BHUTAN has always been very isolated from the world due to the Himalaya mountain range and therefore a lot of their culture has been kept very unspoilt. Only sixty years ago, the first roads from its neighboring countries India and Tibet have been built. And- Bhutanese do everything to sustain both, their culture and nature! Many traditions are part of their daily life, as wearing their traditional clothing called ‘gho’ (for men) and ‘kira’ (for women) out of beautiful, beautiful handwoven textiles as well as preserving their traditional heritage of wooden style architecture. Both beautiful to watch. We visited actual schools who teach young students the traditional Bhutanese handicrafts of wood carving, painting and pottery. They all go to art schools for 5 to 6 years!

The Kingdom of Bhutan – today actually a constitutional monarchy – provides its main revenue by hydro power projects all over the country. And – all Bhutanese love their King! He is the 5th King of the country, only 33 years old, and married to a very handsome Queen. You might all remember the royal wedding two years ago.. And we were actually lucky enough to see the King, when he passed our hotel visiting a school next door. Cool!

Surprisingly Bhutan measures its development and progress by the concept of Gross National Happiness rather than the Gross Domestic Product. The overall idea of national happiness is, of what we understood, very much linked with their main religion…Bhutan is a deeply Buddhist country! We really felt how religion plays a very central role in their daily lives. And their Buddhist tradition is visible everywhere: we got to see many fortresses (dzongs), temples, stupas, prayer wheels and thousands of colourful prayer flags. In Punakha there was this special “Temple of the Divine Mad Man”, which is the symbol of fertility for all Bhutanese. Phallus symbols are anywhere and everywhere, painted in large or small on walls or carved out of wood, as Bhutanese strongly believe the phallus keeps away the evil and brings good luck to fertility! On the last in Paro we hiked up the “Tiger’s Nest”, Bhutan’s most famous temple on a very steep cliff. There in the temple, the Great Lama actually blessed our own Florian&Martina prayer flag, which we afterwards hung up between trees for good luck..

Comparing with Nepal, we feel that Bhutan is on the right track. Yes, we can still see poverty, but in a much smaller scale. Education and health system are free for everyone and financed for instance by us tourists. Though, coming to Bhutan is a difficult journey, as the country only can be visited with an organized tour by hiring a local travel agency. No individual tourism is allowed. Bhutan was the only country we had to plan well in advance already in December last year and the five days we have spent here are by far the most expensive travel days on our entire trip! As we usually always travel on our own, it was kind of strange to not have the flexibility and freedom of “finding our way through the country”. Still, it was great to have an organized tour, as our guide Sonam could not have been better, explaining everything very well, plus he is a very funny guy. Also we got to see an unspoilt country with lots of culture and very, very little tourists..