Although progressive things are happening in Bhutan, many Bhutanese live much as their ancestors did, sowing the seven traditional grains in remote villages on the sides of steep mountains or in bowl-shaped valleys. Life is easygoing, made even easier by the Bhutanese propensity to take life slowly and laugh. Scotsman George Bogle, one of the first Westerners to visit Bhutan and fall in love with the place, wrote in his journal about the women of Bhutan in the 18th century, and what he said is still true: “The resources of a light heart and a sound constitution are infinite.”¹

The rules of social behavior in Bhutan are age-old.The ancient ways of conducting rituals and of caring for the environment and for each other, as well as the codes of behavior, manners, religion, and sensibility haven’t changed all that much in millennia. Now suddenly, there’s television, Internet, health care, cars, telephones, currency, roads, schools, and the opportunity to travel outside of Bhutan. These things have accelerated the transformation of Bhutan, and they have all arrived in less than one lifetime.

If I had to name the biggest difference between Bhutan and the rest of the world, I could do it in one word: civility. I hardly ever hear that word used anywhere else in the world.

It was certainly much in evidence when Portuguese missionaries came here in the 17th century. By all accounts, they enjoyed their stay but couldn’t convert anybody with pictures of an Anglicized Jesus herding sheep; or dying on the cross; or as a fat, pink infant held by Mary. The Bhutanese strain of Tantric Buddhism, with its secret rituals, wrathful, flaming (as in on fire) deities, skulls, and phalluses, seems a better fit.

Within the small area that is Bhutan, there is every conceivable climate, from glacial in the north to temperate in the middle and rainy in the south. Bhutan is home to many endangered species of birds, flowers, and mammals, including monkeys, tigers, elephants, and rhinoceros. It is also home to blue sheep and snow leopards.

The mountains covering Bhutan grow and change shapes according to the weather and the time of day, the way clouds shift and make shadows along ridges, or the way the sun highlights a clump of trees. Clouds form around them or pour over their tops. This makes them seem alive.

The mountains become steep and impassable the farther north and east you go. Some people from eastern Bhutan are small and squat, as if growing up in the shadows of the imposing mountains has stunted them. There’s very little land to cultivate, as most of it goes straight up and down, though there are patches of cultivation between the crags and peaks. The road between Trashigang and Pemagatshel in the extreme southeast is suspended about three-fourths of the way up massive cone-shaped mountain peaks, and you look down at the sheer drop inches from the side of your car. A narrow river cuts through the gorge, but it looks like a thin line etched in the dust far below. It is not a hospitable place for people to live.

There are no roads in the High Himalayas where Bhutan meets Tibet. Some of the old yak herders say the mountains here are impassable. They describe the old days when they were young men and women and traded with the Tibetans. They hung ropes off cliffs and shimmied up and down from Bhutan into Tibet. When China invaded Tibet, they cut the ropes.

Geography has made it difficult to traverse the Himalayas, but improvements in road engineering in recent years mean that the Chinese have begun building roads at the border where Tibet meets Bhutan, and some of the roads have crossed into Bhutan’s side of the map. The Bhutanese are worried.

There is no electricity in many villages in the east or in the remotest areas of the country, like the vast forests in the south and the glacial valleys of the north. The terrain makes building transformers for electricity and laying blacktop for roads difficult and expensive. In some places, heavy equipment must be carried on horseback or, where the horses can’t go, by humans.

There are many meditation communities high up in the mountains. At one, a great three-story temple forms the center of the sanctuary, which sits on a flattened mountaintop. On the outlying mountainsides, a few small hovels and huts dot the landscape. There are many elderly practitioners and a few caretakers who wash and cook for the devout. The community numbers around 80 men and women and 20 student monks.

The young monks from the school run up and down this steep path because there is a tiny shop at the trailhead that sells apples in late summer. The kindly shop owner will never make a profit: he gives the apples to the young penniless monks.

The people of this community and their predecessors have lived in isolation for hundreds of years. But several years ago, the government, at great expense, gave them electricity, building poles to string the wires up the side of the mountain. Any other government would have simply told the people to come down off the mountain.

