Bhutan a big draw in US

The Bhutanese are in Washington, DC for the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival. Kinley Dorji reports in Kuensel:

As thousands of people crowded the Bhutan exhibition to look at a culture that was difficult for them to fathom, however, the Bhutanese participants were equally fascinated by the American people and their country.

“I can’t imagine, even after seeing them, that there are so many different types of people on this earth,” said a Bhutanese swordmaker, looking at the crowd of people of all shapes, sizes, and colours. And, in the heat of Washington’s notoriously hot and humid summer, the Bhutanese find the clothing and lack of clothing of the Americans equally astonishing.

Meanwhile, a Laya herder is still in a daze after the amazing 17-hour flight from Delhi which he found to be an ethereal experience. “I think this is how the deities live,” he said. “It’s so still up in the sky. And they bring you food and drink, serving it up to your chin. I chanted my prayers because I think they would have more merit up there.” He also watched every movie on the menu without understanding a word.

[Photo: His Royal Highness jamming with blues singer Texas Johnny Brown.]

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Postage from the edge

Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan ranks high in philatelic firsts. From The Washington Post:

The first 3-D stamp. The first scented stamp. The first textured brushstroke stamp. The first bas-relief stamp. The first on metal. The first on silk. The first on extruded plastic. The first on a playable record. And now, according to its maker, the first stamp on a CD-ROM (though North Korea might have released one earlier).

“They probably have more firsts in the philatelic world than any country,” says Frances Todd Stewart, whose company sells Bhutan’s CD-ROM stamp and who is helping to represent the country at the 42nd Smithsonian Folklife Festival that began yesterday.

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An ancient sport bows, but doesn’t bend in Bhutan

Archery is the national sport in the Himalayan kingdom. Bamboo and reed have given way to fiberglass, but the passion hasn’t dimmed and the insults still fly. From the Chicago Tribune:

Dorji, a house painter with close-cropped black hair, draws his bowstring, hooks his thumb on his cheek and takes aim at what appears an impossible target: an 11-inch-wide slip of wood dug into the soil 460 feet away — deeper than center field.

He lets his finger slip and the arrow streaks down the field, raising a puff of dust when it hits the earthen bank just behind the target. He has missed.

“His wife keeps beating him! That’s why he’s getting weaker and weaker!” taunt his friends, gathered in a grove of willows along the rocky Pachu River. Dorji, 47, is accustomed to the insults that are a staple of archery in Bhutan, and just ignores them.

[Picture: Bhutanese Olympic archers Dorji Dolma, left, and her husband, Tashi Tshering, practice earlier this year in Thimpu, the capital.]

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In the Himalayas, a climate-change calamity builds

Glacial melting threatens disastrous floods in Bhutan, one of the world’s most environmentally vigilant nations. Henry Chu reports in Los Angeles Times:

Punakha, Bhutan: High in the Himalayas, above this peaceful valley where farmers till a patchwork of emerald-green fields, an icy lake fed by melting glaciers waits to become a “tsunami from the sky.”

The lake is swollen dangerously past normal levels, thanks to the global warming that is causing the glaciers to retreat at record speed. But no one knows when the tipping point will come and the lake can take no more, bursting its banks and sending torrents of water crashing into the valley below.

Such floods from above have hit Punakha before, most recently in 1994, a calamity that killed about two dozen people and wiped out livelihoods and homes without warning. But scientists say a new flood could unleash more than twice as much water and be far more catastrophic.

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In Bhutan, white scarves fly off the shelf

What does an election have to do with the sale of ceremonial white scarves (khadar)? Everything, apparently. Tashi Dendup of Kuensel Online has the story.

With the recent formal appointment of cabinet ministers and members of parliament, the khadar business has seen a boom. The popularity and usage of khadar has reached such a stage that shops in Thimphu have even begun to recycle them.

As you pass by the shops, you see notices pasted on their windows inviting you to purchase khadar at lower prices. A shopkeeper in the heart of town said that second hand khadars were brought to his establishment by folks they knew. “People don’t want to stockpile khadar after receiving them. Maybe it’s becoming a bit of a white elephant once its use is over,” the shopkeeper said.

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Business in Bhutan: Financial forecasting mixed with karma

From The Globe And Mail:

Tshering Jamtsho uncoils the burgundy robe from around his chin and smiles as the first light of a Himalayan dawn streams through the casement chiselled into a stone-cold cell at the Pangrizampa Monastery.

