I took Marie to the airport on Sunday morning. It’s an early flight because Druk Air needs to get the plane up before the wind starts. Marie had spent a sleepless night worrying about all that she still needed to pack, what she would do with said bags for the 14 hours she was in Delhi, whether her e-ticket would work for the flight to Paris and whether she’d get any sleep on the way. I slept like a dragon on its horde.
The alarm went off at 4am and Marie growled about her lack of sleep and I started my own checklist. My job was easy. All I had to do was make sure that I had my driver’s license, the ‘blue book’ car registration and that the car had… I’d forgotten to put petrol in the car! Suddenly our roles were reversed and Marie was trying to calm me down.
Bhutan isn’t like Australia where you can find petrol stations on every street corner and they’re all 24×7. Here, there are only 2 petrol stations in this, the capital city, and neither would open until 6am at the earliest. I needed to have Marie at the airport by 6:30 and it was an hour and a half drive.
We were saved by a friendly expat neighbour who managed to shake off her slumber enough to check that she had sufficient petrol in her car. Just!