Interesting Bhutan

I continue to be amazed at the range of farm produce and flowers.  They grow pineapples and bananas here!  Marigolds grow into bushes.  And the temperature is in the 70's and 80's in late October.  Finally, our expert guide pointed out that Bhutan is at the same latitude as Morocco.  As she put it:  the latitude makes up for the altitude.

Our expert guide, Francoise, is a French woman who was born and raised in the Congo.  She came to Bhutan forty five years ago for a two months backpacking trip and never left except to get her PhD and become one of the foremost experts on Bhutan.  On our long bus rides, she lectures us on history, culture, and economics, and she explains the significance and symbolism of the dances and costumes.  Bhutan does not allow dual citizenship; if you want to become a citizen, you must give up your original citizenship.  But France does not allow one to renounce their citizenship.  Francoise is considered such a national treasure that she is one of a handful of people who were given Bhutanese citizenship although she is still a French citizen.

Several mountain peaks in Bhutan are well over 24,000 feet, with Gangkhar Puensum, the tallest at 24,836 feet.  It is also the tallest unclimbed mountain in the world because Bhutan does not allow mountaineering in order to protect the sacred nature of the mountains.  Also, as Francoise put it:  we saw what mountaineering did to Nepal.  We were lucky enough to have a clear day when we went over one of the passes and you can see snow covered Gangkhar Puensum in the back.

Bhutan lies in the Himalayas but the people live in the valleys between the mountains.  Most of the people live in the western and central parts of the country while the high peaks are in the north on the borders with China and Tibet.  To the far south on the border with India are lowlands where there are elephants, tigers, and a species of rhino, but we have only seen yaks. The valleys are at 5,000 to 8,000 feet and you travel between them by narrow switchback roads that climb to more than 10,000 feet before dropping into the next valley.  

Most surprisingly, the population of Bhutan is 750,000 thousand people!  In an area the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined!  Bhutan had to lie to the UN to become admitted as the UN apparently requires a minimum population of one million.  (Those of you who know my sense of direction - or lack thereof - will be shocked, shocked I tell you, that I was completely wrong in an earlier post when I said we were traveling from eastern to central Bhutan.  We landed in the west and were traveling to the center.  I wondered why the sun was in the wrong place in the sky.  :)

According to Francoise, Bhutan is a hotbed for linguistics as they speak nineteen languages here, only three of which are written languages.  She said that they are all distinct languages, not dialects, and some are only spoken by one or two thousand people.  She also said that only one of the languages is Indo-European in origin and the others are from the Trans-Himalayan family.  There is a national language now that is used in the schools, Dzongkha (I think it is the Indo-European one), and our local guides said it is similar to Tibetan.  But, they explained, the Bhutanese changed the language enough that Tibetans cannot understand Bhutanese, but the Bhutanese can understand Tibetan.  I got lost at this point; I can't understand anything.

Bhutan is a constitutional democracy with a beloved king and queen.  The king's official roles are to lead the army and to distribute land to the people, but he seems more involved than that.  Personal freedom does not seem to be valued here as there are very strict rules for a lot of things.  The reason the houses are so distinctive looking is that there is only one style of architecture that is allowed!  A ban on mountaineering!  And a national dress code!  Rules on immigration are extremely tough.  The spouse of a Bhutanese person cannot necessarily become a citizen and their children may not either.  Thousands of Indians work in Bhutan in construction and fairly menial jobs, but they cannot become citizens.

Our guide, Karchung, invited us to his house today for tea and to meet his wife.  He builds furniture himself, but hired a painter to hand paint the outside walls.  He also has a beautiful altar in one room that he had made to his specification.  It is not clear to me if people "pray" in the sense that we understand it, but he and his wife are in the process of completing 100,000 prostrations.  She is up to 70,000 and showed us the callouses on her hands.