Twigs crunch outside, a voice calls out from the dark and an apprentice enters the chamber gripping the “Mopai.” The ancient 250-page goatskin volume provides human calculators, called “tsips,” with intricate mathematical and astronomical formulas to compute a client’s fate and fortune before birth, during life and in the afterlife.

“I am one of the 40 calculators,” Mr. Jamtsho says over cups of the pungent yak-butter tea his predecessors began serving clients here in the Kingdom of Bhutan more than 1,500 years ago.

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What use is democracy to idyllic Bhutan?

William Dalrymple in The Telegraph, UK:

There could be no better illustration of the virtues of an enlightened monarchy than Bhutan. Even before your plane touches down amid the steeply tiered rice terraces of the Paro valley, you realise how different this idyllic country is from its Himalayan neighbours.

Instead of the urban concrete sprawl of Kathmandu and Simla - romantic names, but disappointingly shabby realities - you pass over green hillsides dotted with large white Tibetan-style farmhouses made of stone and wood, with intricately carved balconies and verandahs.

Instead of clouds of pollution rising from corrugated iron roofing, there are thin wraiths of cloud hanging above thick conifer slopes. Instead of bare, deforested hills with landslips and erosion, there are great ranges of mountains clad with virgin deodar forests.

[Photo: The timber seats of the new parliament building being built in Bhutan]

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Bhutan: First step towards democracy

From Associated Press (via IHT):

Thimphu, Bhutan: The command came from the king, as commands normally do in a nation where royalty has ruled for a century. But when the Precious Ruler of the Dragon People spoke that day, he stunned this deeply isolated corner of the Himalayas: The age of monarchs is ending, he said, and power should be yours.

That was a little over two years ago. Now, on the eve of national elections Monday that will upend a system rooted in feudal monarchism, much of the country remains unconvinced there should even be a vote.

Just ask the candidates. “If you had a referendum, even today, Bhutan would reject democracy. That’s the ground reality,” said Khandu Wangchuk, the burly, gravel-voiced former foreign minister who is running for a seat in the western town of Paro. “But there’s no use wishing democracy away.”

What most people want is what they’ve always had: a powerful king.

[Photo: Bhutan's King and the Crown Prince]

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Smile census: Bhutan counts its blessings

In The Wall Street Journal, Peter Wonacott reports from Thimphu:

GNH (Gross National Happiness) is about to face a series of big tests. On Monday, Bhutan will hold its first democratic election. That will install a parliament, pass a new constitution and dilute the powers of a popular monarch. Later this year, Bhutan plans to join the World Trade Organization, even though its industry comprises little more than high-end tourism and hydroelectric power.

As Bhutan enters these uncharted political and economic waters, its leaders want to prove that they can achieve economic growth while maintaining good governance, protecting the environment and preserving an ancient culture. To do that, they’ve decided to start calculating GNH. It means coming up with an actual happiness index that can be tracked over time.

[Photo: The Punakha dzong, one of Bhutan's most beautiful buildings]

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Bhutan’s enlightened experiment

Guided by a novel idea, the tiny Buddhist kingdom tries to join the modern world without losing its soul, writes Brook Larmer in National Geographic (photographs by Lynsey Addario)

 

First come the high clear notes of the ceremonial trumpet. Then the Buddhist pilgrims, gravitating toward the sound. The sun has slid behind the mountains looming over Thimphu, capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and the day’s final ritual is set to begin. Along the edge of the crowd, in pageboy haircuts and tattered robes, stand peasants who have traveled three days from their remote villages on their first visit to the big city, likely the only capital in the world without a traffic light. Near the center of the plaza clusters a group of Buddhist monks, arms linked, their betel-nut-stained teeth matching their burgundy robes. Together the monks and peasants and townspeople press forward to catch a glimpse of the main attraction: a small boy standing in the center of the circle, his bright orange shirt hanging down to his knees.

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Bhutan: Small wonder

As the people of Bhutan prepare to go to the polls this month in the tiny Himalayan kingdom’s first general election, Patrick French discovers their remarkable achievements and asks how the success of a royal dynasty may have blunted the desire for democracy. In The Telegraph, UK:

Bhutan is the most beautiful country in the world. You fly in over the Himalayas, the plane cruising at the height of the mountain peaks, and watch the snow glistening in the sheer, sharp sunlight. A white blueness envelops the sky and, before you know it, the little Druk Air plane is dropping into a golden river valley and slaloming its way to Paro, the only airport in Bhutan.