The area surrounding Bhutan is the geopolitical equivalent of a trailer park, full of fussing, warring tribes, pugilistic political entities, poverty, drugs, and religious opportunists, and it has a history of epic natural disasters. Climate change is making these natural disasters more numerous, and people talk about the possibility of “water wars” in the region if climate change continues at its current pace. China has swallowed or reclaimed (depending on your perspective) Tibet, directly to the north, and the Han Chinese are destroying what’s left of Tibetan culture. South of Bhutan, where Assam and West Bengal meet, is the “Chicken’s Neck,” a piece of land about 40 miles wide, which connects the extreme northeast frontier of India with the rest of the country. Below the Chicken’s Neck is Bangladesh. Its capital, Dhaka, has the distinction of being the gun-running capital of the region and a center of Islamic extremism. It’s also very poor, hot, and prone to natural disasters. Since 1949, not long after Indian independence, when Bangladesh formed—it was called East Pakistan then—it has never quite gotten on its feet. Much of the country is either at or below sea level, and it has more river deltas than any place in the world. During the rainy season the rivers swell, carry helpless villagers, cows, goats, and other livestock to their deaths, and overturn ferries packed with hundreds and hundreds of unfortunates, which occasions a five-second mention on the news crawl on CNN. Ever since George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, which he organized to raise money to help children caught between political and military upheavals and devastating floods, the name Bangladesh, if it doesn’t draw a blank, evokes a nation of ill-fated brown people and babies with large, fly-encrusted eyes and swollen bellies.

On the upside, Bangladesh is a trading partner of Bhutan, so in Bhutan we all eat from the festive melamine bowls manufactured there, and the Bangladeshis, in turn, eat Bhutanese apples. We also wear “seconds”—defective Old Navy, George (a Walmart brand), Gap, H&M, Tara, and other lesser-known labeled clothing manufactured there, bought in bulk, and shipped to Bhutan by enterprising merchants. You might even be wearing something made by the women and children of Bangladesh.

Nepal, just one country over to the west, has had over 50 years of unstable, corrupt governments and has recently been taken over by Maoists, its king forced to leave. The once prosperous ancient Himalayan monarchy has suffered greatly from rich, unscrupulous landholders selling off its once abundant natural resources, such as lumber and minerals, and shamelessly exploiting its people. Tourism and foreign aid are the biggest contributors to the national coffers, which is not a sustainable situation. Even the once-exquisite Hindu and Buddhist temples have been carted away piece by piece by thieves. Members of Nepal’s ruling families have not once but twice slaughtered each other—first during the 1846 Kot Massacre and again in June 2001. The Nepali people, who are mostly Hindu, have been terribly misled by their leaders and by unscrupulous journalists, and their country is in shambles. Some families sell their daughters to brothels in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Siliguri to feed the rest of their children. They are absolutely desperate, and Nepali refugees flood Northeast India and Bhutan. Now many who migrated to and were kicked out of Bhutan, along with other Nepalese, are starting new lives in the U.S. It is said that Nepal bleeds over a million people every year. This puts great hardships not only on the hapless Nepalese, but also on their neighbors, as the Nepalese now want to claim parts of India and Bhutan as their own.

There are parts of Nepal that look eerily like moonscapes; the vegetation and topsoil has been stripped and nothing can grow there. The Maoists have waged over ten years of civil war, ending the tenuous hold the greedy King of Nepal had over his subjects. Now they seek legitimacy and expansion of their power. But they aren’t much better than their predecessors; and they have invoked draconian measures concerning marriage and property ownership, among other things. Money sent back to the country by friends and family who have left keeps Nepal’s head above water, as is the case in much of the undeveloped world. These people have settled in places like Thailand, Hong Kong, and the U.S., and they support houses full of relatives back home. Many have gone to the Middle East, to countries like Qatar, to work in construction. Their lives are only worth as much as they can send home.

A military junta rules Burma, or Myanmar, to the east. In this beautiful, undeveloped country, the people are, as in Bhutan, Buddhist farmers. Burma is like the house in your neighborhood that you never see anyone going into or coming out of, but you suspect there might be bad things going on inside. This was especially true in the aftermath of a terrible cyclone that decimated the Irrawaddy Delta region of the country in 2008. But we can only imagine how much its people are suffering. Bhutan tends its own garden and doesn’t meddle in the affairs of its neighbors. How could it? It is only a speck on the world map.

