Have you ever woken up to the realization that you are helplessly being pulled along with rest of the world in a mad, mad race of buying, selling, producing, mind-zapping media images, headlines, deadlines? Entire cultures and ecosystems are disappearing even as you read this while, all around you, the grip of a collective worldwide transformation gnaws at your conscience. Globalization is gobble-isation. Now, here’s the good news. There is escape from this madness.
Welcome to Bhutan, or Drukyul, as its people call it, the Land of the Peaceful Thunder Dragon. Snuggled in the folds of the eastern Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world, Bhutan is a country where Buddhist practice is everyday life, marijuana grows wild, and the government measures development in terms of Gross National Happiness. Here, traditional values, environmental preservation and good governance take precedence over economic development. Conventional economic practices are considered delusional. No, the Bhutanese are not closet communists.
Often called “The Last Shangrila (paradise),” Bhutan is the travel world’s best kept secret, a pocket of calmness wedged between the two most populated and larger countries, India and China. It is the only nation that has adopted Vajrayana Buddhism as a state religion and, with 70% of the land area under forest cover, has been marked as one of the world’s 10 biodiversity ‘hotspots’ along with the Amazon rainforests of South America and the Serengetti plains of Africa.