You pass all the mountains: Cho Oyu, Mount Everest, Makalu, each peak spiking in a web of frosted snow and giving way to a further peak, the blank whiteness of the summit becoming a filigree of ice trails as your eyes descend to the lower ridges and see stepped fields and trees, the last great undestroyed Himalayan forests, and bump now on air pockets as the plane turns into the next valley and makes its way towards earth. The other passengers, Americans and Germans with padded ski jackets and virtuous hairstyles, are so busy crowding over to the left of the plane to snap photographs that I fear we will list to port.

[Photo: Would-be voters during another dummy run in December.]

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Training reporters to cover elections

Andrea Bernstein, political director of New York Public Radio WNYC, was selected to train 20 Bhutanese reporters as the country prepares for its first-ever elections. The invitation came from Bhutan’s daily newspaper, Kuensel. Bernstein spent a week in Bhutan. Read her blog:

…Today, we began the training (because of the time difference, we were actually going head to head with the Oscars). We were overwhelmed by the response - twenty journalists were supposed to show up, forty three came. One drove “two-days journey” - she actually did in 15 hours by driving through until 3 am over the national highway, the road that hairpins through the Himalayas. Some of the journalists were brand new, but all took their craft amazingly seriously. We were a bit worried that we’d have to draw them out, needlessly so, it turned out. This was a group keenly aware of the history that is taking place in Bhutan, and in the important role they’ll have in shaping it.

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A kingdom in the mountains shares its secrets

Susan Emerling in The New York Times:

When American curators arrived one spring morning at Norbugang Yu Lhakang, a Buddhist temple in a remote village in western Bhutan, they found a group of monks sitting on the floor in bright robes, chanting. They had been there since 6 a.m., intent on creating the right ambience for a divination ceremony.

The question before them was whether a small 18th-century gilt bronze sculpture - a female personification of supreme Buddhist wisdom - could make its way to the United States for a traveling exhibition of Bhutanese art.

It fell to the sculpture’s owner, a Bhutanese businessman whose family had had the piece for generations, to roll the divination dice. Tremulously, he rolled a two, a six and a nine.

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The guide to Bhutan

Bhutan has always been beautiful, but now it is beautiful and luxurious. Tom Fordyce in The Times, UK:

It was a disturbing scene. Three half-naked men, all wearing hideous carved masks, were running towards me, brandishing wooden phalluses the size of monkey wrenches. On my right, a shaven-headed monk mumbled a monotone mantra while striking a pair of discordant cymbals.

Overhead circled a large flock of ravens, getting closer with every lap. From the ancient monastery to my left came another man, wearing what appeared to be a welder’s mask, a sheen of oil and not much else.

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Breathing life into gross national happiness

Happiness is a fine goal, but for one in four people who live below the poverty line, bread and butter issues might be more important writes Tashi P Wangdi in Kuensel

National Happiness (GNH) isn’t everyone’s cup of tea - especially those who have to think twice about where the sugar or milk is going to come from. And that is what distinguishes rhetoric from reality. Conceptually speaking, GNH is perhaps the highest goal that any nation can aspire for. Yet, when one person out of every four exists, or persists, below the poverty line, it remains a lofty goal. One that is delegated to the realm of literate thinkers and those who will finance anything that is out of the ordinary.

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Dragon on the wings of time

Keshav Pradhan on Bhutan’s transition from a ‘forbidden’ kingdom to a democratic state in the Times of India

The phone on Thinley Zhapho’s table rings again. For one more time the hefty Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) spokesman, clutching a cellphone to his ear, returns to his room to take the call. “It’s really hectic,” he mutters as he again steps out to resume his conversation with party workers in an adjoining room overlooking the Thimphu river. (DPT roughly means Bhutan Harmony Party).

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Getting serious about GNH

The journey to Gross National Happiness moves forward this week in Bhutan, reports Kuensel’s Kinley Dorji

Bhutan is as determined as ever to create a happy society. The journey to Gross National Happiness moved forward this week with the preliminary findings of rare GNH indicators that are expected to help develop a GNH vision.

The pilot survey by the Centre for Bhutan Studies finds that Bhutanese people rate income, family, health, spirituality, and good governance as their most urgent requirements to be happy. A majority of 66 percent felt that income was the most important.

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