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    Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon
    Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon
    Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon
    Ebook134 pages2 hours

    Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon

    By Martin Uitz

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    About this ebook

    In 2006 Time magazine listed the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, as one of the 100 "leaders and revolutionaries" who are changing our world today. Yet it was only in the 1960s that the first road linking the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon with India was opened, and since 1974 only a strictly limited number of tourists have been allowed to visit each year. Martin Uitz, a renowned expert on Bhutan, describes how the Bhutanese, in pursuit of the principle of "Gross National Happiness", are carefully moving towards a more modern future, including a constitution and democracy, whilst preserving their traditional society and attempting to conserve the environment. Uitz made many fascinating discoveries in this enigmatic Kingdom. He was able to explain why the only traffic light was taken out of service, why six men are not allowed to go on a journey together, and what the subtle eroticism of a traditional hot-stone bath is all about. Along the way he also discovered that the Bhutanese hills are more alive with Edelweiss than the hills around his native Salzburg.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHaus Publishing
    Release dateFeb 13, 2017
    ISBN9781907973321
    Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon

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    • 2/5
      Although I found in very difficult to take this author seriously (after having read about his complaints of Bhutan, 2nd important of which was that one can't get pumpernickel in Bhutan!), there is some useful information on Bhutan in this book.

    Book preview

    Hidden Bhutan - Martin Uitz

    Glossary

    Why there are No Traffic Lights in Thimphu

    Tales from one of the smallest capitals in the world

    He must be one of the most photographed Bhutanese in the world – the ballet dancer with the white gloves, the dapper uniform and the military helmet. The policeman who directs the traffic at Thimphu’s busiest intersection from beneath a tiny pill-box is an artist. His hand movements are precisely studied and truly reminiscent of ballet. And his gaze is piercing; with it he signals to drivers with a single glance whether they should stop or go.

    Thimphu must be the only capital in the world where there are no traffic lights. No one misses them, for the smartly turned-out policeman is far better suited to the city’s leisurely traffic conditions than faceless electronics.

    It seems that the city’s planners did once want to install a set of lights at this intersection in the city centre near the main square, but they gave up when it met with resistance from the city’s inhabitants. Certainly the tourists know which they prefer – during the season, dozens stand at the intersection with their cameras and capture this uniformed artist’s movements on film and video.

    It is hard to say how much longer this idyll is likely to last. Thimphu’s volume of traffic has at least tripled over the last five years. Though traffic lights offer no competition to the likeable policeman, he’s likely to have trouble with the air quality if Thimphu ever sees anything like a rush hour at nine o’clock in the morning or five o’clock in the afternoon.

    The volume of traffic increases dramatically when thousands of officials and civil servants go to work or return home at the same time of day. In winter they finish work as early as four o’clock in the afternoon, in the warm summer months at five, and from one to two they have their lunch break. Bhutan’s public employees take their office hours very seriously; few work overtime – which in any case is not considered a sign of particular dedication.

    I had wanted to stay on at my office at the end of the working day, where I found it easier to search the Internet and concentrate on complicated work. But when I asked my official counterpart for the key to the building where we both work for the Bhutanese government, I got the following piece of advice; ‘It doesn’t look good if there’s a light on in your room after work. People here tend to think that anyone unable to finish his work during office hours is badly organised or has something to hide.’

    Thimphu remains a bureaucratic centre; the majority of those who are not self-employed work for the state administration or one of the big nationalised firms. The rhythm of life of this majority determines that of the city. Anyone working in the private sector will often be standing behind the counter or sitting at their desks twelve hours a day. For, apart from their lunch hours, these workers will know of the bureaucracy’s office hours only by hearsay. Businesses stay open seven days a week, opening at nine o’clock in the morning at the latest and rarely shutting before eight at night.

    By contrast, government employees are only too fond of taking the day off. On top of an impressive twenty-four national holidays, there are also religious festivals, such as the traditional tsechus. Then there are the occasional days off that are announced ad hoc, news of which spreads like wildfire. When the country’s much-loved Queen Mother died, His Majesty personally decreed three days of mourning on dates determined by the astrologers. While other kinds of information can sometimes take a very long time to travel around all the government departments, news about unanticipated days off generally does the rounds with breathtaking speed.

