Destinations

As our plane swooped down for landing between high mountain walls looming beside the wings of our Airbus approaching Paro Airport, we already knew this would be an exciting, invigorating and unusual destination. High in the mountains of the Himalayas, south of Tibet, east of Nepal and north of India/Bangladesh, this Kingdom remains one of the more inaccessible and inscrutable of destinations for world travelers.

A country of mainly self-sufficient farmers, living a deeply spiritual Buddhist life, their King has decided to bring them forward into modern times and plans to have his citizens become democratic in 2008. In the same year, his son will inherit the throne so as to carry on their mission to be leaders to their people and to move forward in time and practice. The reign of the Wangchuck family is 100 years old this year, and their tradition has been to thoughtfully and consciously bring change and modernization to this very gentle and hardworking people. Continuing ancient architectural traditions, maintaining national dress for men and women, celebrating lunar festivals called “Tsechu” where Buddhist dances and spirited demonstrations of faith combine with gatherings of the villagers in an annual coming-together on a secular level, Bhutan manages to offer for all a deeply rooted existence and experience.

As visitors to this marvelous place, we find that we learn something about the human spirit — celebrating in the warmth, care and humble honesty of people living humanely in concert with their past, their present and their future. The deep green of the forested slopes, the bright flowers and intensity of the rice paddys constrasting with the dark wood/whitewashed walls of the scattered farm houses, and the amazing construction of the impressive religio-defensive fortresses called Dzongs all make the country intensely tangible. There is an over-arching balance and harmony about Bhutan which is hard to describe.

Bhutan’s magic lies in its immediacy and continuity, its natural environment and its human face, its physical isolation and its willingness to engage in its own future development. It is a place to be experienced — it is a place just to ‘be’ in.