The kingdom of Bhutan is the most impenetrable country on earth. Already hidden behind mists, jungles and the Himalayan mountains, the last of the Shangri-las has deliberately isolated itself for centuries. Its once-closed neighbours, Nepal and Tibet, are common tourist destinations, writes Geoffrey Lean in the Observer Magazine on 18 November 1984. ‘But Bhutan remains a place that is, literally, out of this world: it apparently defies the maxims that guide the rest of the globe.’
It may be the second poorest country on earth, after Kampuchea [now Cambodia], according to the World Bank, yet it has no poverty, no unemployment and virtually no crime. As for work, 97% are subsistence farmers, most of whom use an ancient system of barter for their transactions. For leisure, archery is the national pastime; the evenings resound to the twang of bowstrings. Folk dances are a main form of entertainment.
‘The impression of having strayed into medieval Europe is all the stronger because it is so easy to relate to the people. The Bhutanese are a confident and efficient people, who make a special virtue of pragmatism and have an intellectual bias towards the arts.’
Jigme Singye Wangchuk, the ‘Dragon King,’ at 29, is the world’s youngest hereditary ruler. ‘Although we have a hereditary monarchy,’ said the shy bachelor monarch, ‘the way we function is more democratic than in any other country in the region.’
In theory. In practice, his nationalist assembly is more royalist than the king. When he tried to introduce a constitutional change to the assembly that would allow his leading advisers to criticise him, they protested. He only got it through by royal command.
Keenly aware of China’s occupation of Tibet, the forbidden kingdom took the precaution of joining the United Nations in 1971 ‘to remind the world it was there’. Today, it is now admitting 2,000 tourists a year to see the tiny kingdom for themselves.‘What most worries the king and his ministers is that foreigners might teach the Bhutanese to smoke marijuana… At present it is fed to pigs. ‘This makes the pigs happy, and us happy,’ says the foreign minister. Bhutan may be the one country where pigs do fly.
