Expressway to Crazyway

I f you want to see one of planet earth’s biggest transportation muck ups please do visit the Thimphu Expressway.

The latest sight and sounds is of young teenagers taking part in an annual traffic nightmare of running up and down the Expressway mistaking it for a jogging track.

If that was not enough some of these hormonally imbalanced creatures run right across the road or in the middle of road perhaps thinking they are truly super-men and women immune to any accident.

Oh a great many orange scarves knocked their heads together combined with overpaid consultants to design a blacktopped feeder road magnificently titled as an Expressway in the heart of Thimphu.

The road took not all the natural curves but in some cases the ones dictated by some powerful folk owning land along the road.

Those who had to, made their money from the road from incompetent consultants to corrupt engineers and greedy contractors.

Bhutan as a contribution to the world’s transportation system should donate the road so that countries will know what not to do when building an Expressway.

The Expressway is also a jungle in itself with its own laws. The yellow headed baboons called taxis are the most frequent and irritating animals on the road frequently making unscheduled stops to slow down the great migration or endanger it.

There are also mad elephants called tipper trucks that drive like the road is their family’s personal racing track.

The Expressway is also an example in how not to use road divider fences which act more as ticking accident bombs waiting to waylay passing cars.

The streetlights are of course a joke with them functioning and not functioning at will.

The great orange sages who thought and planned the road up were saintly beings far removed from the concerns of ordinary pedestrians on both sides of the Expressway. When these orange ones crossed roads they given their saintly powers flew rather than walk like mere mortals.

This would perhaps explain the absence of foot over bridges so that people can cross to either side playing a lottery on their lives each time.

In case you get nostalgic about the village life worry not as the Expressway also has the occasional cow right in the middle sometimes. Just get that clump of grass and feed it while horns blare.

For times when the sights and sounds of Thimphu are not enough and you also want the smell of the city just drive by the sewage tanks in Babesa on a hot afternoon.

I sometimes wonder why my country is where it is but after I drive on the Expressway everything is explained.

Opinion by Pema

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