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Land of the Thunder Dragon (Or, less mythical, "Land of the Friendly Dogs")

Visiting Bhutan

Annette
2005-08-29 18:40:32

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Clear, crisp air. A night sky that appears close enough to touch.

Stars in such profusion that I wonder if I should take up astronomy.

Clean streams, sparkling waterfalls and forests that stretch throughout

the country, from valley bottoms to way above snow level.

Dark, slightly menacing Yaks cross mountain roads and climb steep hillsides

with surprising agility in spite of their massive weight.

Birds circle overhead, smoothly gliding in thin mountain air...

And the dogs! Dogs, dogs everywhere! It is almost becoming a constant theme on my travels, my private study of the nature of a country's dogs. Are they nice? Are they mean little yappers? I can say without reserve that Bhutan's dogs deserve the title of the World's Most Friendly Dogs. That, coming from me, decidedly a cat-woman if a choice has to be made, is praise of the highest order. Indeed, the dogs are so passive that they were in great danger of being stepped on by a certain gawking foreigner, oblivious to man's best friend sleeping on a sunny spot anywhere, the color of their fur blending into the countryside. Actually, there is a Bhutanese belief about the dogs: They are viewed as the incarnation closest to mankind, to be reborn as man. It therefore behooves people to treat them nicely; so they do and dogs repay this kind treatment by being equally pleasant!

Those are the first impressions of Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom south of Tibet. It barely stretches 200 miles from East to West, and about 100 miles from North to South. Around 600 000 people live in Bhutan, which is often referred to as "Shangri-La". The national language is "Dzonga", related to Tibetan. English is widely spoken, along with Nepali. The few roads that wind through the mountains were built as recently as the 1960s. Before that time, Bhutan was virtually impossible to penetrate. The British ...