As China looms to the north, Bhutan’s southern neighbor, India, is perhaps the less aggressive of the two nearby leviathans. Along the very porous border with Bhutan, it is said there are over 500 separate tribal entities and political groups with different agendas and manifestos, wanting to secede from the Indian states of Assam, West Bengal, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. In case you think you misread that, you didn’t. That’s a lot of people, about 15 million of them, all vying for a very small area of the world.

Assam, West Bengal, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura, the northeastern states of India, are places of extreme unrest. Every week a train station is bombed or some unfortunate local official who forgot his weekly tithe to the ULFA, the most powerful of the rebel groups, is found floating in a rice paddy. “The Centre,” the nickname for the central government of India, rules from New Delhi, quietly attempting to keep the status quo. It’s an old story: multinational corporations, aided by The Centre, drain tea, oil, and minerals from the natural resource-rich region. The northeast Indian state of Assam is said to have over 1.3 billion tons of oil reserves.

For about 200 years, up until the beginning of the 20th century, Tibetans often invaded Bhutan. The lush, sheltered mountain valleys, where anything could grow, tempted the Tibetans, since nothing grew on the cold high plateau they inhabited. When an invasion was imminent, the Bhutanese dropped their ploughshares and took up their bows and poisoned arrows and retreated to the nearest forest or fortress.

The Bhutanese had a lot to lose, so they were formidable opponents. I do not recommend you make a Bhutanese mad to see for yourself. Trust me when I say the Bhutanese are fierce. I mean flay-you-alive ferocious. Civility only goes so far.

The Tibetans were finally defeated and driven back at a place near Paro called Drukyl Dzong at the end of the 19th century. Ironically, when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959, many Tibetans were allowed to come and live in Bhutan as refugees. Large Tibetan communities still exist in Thimphu, Gidacome, and Bumthang, among other places.

Bhutan was never colonized, but while the United States was fighting its civil war, Bhutan was fighting for control of the Duars, the fertile river deltas in the south, which were semicontrolled by British India. The Bhutanese lost the Duar War against the better-equipped and more numerous British and lost most of their flat land to the south. The British then ceded this land to India. My Bhutanese friends say they were pushed up into the mountains that nobody else wanted.

Given the neighborhood and Bhutan’s small size—it’s 100 miles from north to south and 200 miles from east to west—it’s been in the country’s best interest to lay low while the rest of the world rips itself to shreds. Only within the last 40 years has the country taken measures to end its isolation and take its place among the nations of the world. The Bhutanese did this both to modernize and to protect themselves: a country with a higher profile might be less likely to be swallowed up. The region is full of countries—Mustang, Ladakh, Sikkim—that were once Buddhist monarchies but are now part of India or Nepal. Bhutan is the last one.

Bhutan operated as a sort of medieval state until the late 1950s and early 1960s. Three successive kings of the Wangchuck Dynasty, which was founded in 1908, ruled Bhutan until then. All were benevolent despots to one degree or another. The third king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, perhaps feeling the hot breath of the Chinese at his door (China and India were fighting the Sino-Indian War, a border war, until 1962), began to modernize the country in earnest. For better or worse, he married his country to India, and with the help of his new ally, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he began to build roads, hospitals, and schools and set a path of modernization that continues today. He joined the UN and formulated a political strategy with the ultimate goal of moving the country to democracy, eventually making himself and his progeny obsolete.

Bhutan has had its share of internal strife. From its earliest history, Bhutan was divided into different groups that frequently fought against each other. The mountainous terrain was helpful in keeping Bhutan isolated and allowing it to develop its distinct culture over the centuries. But it was not helpful in promoting solidarity. The Bhutanese fought among themselves and with Tibet, until they got lucky.

In 1627, luck came in the form of a high holy man from Ralung in Tibet, fleeing a dispute about his legitimacy. He came to visit friends and family and lay low for a while. His name was Ngawang Namgyal. He was one of the best things ever to happen to Bhutan.

