Bhutan

Bhutan was unified in the seventeenth century by Ngawang Namgyal, a Tibetan lama who fled sectarian conflict, repelled Tibetan invasions, and built the network of dzongs — fortress-monasteries — that still dominate every major valley. He created a dual system of religious and civil government that outlasted him by centuries.

The Treaty of Sinchula of 1865, after Bhutan lost the Duar War, ceded the Bengal Duars in return for an annual payment, and the Treaty of Punakha of 1910 had Bhutan accept British guidance in its foreign affairs in exchange for non-interference; newly independent India took over that role under a treaty signed in 1949. The Wangchuck dynasty was founded in 1907, when Ugyen Wangchuck became the first hereditary "Dragon King." Bhutan stayed closed and largely feudal — roads, schools, and hospitals arrived only from the 1960s, and television and the internet were legalised as late as 1999.

The fourth king voluntarily steered the country to constitutional democracy, abdicating in favour of his son in December 2006, and the first parliamentary elections and a written constitution followed in 2008. A darker chapter runs alongside this: in the late 1980s and 1990s, citizenship laws and a "one nation, one people" policy targeting the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa of the south led to crackdowns and the flight or expulsion of roughly 100,000 people, most of whom spent about two decades in refugee camps in Nepal before resettlement abroad.

Vajrayana Buddhism saturates daily life. Prayer flags line every ridge, prayer wheels turn in the streets, and the year is punctuated by tsechu festivals of masked cham dances re-enacting the deeds of Guru Rinpoche, credited with bringing Buddhism to Bhutan in the eighth century. Monasteries and monks are woven into the fabric of the country.

National dress is worn widely and required in official settings: the knee-length gho for men, the ankle-length kira for women, with a ceremonial scarf whose colour marks rank inside a dzong. Houses are built of rammed earth and painted timber, sometimes with a large phallus image on the wall for protection, a motif linked to an eccentric fifteenth-century saint.

Archery is the national sport, boisterous and social, and reverence for the king runs deep. Karma, rebirth, and merit-making frame how many Bhutanese understand misfortune and good luck alike.

Bhutan has about 800,000 people, most of them farmers in the temperate valleys growing rice, buckwheat, potatoes, apples, and chillies, or herders in the high country. Thimphu, the capital, is the only real city, and one of only two national capitals in the world with no traffic lights — a traffic policeman directs the cars by hand instead.

The state is guided by the idea of Gross National Happiness, an official development philosophy that weighs culture, environment, and wellbeing alongside economic growth. The country is committed to keeping at least 60 percent of its land under forest cover, and its forests absorb far more carbon than the country emits, making it carbon-negative.

Hydropower sold to India is the main export earner, along with tourism. Life is slow-paced and communal, organised around the farming year, the local temple, and the dzong that serves as both monastery and district administration.

Chillies are treated as a vegetable rather than a seasoning. The national dish is ema datshi — chillies stewed in a soft, tangy cheese sauce — with variants made from potato (kewa datshi), mushroom (shamu datshi), or pork. Bhutanese red rice, nutty and the only rice that grows at these altitudes, is the staple.

Other common dishes are phaksha paa (dried pork cooked with chillies, spices and radish or turnip), jasha maru (a chicken dish), momos (dumplings), and buckwheat noodles and dumplings in Bumthang, where buckwheat rather than rice is the mainstay. A fiery chilli relish called ezay sits on most tables. Dairy matters as much as meat: datshi, the home-made cheese, goes into everything, and rock-hard cubes of dried cheese called chhurpi are chewed through the day.

Salty butter tea (suja) and locally brewed ara, a home-made spirit of rice or maize, are the traditional drinks, alongside milk tea and beer.

Paro Taktsang, the "Tiger's Nest," is the country's defining image: a monastery built into a cliff 900 metres above the valley floor, where Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated, reached by a steep uphill hike.

The dzongs are the other great sight. Punakha Dzong, at the meeting of two rivers and framed by jacaranda in spring, is the most admired, and the site of coronations and royal weddings; Trongsa Dzong is the largest, strung along a ridge; and Paro and Thimphu have their own. The Bumthang valleys in the centre are the spiritual heartland, dense with ancient temples and buckwheat fields.

The drives are part of the experience — the Dochu La, on the road from Thimphu to Punakha, with its 108 memorial chortens and its Himalayan panorama on a clear day, and the Chele La, at 3,988 metres the highest motorable point in the country. Phobjikha Valley, a broad marshy bowl, is where black-necked cranes spend the winter, arriving in the last week of October at the Gangteng monastery.