Bhutan – Land of the Thunder Dragon

A  country where a smile is more valuable than the penny in your pocket, where Gross National Happiness which works on the four pillars of preserving and promoting national culture, preserving the environment, sustainability and good governance  is used for reviewing policy decisions and allocation of resources, and this is reflected by the people there who are very kind, generous and happy.

Bhutan lies between India and China two biggest countries of Asia and whose economy mainly depends on selling hydro power electricity to India has a cultural identity of its own, although its national language is Dzongkha almost everyone can understand Hindi and English. People respect their culture and tradition and you can find everyone in their traditional dress, men wearing “gho” which is a knee length robe tied at waist by a belt known as kera, and women wearing “kira” which is an ankle length dress, wrapped and folded around the body and is worn with “wonju”  a long sleeved blouse.

Host to some of the most difficult treks in world Bhutan is home to some of the highest peeks. If you are not an Indian or Bangladeshi you will be charged $250 per day to awestruck by the beauty of Bhutan, its not that Bhutan dosen’t support tourism it is one of the major source for their income but they want to keep their beauty and culture intact and preserve Bhutan as a marvel in todays world.

We arrived in Bhutan from jaigaon which is about 27 km from the nearest railway station Hasimara in West Bengal. just after crossing the borderline, there is visible contrast and one can find himself in a new world where streets are not littered, there’s no overcrowding and everyone is happy enjoying their life and helping others. Being an Indian resident there were no VISA formalities for us we easily got a permit to explore Bhutan for 6 days by producing our passport or voter id card. There were a lot of taxi which you can hire or share to travel to Thimphu the capital of Bhutan and the drivers are so helpful that they will not hesitate to drop everyone of you to your respective hotel. We started from Phuentsholing to Thimphu at around 4 o’clock after exchanging our currency to Bhutanese ngultrum, which is 5 hour drive and stopped at D2K restaurant in between to have a bite of tasteful Bhutanese dishes, and thus started our journey to dig into the land of Thunder Dragon 🙂