Bhutan, the Fairy Tale Kingdom But It's Not a Fairy TalePrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
Bhutan has all the makings of a children’s book of fairy tales. But Bhutan is no fairy tale. It’s real.
Until recently Bhutan was truly a forbidden kingdom in the Himalayas. To visit the country a few years back was almost impossible unless, of course, one was invited by the king or else on a diplomatic mission. If you were a tourist, forget it. Aside from Bhutan being closed to the world, getting there was a problem. The only way to enter Bhutan by air was from Calcutta. This meant Bhutan had to rely upon India as its only gateway. Flights then were by a 16-seat Dornier 228 that flew from Calcutta and, due to the high altitude, pilots had to search the high Himalayan valleys for an opening in the clouds to land at Paro, the only airfield in Bhutan. Sometimes, if the pilot couldn’t find an opening, he had to return to Calcutta.
The government decided it needed a second gateway and turned to Bangkok for help. Thai International was called upon to send a team to Bhutan to investigate the possibility—aviation experts, an experienced hotelier and a couple of journalists to report on what they had found. At the time, there were less than 2000 visitors a year entering the country. I was one of the journalists invited to go.
Bhutan is again in the news. His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand celebrated his 60th year on the throne in June and royalty from around the world were invited. His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan sent his son, Crown Prince Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, to represent Bhutan. Every young Thai woman in Bangkok, and perhaps older ladies as well, felt heart palpitations when the prince arrived. He’s gone back home but now everyone is talking about visiting Bhutan. But, I hope it’s not for the chance of meeting a young, handsome prince. The prince, his father and mother, and his father’s other three wives (he married four sisters) are all sequestered in the palace leading private lives.
The good news is that Royal Orchid Holidays now has tour packages to Bhutan (ROHE24). This is the chance to make a fairy tale come true. This week I would like to tell readers something about this fabulous mountain kingdom from my own experience and next week tell readers how they can join a Royal Orchid Holiday tour.
I mentioned above that Thai Airways sent a small survey group to Bhutan to study the feasibility of opening Bangkok as an additional gateway. Our small team few to Calcutta and there boarded a Dornier 228 to fly us to Bhutan. I can’t remember ever being so excited. Our pilot, a retired Indian air force commander, found an opening in the clouds and landed us at Paro. A minibus awaited us at the terminal for a two-hour drive from the landing field at Paro to Thimpu, the capital. I found myself completely mystified by the whole experience. I found it hard to believe I was in Bhutan, the most remote kingdom in the world.
When you step from the plane at Paro and look around, you can’t help feeling a vast emptiness. High surrounding mountains seem to seal you in. A monastery with white walls is perched on a cliff. James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon is likely to come to mind. When he wrote about his mythical Shangri-La, the name he created, did he have Bhutan in mind?
And where else but Bhutan can you find such wonders? And no juke boxes, pool halls or neon lights. There are but 2,000 kilometres of roads and less than 5,000 vehicles. The country's biggest expenditure is maintaining the roads. *Bhutan is a country that functions without the rest of the world. It's self-supporting, we were told.
Two things will stand out, aside from the mountains, as you drive from Paro to Thimpu, the capital. They are the local dress and the architecture. Everyone, even the mechanics who work on refuelling the plane, wear the national dress. The men's costumes, called khos, are full-sleeved long robes which reach below the knees and are worn with a belt. Men don't wear trousers, only high stockings—Scottish plaid when they want to be stylish—and shoes. Women wear kiras, full length dresses, tied with a belt at the waist and held up by a pair of broaches at the shoulder. It's possible to tell from which area of the country the women come by the design of their skirts. The national dress is appealing to foreign eyes. You don't see local people in shabby, unsightly Western garments that have turned to rags. Even farmers in the field look neat.
The architecture is unlike any you have seen before. Houses are large, square buildings, made of tamped mud, stone, wood and clay. The outer walls are white-washed with raised roofs above the main structure. The roofs are shingled and are held in place by large stones evenly spaced apart. The stones prevent the shingles from being carried off by the strong winds that regularly sweep through the valleys.
The valley widens and Thimpu appears ahead. It’s a one-street town, built on the slope of a hill (there is little flat land in Bhutan). There are several hotels in the capital* but the favourite for visitors is the Motithan Hotel which overlooks Thimpu.
