Exporting from Bhutan — by water?

   If you’ve ever daydreamed while paging through an atlas, you may well have lingered over the maps of the Himalayas in Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.
   So it was a bit of a shock Thursday morning seeing a headline in The Times of India: First Indian cargo ship from Bhutan arrives in Bangladesh via India.
   The newspaper reported, “For the first time, an Indian cargo ship carrying 1,000 tonnes of stone aggregates from Bhutan arrived in Bangladesh” after making a voyage down the Brahmaputra River.
   The stone was carried by the Indian cargo ship MV Aai and arrived in Narayanganj, a river port on the Meghna River near the confluence with the Padma River.
   India’s Ministry of Shipping said it would take 70 trucks to transport the same cargo by road. Of course, there is a catch to this water transport story: The newspaper reported that the stone had to be trucked 160 miles from the quarry in Bhutan to Dhubri, India, before it was loaded on a ship. 
   Still, Shri Mandaviya, India’s minister of state for shipping, said the development is a historic one, moving ahead the vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to promote cargo transportation through inland waterways. He said the move will be beneficial to India as well as Bhutan and Bangladesh and strengthen relations between the neighboring countries.
   Transporting the cargo by river will cut short travel time by eight to 10 days and reduce transportation costs by 30%. It also will be a more environmentally friendly mode of transport, the ministry said.
   Mandaviya said use of the waterway will open up an alternate route to northeastern Indian states, making it easier and cheaper to move goods from other parts of India.
   Shri Pravir Pandey, chairman of the Inland Waterways Authority of India, said dredging has been carried out to maintain guaranteed draft in the navigation channel of the waterway.