Tour of Bhutan 2024 | Day 16 | Mongar – Trashigang | 101.1 kms

2 nights in Monday have come to an end. It’s time to head towards the east direction. I get up around 8 am and ready myself. Have my coffee before staring to pack up. Around 9:15 am, I get all my luggage down. Phub is waiting for me in the lobby. We have breakfast of fried rice, omelette, butter toast and coffee. After the breakfast is done, I load the luggage on the bike we get a group photo with the hotel staff before we fire our engines.

We leave around 10 am. The weather is perfect for riding. I am not wearing my thermal lining today as it’s not cold. The temperature is around 12-13 deg. The hair pin bends continue as we slowly start to gain altitude. There is dense forest like vegetation around. With the gain in altitude, temperature slightly drops and I can feel little cold when we enter shadowy region of the mountains. We continue without stopping. Far away, we can see some mountains completely taken over by the clouds. It seems like they are floating above clouds. It’s a unique phenomenon to watch as I take some photos before moving ahead. We start to descend down now and the climate again becomes pleasant. I can see many orchards of oranges on the mountain slopes. I even spot some trees which I hadn’t seen till now. We also spot ‘bor’ tree by the road side. This bring back the childhood memories for me as I become nostalgic.

We stop to pluck some of the ripe ones. The tree is full of them. Guess, it’s their season now. Back in days, we used to eat it with chili powder mixed with salt. We taste them and they are just perfect. We continue ahead and from now on, I can see them every few mtrs filled with berries. I even start to see Eucalyptus trees and some of the trees which grow back in my hometown. We descend further down in to the valley. The atmosphere becomes hazy. It’s kind of the early morning fog but it’s not. The sun has become the moon as it looses it’s intensity to warm. Up ahead, we came to know the cause of it as we see fires burning at isolated areas on the mountain tops. we are clueless as to how it must have happened. At one location, we pass by from a close range and we see some burning logs fallen on the road. There’s also lot of burnt rubble which as come down. The roads become wider now and appear more whitish in color. We have a river flowing to our right down below.

Trashigang is just within reach as we cross a giant metal bridge and move over to the other side. The last 10 kms is an uphill climb with 4-5 loops. We enter the town via a large entry gate and stop at the road side to take a photo which has a beautiful stupa at the back. After the photo, it’s just 2 mins to the hotel. We reach around 1 pm covering just 85 kms. We are given our rooms. We transfer all our luggage. I have a black coffee. After that, we go to a nearby high point up the mountain to get the birds eye view of the town. This is recommended by the hotel owner. We climb up and up and think that the viewpoint would be a physical place but we are wrong. We go too far and start to descend the mountain on the other side. We call the owner and reconfirm. The owner tells us that no physical viewpoint exists, you need to find one for yourself. We do mange to locate one and get some amazing snaps of the town from above. We return to the hotel after that, get fresh and go to the town, walking. We explore all the shops and the areas before settling in one of the restaurants for a late afternoon lunch of chowmein and momos.

We sit there for quite some time before returning to the hotel. We spend some time before we have our dinner of potatoes with chili, egg masala, rice and daal. After the dinner, we spend some time discussing travel things and general things about living in Bhutan with the owner. We are the only guests in the hotel. Around 10:30 pm, we retire to our rooms for a good night’s sleep.