    Though the city lies 2,500 metres above sea level, snow is rare in Thimphu. One January morning, when the city lay resplendent beneath a couple of centimetres of freshly fallen snow, I decided to walk to my morning meeting at the Ministry of the Economy. On Thimphu’s steep streets traffic had come to a standstill; there was no snow clearance service, no one was responsible for keeping the streets open, so I left my car and enjoyed a thirty-minute walk through the wintry city from the residential suburb of Motithang to the steep roads below the city centre. I arrived punctually outside the Ministry’s main gates, only to find them closed. By way of explanation, passers-by greeted me with a ‘Happy Snow Day’ – didn’t I know that the winter’s first day of snowfall had spontaneously been declared a national holiday? Indeed, the entire city seemed to be celebrating; since early morning people had been calling each other frenziedly to pass on the news about the unexpected day off, and to make sure that no one inadvertently showed up for work.

    On top of this, every Bhutanese must celebrate religious ceremonies called pujas several times a year. On these occasions, monks are summoned to the house, for a suitable fee, and generally spend the next three days praying for the client’s health, spiritual welfare and material prosperity. Family, friends and neighbours are invited to attend these rituals. Obviously employers give individual employees days off work so they can carry out these obligations. Add to this the legally-determined four weeks’ holiday a year, and Bhutan’s government employees probably enjoy the highest numbers of days off in the world.

    Thimphu is undoubtedly one of the smallest capitals in the world, but in recent years the Thunder Dragon’s metropolis may also have become one of the fastest growing cities on earth. According to the census of 2005, almost 100,000 out of Bhutan’s 634,000 inhabitants already live in the district of Thimphu, with about 70,000 of them in the city itself.

    Among Bhutan’s peasant population the dream of becoming rich in the city remains strong, although Thimphu could hardly be said to offer unlimited opportunities or metropolitan flair. There is a cinema, a theatre but no concert hall, a single covered sports hall, a swimming pool that has been closed for years, until recently no supermarket, no shopping malls and a very limited nightlife. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that this little city is on the verge of breaking out of its constraints, not least because of all the building that is going on in every part of it.

    The city’s small size allows it to recognise in advance the problems faced by other capitals in developing countries, and to solve them with foresight and planning. Thus Thimphu has no slums, an effective network of sewers, a bio-friendly sewage treatment plant set up with Danish help, good electricity and telephone services, cable TV, a modest, though reliable, network of state-run buses, functioning refuse collection and a system of traffic planning which makes it clear that the authorities have prepared for the city’s expected growth.

    Since 2006, six kilometres of motorway have linked the centre of the city with the National Highway, which connects Bhutan with India. Bhutan’s first four-lane road has been proudly named the ‘Express Highway’. It is true that the completion of the bridges has been delayed, and you still have to negotiate your way across the single-lane temporary pontoons, but that only increases the charm of the journey along the few kilometres that have already been completed. Lacking experience with the marvels of this kind of road building, Thimphu’s car-owners enthusiastically drive in both directions along the new motorway, naturally on both sides of the central reservation, which is illuminated at night with colourfully flashing lights. There are no problems with drivers driving on the wrong side of the road, since oncoming traffic is present on both sides and in all directions. Even the planners’ intention that people only drive on and off the Express Highway at three designated points has had to succumb to the realities of local driving habits.

    There are even short-stay parking zones in Thimphu, thereby solving two problems at one stroke: for years now, more than a hundred under-qualified school leavers have been able to find jobs as parking attendants – and long-term parking in the city centre is now a thing of the past, since for every half an hour’s parking the young officials charge five ngultrum. This can elicit startling athletic achievements on their part, for they must watch their prey with eagle eyes and sprint across to those drivers trying to sneak out of the zone without paying. ‘It’s a tough job, and you can never let up,’ is how one young woman described the daily game of cat-and-mouse with her

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