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Today we drove up to Dochula pass, the first on the national highway — a road that is not quite one lane in each direction, with constant hairpin turns. This is the main road that goes from one side of the country to the other — a distance not much different from crossing the state of New York. It takes two days of driving to get to the other side of Bhutan. Here, everything is measured in “day’s journeys” Two days journeys to the east by bus. One from the south, to get your vegetables to market. One day’s walk. Some towns are so remote, election machines had to be helicoptered in. The weekly paper Kuensel has already been sending reporters out on the muddy trails with the candidates. The literal campaign trail. As we drove up to the pass today, I saw many houses far from roads, reachable only by trails and stairs. Supplies are carried in by back. This is a common way of living here. Campaigning in the U.S. seems hard, but how would our election have been different if Barack Obama and John McCain had had to walk eight hours — none of it horizontal — to meet the voters?