm on the pass, nor on the long descent to Haa, so we bundled up and just did the descent.   I have no pictures of this.  I recall I was wearing everything I owned, including shells over my gloves, and that it was wet.  I also recall that the descent was bumpy and I had to feather my brakes the entire way, so much so that I felt that the mitten shells were preventing me from braking, so I stopped to take them off.  Then I looked behind me and David wasn’t there, so I rode back uphill to make sure he hadn’t gone over the edge somewhere, but sure enough, he had just taken a detour to water the plants.    My back hurt, my arms hurt, my hands hurt.  We had to worry about every blind corner because with the narrow roads, there was no margin in the event of oncoming traffic.  This descent was just the first notice that while I had brought the ideal climbing machine, I would pay for it on the downhills.   Finally, though, we were in Haa, where we were well fed and able to clean up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2 – Tiger’s Rest

Paro is in a valley lined with rice fields. You could replace “Paro” with the name of any other city in this part of Bhutan and the sentence would stand. Nevertheless, for this newcomer, the beautifully terraced fields of gold and green were captivating.From the hotel

we sorted gear a bit and headed out for an afternoon’s hike up to a famed monastery called Tiger’s Rest.

It’s about 900m up, and I set the standard of being last. Shooting photos and talking with my friends takes a long time.

   

Oddly though, we did get down first. So absorbed in conversation were we, much of it about the group we saw going in the opposite direction, well-Nikoned hikers who had chartered a 757 for their expedition, and who were well supported by Bhutanese carrying their long optics, and about whom we made amusing generalizations about their marriages and their politics, and observations about body types and the clothes and advertising they wore, and the message that advertising bore about the kind and frequency of vacations they take, and semiotics in general, that we missed the turn off to a tea-shop and were first to the bottom. This was the only time on the entire trip when I was first to the bottom of anything.

Then we returned to the hotel to unpack our bikes. This was more interesting than it might have been. We had what I think the are the usual amount amount of difficulties and discoveries. And then, we had some really interesting ones beyond that. Some in-the-field resourcefulness and KE’s bag of spare parts rescued the day. To calibrate this for you, a set of taps would have been handy. Actually, the problems of the day weren’t fully resolved until a phone call home the next morning, in which a bike mechanic explained the trick of how to remove a cable from someone’s integrated lever.

   

Days 1 and 2

Day 1 in Delhi was just gathering in the lobby of the Ashok Country Resort. Lots of other Westerners begin their trips there, too, so we had to figure out who was who. The bar had been grabbed, so we made our home a table and sofas in front of large screen TV. Beers and peanuts fueled the discussion as we shot it and waited for Helen, our guide from KE, to show up. That was like waiting for Godot, although in her case, she at least left a message. It said, “we’re leaving the hotel lobby at 2:30AM!”, so I for one turned in before either she or my two friends from CT (a small state on the eastern seaboard of the US) showed up.Dutifully, we were all dressed and ready at the appointed hour. Helen had not managed a wink after arriving from the UK. My friends had showed. Bikes and duffels were loaded into buses and we began a longish day of travel. We would have longer.

 

OK, we packed a bit two much stuff.  What was it, 200kg too much?  There was some misunderstanding about the allowance, but with bikes, it simply is not possible to get close to the allowance.  With powerbars, too, not a chance.  So, we forked over the penalties and waited for Druk Air to take us first to Kathmandu

Kathmandhu from the air

 

and then on to Paro, Bhutan.  The route in remind me more of a winding descent on a bicycle than any airport approach I’d ever experienced.

 

 Incidentally, I learned a few things about Bhutan on the flight.  First Bhutan is not India.  The plane was as immaculate as a newborn Boeing.  In fact, it was an Airbus 319. Who knew there was such a plane?  Second, the Bhutanese women are very beautiful.  Later, we learned the they are so beautiful, the king has married four of them.  But, put away your visions of Utah.  Bhutan is no Utah, either.  If you’ve ever flown United, you are probably more than a little jaded about the friendliness of the hostesses of the Friendly Skies.  You might even have feared that one of these ladies might whack you upside the head with a lead filled purse if you dared to ask for something, or that one of their smiles would fall off and cut you.  Not so with these Bhutanese hostesses.  They had a purity of innocence about them, as well as an elegance of simplicity, and a radiant beauty.  I barely dared to look at at these young women whom I now visualize as a cross between my little sister (I don’t have a little sister) and my 7 year old daughter.

I’m going to leave off here, with some photos from the tarmac.