Beautiful Bhutan

This Monday, let me draw you away from the frenetic politicking in the country and take you to a distant and beautiful country in the roof of the world, the Himalayas. Its population is a miniscule 800,000 and its capital is Thimpu. It has another big town, Paro. With its many rivers that are dammed, its highest export is electricity.

I am the first Filipino to go to Bhutan in 1963 as Information Officer of the Colombo Plan Bureau based in Ceylon. Bhutan had joined the Colombo Plan and, after years of building, the road to the country was finally opened. Because of its location, Bhutan was far more closed to the world than Tibet. From Calcutta at daybreak, we flew to Phuentsholing in the Dooars – the Himalayan foothills and at daybreak, in five jeeps, we started out. The group was led by Lampi Dorji, the brother of Bhutan’s queen, and the Indian engineers and officials who built the road. It was without a protective rail guard. The ascent was gradual, but soon we were high up, looking down thousands of feet. The vegetation, too, had changed slowly and soon alpine rhododendrons – most of them in bloom – were trees, not the bushes as I knew them in other countries.

The trip took the whole day. We arrived in Paro at about 8 p.m., cold and hungry. We were billeted in a huge building, the floor made of rough sewn wood. I had slept soundly, and when I woke, a sliver of sunlight streamed in from the closed window. I rose and opened it, and I’ll always remember this vaulting feeling of wonder and awe – before me, on both sides of the huge building – it was a dzong, a Buddhist temple – the myriad Buddhist prayer buntings, fluttering in the morning breeze and below me, a stream, a valley golden with ripening barley, and the majestic Himalayas crowned with snow. Shangri-La!

I went down the valley soon enough, and from the wooden bridge in the clear stream were so many fish which I soon recognized as brown trout. I asked my young Bhutanese guide, Dawa Tsering, if there was a fishing rod around. He produced one quickly, and in a matter of minutes, I had landed a dozen. It was then that Dawa told me the Bhutanese didn’t eat fish.

Miss Tashila Dorji, the Queen’s sister who represented Bhutan in Colombo Plan meetings, was a most gracious host. She planned for us an itinerary which also illustrated the country’s culture. We witnessed an archery contest and a masked religious dance. Most memorable was a visit to a temple where a monk was in the lotus position for months. When I saw him, he was already covered with ash. I put my hand over his nose, and sure enough I could feel his breathing.

Bhutanese Buddhism is Tantric, like Tibet’s, and it considers the sexual act as religious; all over the country are phallic figures. Like the Tibetans, the Bhutanese also believe in reincarnation, in their assumption of another life when they die.

I have written about the cultural similarities in regions where similar conditions exist. Prime Minister Jigme Dorji, the Queen’s oldest brother, asked me if I wanted to see a Bhutanese folk dance. Of course, I said yes. We were in his house, and outside in his courtyard, a bonfire was blazing, and a dozen girls in their native costume were around the fire, bells on their ankles. They started chanting and stomping their feet. I recognized it at once as the same dugso, the harvest dance of the Manobos of Bukidnon.

Bhutan was very feudal, the power vested in two families – the Wangchuks and the Dorjis. Shortly after I visited Bhutan, the King returned from Europe. Jigme Dorji was assassinated.

So many changes have come to Bhutan since then. Most important, the new king has established a new government, with a parliament. The King is concerned most with his country remaining green. Bhutan is the only country in the world that bans smoking. This, in a country where marijuana grows wild and in abundance. They use it to feed the pigs.

After all that plentiful trout in the streams, Dawa Tsering, my guide in the 1960s, became Finance Minister. He came to Manila years ago to attend an Asian Development Bank meeting, and he invited me to the King’s coronation. I told him that I would gladly go so I could fish. He said all that fish is gone. The Bhutanese had learned to eat trout.

My ties with Bhutan have been replaced by my son, Ephraim (Eddie). Way back, I introduced him to Tashila Dorji, with whom I had the warmest relations. Eddie spent 12 years in Japan specializing in the restoration of art, particularly on paper. Eddie set up an atelier in Bhutan where he taught the monks how to restore Bhutanese art, particularly the Tangka. These exquisitely crafted paintings are the result of acts of worship, performed by monks in Tibet, too. Years back, at our Solidaridad Galleries, we exhibited them.

Going to Bhutan no longer involves that perilous ride up the Himalayas; there is a regular flight by plane from Bangkok and organized tours which are rather expensive, limiting tourists. Looking at recent documentaries, I can see how Bhutan quickly modernized, with education most of all and with the gadgets and technologies. They even have a football team now.

Meanwhile, Bhutanese progress, as measured by their Gross National Happiness, is marred by the emergence of several problems, the growing number of Nepalese residents who seek employment and government benefits and yes, their increasing border problem with China. In 1960, only one dirt road connected the country, the solitary traffic consisted of a few jeeps. The universal plague of modernity now plagues Bhutan; a recent documentary showed a traffic jam.

Gross National Happiness is indeed a unique measure of people’s progress. The wonder of it all is that for this tiny state, it is still valid.