Bewitching Bhutan! Day Eight: Road Journey from Puentsholing to Bagdogra (Siliguri, West Bengal) and Cancelled Return Flight to Bombay.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Bewitching Bhutan!

Day Eight: Road Journey from Puentsholing to Bagdogra (Siliguri, West Bengal) and Cancelled Return Flight to Bombay.

We awoke on our last morning in Bhutan and were all set to return to India. After showering, packing, leaving our baggage ready for pick up, we adjourned to the restaurant for breakfast. It was a hearty one: omlettes with buttered toast, jam, sheera, poha, fresh fruit, coffee, tea. We ate well and, having made contact with the two drivers who would take us across the border from Bhutan into India and on to the airport at Bagdogra, we piled into their cars. We had asked Gilroy for two separate cars as a single one had been simply too cramped and we could not imagine undergoing the five to six hours journey in such uncomfortable positions. Accordingly, Blossom and Menaka (heading for Bangalore and taking a flight an hour before us) left in one car while Llew, Marisa and I (heading for Bombay) were in another.

We had a bit of a setback when it came to clearing Indian Immigration as Llew and I had foreign passports that needed to be stamped before we entered India. Marisa had undertaken her immigration formalities, the previous day. When we arrived at the Indian Immigration Office in Jaigoan (a one-horse town in West Bengal, just over on the other side of the border from Puentsholing), we discovered that it only opened at 9.00 am. We were there at 8.00 am hoping to be nice and early. Hence, we had to kill time for a whole hour and our driver took us to an air-conditioned restaurant called Sheetal (as it was really humid and hot) where we found refreshment (ice-cream and cool drinks) before we returned to the place at 10.00 am. By this time, tons of foreigners had arrived there and we found ourselves having to download an e-entry card for India that gave us trouble as we did not have adequate bandwidth on our phones to download it. Anyway, the immigration officer, who had remembered us from our previous visit (and whom we had christened “Chubby Checker”--hahahahah) went out of his way to help us and a good one hour later, we were out of there and on our way. Meanwhile, Blossom and Menaka’s car had sailed ahead, but they had to come back because our driver had become very late with all this waiting and we needed to switch cars and drivers before we set off again.

We thought we would meet at lunchtime, but we missed them again, as they left just before we arrived at the ‘K B Restaurant’, where we had stopped en route to Bhutan. Along the way, we had passed by miles and miles of neat tea estates, beautifully manicured and irrigated and sunning themselves picturesquely in the hot sun. There were also a few dusty, under-developed towns filled with half-baked structures that were uniformly ugly and unappealing. And then, eventually, lunch done (an Indian a la carte meal this time consisting of thupka—Chicken noodle soup for me, fish curry for Marisa and Butter Chicken for Llew with naan), we arrived at Bagdogra Airport where we had a reunion again, of our entire group.

After we checked in and went through Security, we were able to enter the area where the gates were located. Blossom and Menaka, who had been holding seats for us, made us comfortable and we had a good hour together as their flight was delayed. Chaos reigned supreme with long lines of people waiting to board flights, others sitting around and waiting. The shops did very desultory business as everything was heavily overpriced. It had begun to rain by this point and we could hear the downpour drumming on the terminal roof. Finally, when their flight was announced, we said our goodbyes and waited patiently for our flight to be announced too.

Except that our Air-India Express flight was not just delayed, it was well and truly cancelled. We discovered this at about 8.00 pm. Of course, from that time onwards pandemonium prevailed as three flights had been cancelled: to Bombay, to Calcutta and to Dibrugarh. Passengers began to shout for assistance and, on discovering that there were no more flights leaving Bagdogra that night, they began to demand hotel accommodation.

Now, I was well aware that Bagdogra is a one-horse town and it would be impossible that the airline authorities would be able to conjure up accommodation for hundreds of passengers in the flash of an eye. We, therefore, decided to find out what our alternatives were, found a traffic assistant who advised us to get ourselves manifested on the flight tomorrow leaving at the same time and pick up the baggage we had checked in. We did these things while everyone else around us was raising their voices. Once we received our baggage, we found ourselves a quiet corner, far from the madding crowd, near the luggage conveyor belts and sat down to look for an Air B&B close to the airport. Blossom and Menaka, meanwhile, delayed on the tarmac for over an hur, finally did take off and reached Bangalore a little after 10.30 pm.

Well, to make a long story short, we found a place in Siliguri that was about 5 kms away and called the proprietress whose name was Pratima Pradhan and who ran a place called The Newas Home Stay. A call to her ascertained our accommodation for the night in her apartment that had 2 bedrooms—perfect for the three of us. She also arranged for us to get an airport shuttle pick up service (for Rs. 500 extra) and in a short while, the driver arrived and transported us to her place. We met and liked her, looked at our apartment and our rooms for the night, were content with what we saw and then asked her to order diner for us. We also asked her if there was anything interesting we could do, the next day, as we had a whole day to kill before taking our flight; but when she discussed the options with us, we found that it involved waking at the unearthly hour of 4.00 am to see the Jaldapara Wild Life Sanctuary which was almost 3 hours away. We nixed that idea and decided instead to simply spend time in a place called Hongkong Market. In a short while, we received a simple Indian dinner of Mixed Vegetable Kurma with Naan and on that replete note, we made the most of our unexpected delay and settled down to bed.

Until tomorrow…keep smiling.