Ngawang Namgyal is always portrayed in paintings and sculpture as fat and jolly with a long, Santa-Claus-style beard; but in truth he had a short, trimmed beard, and he wasn’t fat. He was a military strategist, an accomplished Tantric master, a choreographer, an artist, and a brilliant mediator. He unified the warring factions in Bhutan, formed a dual government of secular and religious interests, forged alliances, and drove the warring Tibetans out of Bhutan once and for all. Under his rule, Bhutan became a single country, with a strong Buddhist culture. In his spare time, he did magic: Tantric, supernatural, unexplained enchantment. Every schoolchild knows stories about Shabdrung, as he came to be called, and his amazing feats. He could fly, for starters, and he could destroy his enemies with unexplained weather formations.

He started the Zorig Chusum, or Thirteen Arts, of Bhutan, an art school specializing in wood carving, painting, sword making, and other indigenous arts, which is still active today. Shabdrung understood the importance of culture in shaping the lives and attitudes of people and in bringing them together. Because he was such a powerful man and a great leader and had no successor, his death was kept secret. After he died, his attendants brought food to the room where he was said to be meditating every day for over 30 years.

Traditionally a Buddhist monarchy, Bhutan is ruled by the fifth Druk Gyalpo, the hereditary King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck. He succeeded his father, who abdicated in December 2006. The country has recently evolved to become a parliamentary democracy, with a constitution and voting. True to form, the Bhutanese aren’t taking the road most traveled to democracy. They held elections, ran for office, and moved the country to one person, one vote, but not because they wanted to—because their beloved king asked them to. They have a lot to lose if things go south: it’s one of the few countries in the world that gives its people free health care and free education.

We should never underestimate the Bhutanese resolve. They have dodged major bullets, both literal and geopolitical, in their unique and varied history. Bhutan has survived by enlightened governance, by grace, by work, by luck, and by shear will. The country doesn’t particularly need the rest of the world. But the world needs Bhutan.

¹ Clements R. Markham, ed., Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (New Delhi, India: Manjushri Publishing House, 1971), 65.

angay – A grandmother, or an older woman.

ara – A locally brewed wine made of excess grains (wheat, barley, rye). Where I come from it’s called moonshine.

Bailey bridge – A prefab steel-paneled bridge designed about 50 years ago by the British Army Corps of Engineers. These bridges have become indispensable in Bhutan, where mountain roads often get washed away. The Bailey bridges are easy and quick to assemble, without heavy equipment, and their parts are interchangeable. They can be trucked to an area in modular pieces and assembled there, and they are solid enough to withstand heavy usage.

cabze – A biscuit of fried dough made for ceremonies.

chappel – A rubber house shoe, otherwise known as a thong or flip-flop.

chipon – A gatekeeper.

chorten – A mound-shaped repository for relics. See also stupa.

choshom – An altar in a temple. Every Bhutanese household has one.

chu or sometimes chuu – A river. Mo Chu and Po Chu— mo means “mother”; po means “father”—are the Mother and Father Rivers, which begin above Gasa and flow through Punakha and down into the Indian Duars.

dasho – Boss or “sir.” Dasho is a term of respect, as is the honorific la, as in “How are you, la?” A Bhutanese friend joked, “Use ‘la’ when you want to ask a favor of someone.”

doma – Another name for areca, or betel nut, the mildly stimulating nut that Bhutanese people like to chew with lime and betel leaf.

dopchu – Bracelet. Not to be confused with uzen, or principal (not that you would do that).

driglam namzha – Manners. Basic rules for behavior in Bhutan that were formulated by Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the great unifier of Bhutan, in the 17th century. Driglam namzha includes everything from dress to architecture to giving gifts.

Druk Air – The Bhutanese national airline. It’s still the only consistent way to get to Bhutan.

dzong – A government and religious center. There are 19 dzongs throughout Bhutan. They were traditionally used as fortresses when warring tribes and the Tibetans invaded. They have secret tunnels and hidden water supplies and are large enough to house thousands of people for many years.

Dzongkha – The national language of Bhutan. Dzongkha actually means “language of the dzong,” so in olden times it was the language spoken in the dzongs, the official language.

The Indo-Burmese valleys of Bhutan, India, and Burma are some of the richest linguistic areas in the world. There are over 300 separate languages and thousands of dialects in this region. Because of this diversity, an official, common language was needed.

ema datse – The national dish of Bhutan. Ema means “chilies” and datse means “cheese.” It’s served with rice and is very spicy and hot.

gho – The national dress worn by Bhutanese men. It crosses in the front like a bathrobe, and then the excess fabric is gathered at the waist and tied with a belt.

gup – A mayor.

