Bhutan’s unique identity - Bhutan Birding and Heritage Travels

Bhutan’s unique identity

By John Julius Norwich

Published: July 4 2009 00:19 | Last updated: July 4 2009 00:19

A monk passes a traditional dzong in Bhutan's capital Thimphu

Almost for as long as I could remember, Bhutan had been a dream - and a remarkably familiar one. The old clichés were rolled out again and again: the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), the compulsory national dress and national architecture, the passion for archery; the dzongs. In a way, I felt I knew it all already. Anyway, the whole thing sounded too good to be true; Shangri-La, as everybody knew, didn't exist. Then, last year, we went there - and found that it did.

The first surprise was Paro airport - and no more beautiful airport building exists in the world. Here was our first sight of traditional Bhutanese architecture - long, and fairly low, surmounted by the traditional three flat wooden roofs laid one above the other, diminishing in size pagoda-style; the walls snow-white, but with all the windows and the entire central section a riot of astonishingly elaborate and brilliantly painted woodwork.

Outside the airport, Hishey was waiting - fortyish and full of charm, enviably sophisticated, his unaccented English as good as ours. He had arranged our trip, planned our itinerary and provided the minibus in which we were going to travel. A superb naturalist and ornithologist, one of the world's leading authorities on cranes, he can instantly identify any animal or bird. The journey along the valley to our hotel was only 20 minutes but we broke it to watch an archery contest. Two teams of 11 were taking turns to shoot, one at each end of the range, 120m from each other. Their marksmanship was astonishing, the whole target being roughly the size of our normal black bull's-eye.

The Gangtey Palace Hotel, the first of the six in which we were to stay, proved to be another show-stopper. Upstairs was a Buddhist prayer-hall, ablaze with every colour of the rainbow. (Never miss the Bhutanese prayer-halls.) The garden, looking out across the valley, offered a glorious view of the dzong immediately opposite.

A dzong is essentially a fortress monastery and it is normally the seat of the local civil and religious power. Every big town has its dzong - though the dzong was usually there before the town was - that, by its size and commanding position, provides an architectural focus and effortlessly dominates its surroundings. The several interior courtyards of each dzong overflow with that dazzling ornamental woodwork of which we could never see enough, and they all seem to be thronged with monks, many of them aged about seven. But Buddhism is everywhere in Bhutan. Wherever you look, you see fluttering clusters of tall prayer flags, or prayer wheels to which you give a spin as you pass.

After one night in Paro, the town looking like a stage set in the moonlight, we climbed into our minibus and began our journey. It was to take 10 days and, to all of us, it was a revelation. We drove, on Bhutan's only major road, built in the 1960s, through high mountains completely covered with trees to their summits. Never was there an advertisement of any kind; publicity is frowned on, and shops are forbidden to display all but the most discreet signs. Frequently we followed rivers, varying from quiet streams to raging torrents, passing the occasional gaily decorated house with its shingled roof. Sometimes we would pass men ploughing a field with oxen or sturdy girls working in the paddy fields. (Some 80 per cent of the labour is agricultural.) Nearly always they would wave to us as we passed. When a restaurant was within range, we had lunch there. Otherwise we picnicked, the meal having been provided by the hotel where we had spent the previous night.

"Lack of variety," said our guidebook, "prevents Bhutanese cooking from ranking among the world's great cuisines." This, it must be said, is something of an understatement. The favourite dish, however, hemadatsi, consists entirely of hot chillies, treated as a vegetable and served in a cheese sauce. Pork fat is another speciality. There is always a dish of chicken or beef, and the vegetables were excellent.

The first stage of the journey took us to Thimphu, described as the only capital in the world without a traffic light. There we called on the delightful chief justice, who had drafted his country's constitution. He was the first Bhutanese to have gained a foreign university degree. Like all ministers, he wore a bright orange toga over his normal costume.

Off the next morning to Punakha, its immense dzong standing like a great ship at the confluence of two rivers, gleaming white and gold in the sun; then another spectacular day's drive to Trongsa, where the first temple was built in 1543.

Our furthest eastern stop was Jakar in Bumthang, the centre of the country. The journey involved crossing an 11,000ft pass, after which the road became more open, hardwoods giving place to pines. Just as we arrived, the weather broke: grey at first, and then a day-long deluge. Undeterred, we visited more astonishing temples that looked even more mysterious in the rain. At 9,000ft or so, our three nights there were cold but every room in our hotel had a wood stove, which transformed the temperature from that of a fridge to that of a ship's engine room.

We headed back westward, and the sun returned. There was one big detour - to the south in the hopes of seeing the almost legendary black-necked cranes, which arrive annually in the third week of October. Alas, they were late; but Hishey is a renowned ornithologist with an eye that misses nothing. His triumph was to spot a colony of golden langurs - the most beautiful monkeys I have ever seen - which exist only in Bhutan and India.

The Tiger's Nest monastery in Paro

And, so, finally we returned to Paro; but one more excitement remained. The monastery known as the Tiger's Nest is the most dramatically situated of them all, perched on a vertiginous cliff-face nearly 3,000ft above the valley and nearly 10,000ft above sea level. The climb takes three hours but we decided to call it a day at the tea house across the valley from which there is a view of the monastery.

And so to the all-important question: can Bhutan survive in the modern world? The fourth king, who developed the GNH philosophy but abdicated in favour of his recently-crowned, Oxford-educated son, believes it can. A country the size of Switzerland, with a population of only 650,000, sandwiched between two giants - India and China - can survive, he believes, only by preserving its unique identity and culture. Tourism is limited by a daily tax, thus keeping out the crowds of backpackers that have ravaged Nepal. Its seat at the United Nations will probably save Bhutan from the fate of its neighbours Ladakh and Sikkim (both absorbed by India) or Tibet. But the country is still largely innocent of the modern world - television arrived only as recently as 1999 - and the pressures upon it will be immense. We can only wish it well.

John Julius Norwich is the author of numerous books including ‘The Middle Sea' and ‘The Normans in Sicily'

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Last Updated ( Monday, 14 September 2009 )

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