of a bare, dirt-floor room, warming
our hands on tiny cups of hot, sweet
Nescafé. We drew a crowd, of course.
A circle of grubby, quietly curious chil-
dren surrounded us and the bikes.
And — unlike India where the cry “one
rupee, one rupee,” followed us every-
where — not one asked for money.
We were riding the East-West
Highway (also known as the Lateral
Road) a roughly paved single-lane
strip of broken tarmac that rambled
along the mountainsides — and not a
motorhome anywhere. Snaggly, snow-
covered peaks jumped out around each
bend like crooked fangs; vast, rambling,
brightly painted, low-rise buildings
called “dzongs” (a sort of combination
temple, monastery and municipal hall)
were tacked on the hillsides.
The Indian army helped build this
road to aid troop movement. Their
presence in Bhutan bolsters the coun-
try against an over-the-mountains
invasion from Chinese-occupied Tibet.
And the U.N. quietly maintains a pres-
ence of its own to stifle any Indian
colonial ambitions.
As we broke through above the
cloud, the terrain became flatter, open-
ing into broad alpine valleys. The road
forked and we swooped along the side
of a narrow chasm, white water crash-
ing below. The canyon walls widened
and became shallower, opening into a
broad valley of neatly laid rice fields.
This was the Paro Valley, home to
Bhutan’s second-largest community
and its only airport. Still it was little
more than a clutch of two-story houseslining a short, broad dirt street with an
open storm drain.
Rob hustled us toward one of the
houses. Painted beams pierced the
stucco walls. Above the second floor,
a plywood-sheet roof was weighted
down with rocks. The narrow windows
had no glass : Wood shutters hung from
the frames. Near the door of the dark,
bare room was a counter with a sparse
arrangement of candy, pastries and
spirits. A wooden bench lined one wall,
a rough table in front of it. It was
impossible to age the faces around
us, teeth gaping behind their sun-
leathered smiles. We warmed ourselves
with Special Courier Indian whisky and
freshly steamed momos — meat-filled
pastry shells not unlike empanadas.
Each night, we stayed at basic, but
quite adequate, government guest
houses; and while we ate dinner, Gyan,
our mechanic, tended to the Enfields.
The food — the kind of mystery meat
and vegetables they serve to first-world
visitors in developing countries —
was plain but filling, and richer, I’m
sure, than the rice and chilies most
Bhutanese subsist on.http://www.MotorcycleClassics.com 61
1997 Enfield Bullet 500,
made “Like a Gun” just
as it was in 1956.Left to right: Himalayan Roadrunners’ Rob Callander, guide Dorji, RDS, mechanic Gyan, Phil, Graham, guide Charles Gray.