Guru Rinpoche – An Indian saint, Padmasambhava, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan in the 8th century. He is highly revered in Bhutan. Guru Rinpoche is an honorific that means something like “precious lama and teacher.” Also known as Guru Singye, he has eight different manifestations.

hemchu – A chest-level pocket formed by folds in ghos and kiras.

Je Khenpo – The spiritual leader of Bhutan.

kabney – A ceremonial scarf worn by Bhutanese men when they go to a temple, dzong, or government center.

kata – A white silk scarf given as a token of good luck or congratulations at births, marriages, promotions, etc. It’s the Bhutanese equivalent of a Hallmark card.

kera – A long, woven belt that is wrapped around the waist to secure a gho or kira. Also a language in southwest Chad, but you don’t need to know that.

kichu – A big, all-purpose knife, like a machete.

kira – The national dress for women in Bhutan. It’s a rectangle about five feet by eight feet that’s wrapped around the body, held together with a clasp or a brooch at each shoulder, and cinched at the waist with a belt.

koma – A brooch used to gather the kira at the shoulder.

Kuertop – Someone from Kuertoe, a region in the extreme northeastern part of Bhutan.

lhakhang – A temple.

lopen – Honorific term for teacher or “sir.”

lyonpo – A minister in Bhutan. Lyonpo is an honorific term that’s something like the British knighthood. Lyonchen is the title for the prime minister.

naga – A spirit that lives in the earth. Bhutanese try to appease naga because they can cause disease or illness if they are made unhappy. Naga hate pollution, and skin diseases are a favorite form of retribution they use to punish people who make them angry. They are depicted as snakes, and sometimes they have a woman’s head and torso.

ngultrum – Bhutanese currency. It’s tied to, and is the same monetary value as, the Indian rupee.

puja – A ceremony. It usually involves monks or nuns chanting, the blowing of horns, and lots of food and drink. Nearly every household in Bhutan has a yearly puja during the Losar, or New Year. Pujas can be performed for weddings, to pray for good health, for death or cremation, as consecration rituals, or at births. Puja isn’t actually a Bhutanese word—it’s Hindi—but most people in Bhutan use it. The equivalent word for a ceremony in Dzongkha is rimdo.

Punakha – A valley in western Bhutan, formerly the seat of government. Its temperate climate makes for excellent farming.

rachu – A ceremonial scarf worn by Bhutanese women when they go to a temple, dzong, or government center. It’s usually woven from red silk or cotton, or it is embroidered with flowers or auspicious symbols.

samsara – This lifetime. In Buddhist philosophy, the world is made up of endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth for all sentient beings. One cycle is a samsara.

Selj’e Sumcu – The Bhutanese alphabet of 30 letters. The alphabet is actually borrowed from Chöke, the Tibetan alphabet used for scriptures.

shedra – A monk school.

stupa – A mound-shaped repository for relics. See also chorten.

Tantric – The form of Mahayana Buddhism practiced in Bhutan. The word tantric or tantra is related to “weaving,” and people who practice believe in ancient secret rituals to harness divine energy and make it possible to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime.

tdego – A short jacket worn by Bhutanese women over the kira. Just to confuse you, the unstructured, usually white cotton undershirt worn by men under their ghos is also called a tdego.

terton – A treasure finder. In ancient times, holy men who traveled in Bhutan and Tibet hid treasures—ancient religious texts, priceless religious objects such as statues, and other precious things. Tertons found the treasures that were revealed to them in religious texts or in their dreams, sometimes centuries after they had been hidden.

thanka (also tangka, thangka) – A painting or embroidery. Thanka means “rolled art,” so the painting or embroidery is made to be rolled and unrolled, to be carried on pilgrimage or to be opened during rituals or celebrations.

Thimphu – The capital of Bhutan.

thrimpon – A judge.

torma – Sculpted dough made out of butter and flour, dyed different colors, and shaped into flowers or other iconography. The sculptures look like miniature totem poles and are placed on the choshom, or altar, during rituals.

uzen – Principal of a school.

wanju – A thin undershirt worn under a lady’s kira, usually made of silk or polyester.

Zangtopelri – Guru Rinpoche’s heavenly abode.