8/20/2019 Holiday in Bhutan - Adventures in Bhutan
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Thunder Dragon: Adventures in Bhutan
It was a rocky little plane that takes us into Bhutan, but it
strength as well has been
one of the nation’s eponymous thunder dragons. I’ll never
disregard the way the
scenery looked from above: the colorful, tiered houses
increasing like paper lanterns
out of the fog and the splendid blue pines crowning each hill
side mountain ridge.
One of my guy American students twisted to the pleasantlooking
central point aged
woman sitting ne!t to her and said in disbelief, "#ou live
here$% &he woman smiled a
bashful but deeply warm beam that I would come to be familiar
with as distinctly
Bhutanese and nodded, pleased by our charm.
I hadn’t heard much about Bhutan before I decided to study
abroad. it turned out,
neither had most people: only once or twice did I tell someone
where I was headed
and hear anything other than "Bhutan$ 'here’s that$% Bhutan is a
small country,
about the si(e of Ohio, situated between )hina and India. *nown
for its concept of
"+ross ational -appiness,% it’s also the only country to declare
itself //0 organic,
and 1 interestingly enough 1 the only country in the world
without a single tra2c
light, even in its capital. 3In case you were wondering, tra2c
in 4aro is directed by
an enthusiastic and e!tremely welldressed tra2c cop.5
6or the foremost week of our stay, we traveled the state in a
giant bus that
careened around the heart stopping curves of Bhutan’s slender
and mountainous
highways with shocking speed, honking when it accepted another
means of
transportation or a group of grinning children playing in the
potholes. 'e visited
museums and temples, holy sites and wildlife preserves. 'e
sightseeing and meet
Bhutan’s national wild animal, the taken, a modest creature that
appears to have
resulted from the union of a moose and 7chnau(er.
'e went to stupas where little old women sat revolving prayer
wheels and chanting,
indi8erent for hours. 'e visited a dress shop, somewhere each of
us was prepared
with conventional Bhutanese garb: for the women it was kiras, a
kind of embellished
9acket paired with an unbearably tight wrap skirt. 3I
never did uite learn the trick of
tie these, which didn’t con;rm to be a problem, as there were
forever chuckling
Bhutanese women around to drag you into a corner, halfundress
you, and retie
your skirt correctly.5
&he mainstream of our program was spent at the
