Bhutan

We have arrived successfully in Bhutan!

We started with an early morning visit to try and find the incredibly rare One horned black Asian rhino. Up at 5am and no guesses how many of those we saw. We did however see 5 Asian elephants, numerous peacocks and a large black squirrelly thing up a tree. We shared a Mahindra jeep with Chris and Sophie and found ourselves laughing and laughing about things that later on we couldn't remember. Very funny and fantastic way to start the day.

Today we drove 12km to our first stop. Not really a challenge to successful ralliers like Paddy and I. Unfortunately we missed a critical turn and spent the best part of 2 hours getting there. A quick lunch with Ines and Xavier and then onto a tea factory near the border. 95km of quite busy Indian traffic where one has no choice but to push on. I am now getting the hang of driving here, the rule being the larger party takes priority!

The tea factory was fascinating but sadly we only had the briefest of visits. CTC (crushed, torn and curled) tea is the very strong local tea (Undrinkable in my view) but it's a similar process. The owner of the tea garden knew Nicky's parents who were tea planters which was an extraordinary coincidence.

As we left the tea garden we needed to stop to check the route book. Xavier and Ines were behind us and when we both pulled away their half shaft went. We returned to see whether we could help but sadly their catastrophic mechanical failure was beyond even the mechanical expertise of Paddy and I. We left them with an armed guard waiting for Charlie and his team.

Then it was through Indian customs, Indian immigration and we were into Bhutan. Incredibly straight forward really and all the officials were fast efficient and delighted to see us. You can sense the difference immediately. It's just so much cleaner, calmer and quieter.

Bhutanese immigration was very straight forward and then after supper we all stood around bouncing ideas about how we could get Xavier's car going. We are simply in a very tricky country to get anything to in time. Flying someone out to Paro would take too long (probably 2 weeks for an uninvited guest to get a visa) and flying to Kolkata, Sirilungi and taxi up here to the border would probably take a week. Eventually Xavier decided to ship the car home and hire a car for the rest of the rally. The right call I'm sure since to be driving in remote Bhutan with a repaired half shaft would be hair raising to say the least.

The Car 9 team is in good form, physical well, mentally well (not a very high bar!) and raring to drive up in the mountains. We climb 2500m in 20km which will be interesting.

RHC

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