The real thrill of a visit to Bhutan is to take a motor trip into the countryside. We did just that on our second day and headed northeast, across the backbone of Bhutan, to Punakha, Tongsa and Bumthang. The road is one curve after another, and at times it's treacherous, with sheer drops of hundreds of metres into deep canyons below. Or could it be thousands! It appears that way when you look out the window, especially when another vehicle approaches and your driver has to give way, for the road is only one-way lane without guardrails. I found it best not to look. An army of Indian labourers work endlessly to keep the potholes filled and the landslides cleared. They do a remarkable job.
We crossed a high pass, where great Mongol hordes once marched through this east-west passage on the very first Silk Road. The pass is marked with hundreds of tall poles with white prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. These flags, seen on many distant hills, give the countryside an eerie animation.
Sheep, cows and even yaks feed along the roads. Their herders make no effort to shoo them away. At times you drive through the clouds. Villages are scattered, where old folk gaze and kids wave as you pass. The mountainsides are gardens of flowers; some trees in blossom look like exploding fireworks. Magnolias and rhododendrons predominate.
We arrived at Punakha, the old capital, and visited the monastery, and that afternoon reached Tongsa. The Tongsa Monastery, dating back to 1543, is impressive, built on the bank of the Mangde River. The monasteries, or dzong as they are called, are generally closed to visitors but lately they have been opening their doors to foreign tourists. Here at the Tongsa Monastery, cloistered behind thick walls, 700 monks live out their lives. Unlike in Thailand, Bhutanese monks are in the monk hood for life. Their robes are thick hand-woven cloth and dark-red. Monks do not shave their heads as they do in Burma and Thailand; they wear their hair clipped short.
The Tongsa Monastery is as impressive inside as it is from the outside. You can feel its great age as you walk across worn stone courtyards and step upon wide plank floors. Trankar-like paintings, some quite ancient, adorn the inner walls. Embroidered drapes hang from lofty ceilings and altars, with heavy silver trays and bowls, are flanked by enormous ivory tusks, cracked and yellowed with age. Pillars are square timbers and painted red. Huge wooden doors swing not on hinges but on pins. Chambers are dark and ladders that connect the levels are steep and menacing to climb. Everywhere are large brass bells and gongs. In small hidden side rooms, monks chant, doing their pujas, and in the stone courtyards blackbirds and crows disrupt the silence with the heavy flapping of their wings and their mocking cries.
The road to Bumthang is even more thrilling and nerve shattering. Bumthang is about as far as one can travel, back and forth, in a week’s time. That night in Bumthang, we sat around a log fire at the bar in our inn. We considered having a drink from one of the bottles behind the bar, all locally made, until we examined the names closer—Pure Malt Whiskey; Bhutan Mist; Magpie Apple Brandy; Khambu Spirits; Dragon XXX Rhum; and Jachung Brandy.
Eventually, after a week and a dozen monasteries and an estimated 12,000 curves, we arrived back in Thimpu. The town that first appeared so comically small when we arrived now loomed as big as Paris does to the farm boy seeing it for the first time. It's a welcoming sight. This was our chance to visit the market, watch the Bhutanese at their national sport of archery and have coffee and pastry at the Swiss Bakery.
We made one last visit to a cliff-side monastery, the one seen in all the photos, a few hours up the Paro Valley. It’s called Taktsang, meaning Tiger's Nest, and we had to travel by horseback—Mongolian pony—to reach it. It is built around a cave and clings dizzily to a sheer precipice.
Back at the airport at Paro, the weather was clear and we heard the plane before we saw it. It landed and we said our good-byes to the new friends we had made. We climbed aboard, roared down the runway, swerved to the left to miss a mountain ridge and turned south.
It was a quick, short seven days and, as we looked below, we watched the sharp peaks of Bhutan turn into rolling hills and then into the flat plains of India. We looked back and the snow-capped peaks of Bhutan vanished into the horizon. We wondered if it happened at all. Had we really discovered James Hilton's Shangri-La?
Next week we will learn how to reach Bhutan by Royal Orchid Holidays.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens. Is it possible to take the train to Chiang Mai and fly back to Bangkok? I would like to see some of the countryside. —Lessie Schafer, NYC
A. Dear Lessie. Yes, you can take the train to Chiang Mai and return by a THAI flight to Bangkok. But I hate to disappoint you. The train to Chiang Mai is a night train and there is not much to see in the dark. You could travel one way by bus, or by rented car. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
