A flurry of development activity started taking place in Orong Gewog, under Samdrup Jongkhar, after it was connected with a farm road, in 2005. After the farm road, came a higher secondary school in 2008 and so did the civil servants.
There was no place to accommodate the civil servants, so people started constructing buildings to rent out, according to the Orong Gup, Khawjay.
Orong Gewog is 65 kilometres away from Samdrup Jongkhar town. It takes about three-hour drive to reach Orong from the town.
From what it used to be post-2005 and now, the small gewog stands to tell a story of two different eras. Instead of small huts dotting the hills of Orong, it now proudly showcases concrete buildings with CGI sheets.
“During 1984-85 there weren’t any buildings. The roofs of the huts were banana leaves,” recalls a civil servant based in Orong, Cheten Chedup.
There are about 5,000 people living in six chiwogs of Orong Gewog.
