I’ve often raved about the driving skills and ethics of Bhutanese, who drive as if they were walking around a village. When driving along the one lane roads, trucks keep to the centre, forcing the little cars with no clearance and less suspension to drive on the road fringes, wheels scraping cliffs or finding air. Yesterday, on our return from Paro, I was humbled and shown the narrowness of my view.
We’d already passed the police border checkpoint but hadn’t reached the roadwork where they were turning the road into a decent two lane highway. Coming around a corner, we saw a truck with its ass in the air. I stopped the car and we rushed over to see if we could add anything to the crowd it had drawn, but everyone was out safely and the owners called to arrange recovery. Before we got back in the car, I took a quick look to see what had happened.
I’m no forensic scientist, but it was pretty clear from the chunk of land missing between the rear wheels that the truck had pulled over to let someone pass. Robin later told me that it had been a speeding taxi. The ground at the top of the cliff had loosened in the rain and given way under the truck’s weight. That weight then pulled the rest of the truck with it. I’m convinced that only the slow drag of the truck, the trees just below the edge and the driver’s quick action to turn the wheels downhill stopped it from being a fatal roll into the river.
Had it been a car, the ground might have held and the car would have stopped once the lower clearance was breached. So I’ll try not to get so angry at ‘thoughtless’ truck drivers in the future.