The Discovery of Bhutan

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S. Nihal Singh

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By Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck [4]

Rs 499

A first visit to Bhutan is a transforming experience because the beauty of the landscape is the nearest thing to heaven one can conceive of. Much of it remains unspoiled and the hills and meadows and rivers and streams with an abundance of wild flowers are a balm to tired eyes satiated with the eyesores of urban architecture.

Bhutan has been wise to restrict the flow of tourists by pricing out backpack travellers, except for Indians who have visa-free entry. The Bhutanese often associate Indians with their fondness for butter chicken.
Bhutan has other distinctions. It has given the world the Gross National Happiness to measure a country’s progress not by economic indexes that make up the Gross National Product, but by the score of the people’s happiness. Remarkably, it decided to forgo the riches the development of copper mines would have brought the country by abandoning a vast copper mining project started in 1978-79 a couple of years later in order to protect the biodiversity and bounty of nature.
Treasures of the Thunder Dragon is the most charming of introductions to Bhutan by the Queen Mother — 51-year-old India-educated Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck — who undertook a series of arduous journeys across six districts of her kingdom through perilous paths in the high hills and the steep meadows to acquaint herself with her kingdom as also to connect with her diverse people, give the needy help through her Tarayana Foundation and tell them that the King and his progeny really care. They are fascinating journeys and tell the outsider much about the people and their customs and the primitive conditions in which many live although the countryside is being gradually transformed with such amenities as electricity, sanitation and piped water to homes.
The vast majority of Bhutanese are Buddhists, although traces of animism survive in the more inaccessible regions. They are, by Indian standards, more emancipated in many respects. Marriage often consists of a man spending a night with a girl and if he stays for breakfast with her kin, he is deemed to be married. If he has reservations, he steals out of the house in the middle of the night. Since children born out of wedlock do not bear the social stigma attached to the practice in other societies, many tourists tend to leave behind the results of their liaisons, with local girls left to take care of them. A Japanese traveller also left a television set and other gadgets in a home without access to electricity.
The author has a direct and compelling style of writing and a sense of humour. She passes over the joint marriage of her own and her sisters to King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in a matter-of-fact manner, simply saying that it is the custom of the land. A “wedding portrait” illustration in the book shows the King with his four brides. But the Queen Mother is both observant and unabashed in retelling the practices of her people, despite their unique characteristics, compared to the mores of other peoples. What will strike an outsider though is the manner in which the King and her son, among others, drove out anti-India militants in 2003 using Bhutanese territories as a refuge to strike at Indian targets. It was presented as a grand battle and in the bargain her son Jigyel deferred his studies at Oxford for a year. The war was won in one-and-a-half days in December with the militant camps destroyed and many militants captured. It is called the Duar War of 2003.
The Queen Mother is optimistic about the future. She writes: “We want the benefits of modern technology, but at our own pace, according to our own needs, and when we feel the time is right. It was why we waited until 1983 to build an airport and start air services to Bhutan… why we introduced television only in 1999.”
Bhutan cannot of course cut itself off from the world. One has only to visit downtown Thimphu to see the pull of Bollywood and Western pop culture on the Bhutanese people. The kingdom is now connected by Internet. But in another sign of the wisdom of Bhutanese rulers, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck introduced an elementary form of democracy, even giving the elected representatives the right to censure the King. He then abruptly announced his own abdication in favour of his son. In many ways, this volume is unique in presenting Bhutan and its singular story in a still enchanting land of much beauty graced by the poise of its richly dressed women.
The Queen Mother writes about 1963, when she was leaving her home in the north for Thimphu for the first time for her school in Darjeeling, “My sister and I, like most people in Bhutan, had never seen a motor vehicle before. In fact, we had never seen anything moving on wheels before — carts, carriages, bicycles and the like being unsuited to our rough, mountainous terrain. For journeys, everyone in Bhutan relied on horses, mules and their own feet.”
The Queen Mother and Bhutan have come a long way since those days of the relatively recent past.

S. Nihal Singh is the author of Ink in my Veins: Life in Journalism