94. Bhutan: Understanding One of the World's Most Unique Countries

It didn't open to tourists until nineteen seventy four. It didn't get television until nineteen ninety nine, and somewhere in between closing itself off and cautiously letting the world in, it invented a very unique philosophy that economists, philosophers, and policymakers have been arguing about ever since.

But here's the thing about Bhutan. The happiness framework is the part that people talk about, but it's not the whole story. In my studies, I found that this is a country with monks and fortress monasteries and a king who wears robes. And everyone still wears traditional dress by law, and archery is the national sport, and chili is a food group. It is also an imperfect history with a few dark chapters as well. There's a lot to Bhutan, so let's learn about it.

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Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash wiserworld for free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash wiserworld. So today we're going to Bhutan, one of the most unique countries on earth. And as always, we're gonna start with geography, and then we'll talk a little bit about modern Bhutan, the economy, the language, the religion, and then we'll move to the history.

But please know that this is by no means comprehensive. There is so much to Bhutan. There's just no way I could cover it all in one episode. Let this be a jumping off point for your learning because there's just so much more. to learn. And I give you some of those resources at at Patreon, which is patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast.

I share extra resources with you. Patreon is especially helpful if we're talking about a country you know very little about. So you get to see maps, photos, videos that we've found for you to better understand what's in the episode. If you're short on time and you don't want to click on everything, just scrolling a Patreon post can give you a better idea of what you're listening to in this episode. You can also buy Patreon posts.

a la carte, which is pretty cool. You can also follow me on Instagram at WiserWorld Podcast or sign up for my free weekly email newsletter at wiserworld.com. And in this episode I do my best with pronunciation. But I know that I am not perfect at pronunciation. I do not speak zonga and therefore I do my best. I looked up every word I tried, but I do make a few errors. So bear with me, I'm doing my best.

All right, let's start with where Bhutan is. So it's a small country. It's about the size of Switzerland, or roughly the size of Indiana in the United States. It sits high in the eastern Himalayas. It's tucked between India and Tibet. What makes Bhutan especially interesting is that the entire country changed dramatically or changes dramatically as you travel from north to south. So in the north you find the great Himalayas, huge towering peaks.

glaciers high alpine valleys where yaks spend their summers grazing. Bhutan's highest mountain is Gankar Puensum, and it's 7,500 meters, around 24,800 feet above sea level, and it is the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. Bhutan has never allowed anyone to summit it, partly because the mountain is considered sacred, and partly because the government simply decided that some places should be left alone.

If you move south, you reach the lesser Himalayas, where most Bhutanese people live. Here, broad river valleys cut through the mountains, the climate is mild enough to grow rice, wheat, apples, Nearly every valley seems to have a zong, which is a massive fortress monastery, watching over it from a hilltop or riverside. We'll talk a lot more about zongs in a second.

Then down along the Indian border, the landscape changes again, and the southern dwarfs is a region and it's low, it's hot, it's humid, it's covered in subtropical forests, and it's very lush and green, very different from those Himalayan peaks in the north. Bhutan's population is really, really small, just under eight hundred thousand people, roughly the same as San Francisco.

About 70% of Bhutanese still live in rural villages. The capital city, Timpu, is the country's largest urban center, but everyone who travels there says it feels remarkably relaxed compared to most national capitals. Bhutan's economy rests on two big ideas, hydropower and restraint. And the country's rivers flow down some of the steepest mountains in the world. Which really creates ideal conditions for generating hydroelectricity. Bhutan produces far more electricity than it needs.

and sells much of the surplus to India. Those rivers help fund schools, roads, healthcare, and a significant portion of the national budget. And that income has given Bhutan something very, very unique. It's something that smaller, less wealthy countries typically don't have, and that's room to be selective about growth. And rather than pursuing rapid industrialization or mass tourism, Bhutan has deliberately chosen a slower path.

Tourism is tightly controlled through a sustainable development fee, which currently costs most visitors visitors about$100 per day. This was lowered in 2024, so the fee was even higher before then. The goal is what Bhutan calls high value, low impact tourism, fewer visitors, less environmental damage, more economic benefit per traveler. By global standards, Bhutan is still a lower middle income country with GDP per capita around$3,700.

At the same time, healthcare and education are free to the public, and the government tends to measure success using a broader set of metrics than just economic growth alone. We'll talk more about that later, I promise. One other fact I think is worth mentioning is that Bhutan is the world's only carbon negative country. More than seventy percent of the country is still forested.

And its constitution actively requires at least 60% forest cover forever. Those forests absorb more carbon than the country produces. And I just think that is incredible. The official language of Bhutan is Zonka. It is a language closely related to Tibetan and is written using the same script. It became the national language in 1961 and is the primary language of the Ngalap people who form the country's largest ethnic group.

But Bhutan is linguistically diverse. Different valleys have their own dialects and languages, and English is widely taught in schools, commonly used in government and business. And a significant minority of Bhutanese are the Lunshampa. And this is a group of people of Nepali heritage whose first language is Nepali. And in the late nineteen eighties, the government ended Nepali language instruction in schools as part of a campaign to promote a single national culture.

That policy became one piece of a much larger, more controversial story we'll come back to later. But that is a significant minority group in Bhutan.

You know, to really understand Bhutan, you have to have some understanding of Buddhism. So Bhutan's official religion is the Vajrayana Buddhism. It's a branch of the Buddhist tradition that traces its roots to the teachings of Guru Rinpoche. Now, according to Bhutanese tradition, he brought Buddhism to the Himalayas in the eighth century, and his influence is still everywhere. You know, you walk into almost any monastery in Bhutan, you'll find his image. This is Guru Rimpolche.

And in the history section I'll talk more about this unique type of Buddhism and how it works, but to set the stage for that, I think it's important to know that religion is very woven into everyday life in Bhutan. The monasteries, the zongs, Are also government buildings. Monks live and study there while civil servants work in offices down the hall.

You'll see prayer flags draped across mountain passes, river crossings, ridgelines throughout the country. These are not decorative. Each flag carries prayers and blessings, and as the wind moves through them, those blessings are believed to spread outward into the world. One of the most spectacular expressions of Bhutanese Buddhism is the annual Xiechu Festival.

The most famous is held in the city of Paro each spring, and it draws thousands of people from across the country, and for several days monks and performers dance elaborate masked dances called chamdances, And some dancers appear as angry deities, others as protective spirits. They use music, movement, symbolism to retell stories about compassion, wisdom, enlightenment, and the triumph of good over evil.

And then comes the festival's biggest moment before dawn on that final day, the monks unfurl a giant, sacred, silk religious painting. That can be several stories tall. And it remains on display for only a few hours before being rolled up again. And many Bhutanese believe simply seeing it brings spiritual merit and blessings.

Now if you visit Bhutan and you don't like spicy food, you're you may be in for a rough time. The national dish is called ema dachi, which translates literally to chili and cheese. And when Bhutanese people say chili, they mean actual chilies? Not like a little spice sprinkled on top, like the chilies are the meal. So Emma Dachi is made by simmering fresh or dried chilies in a rich sauce of cheese and butter and serving it over rice. And that is usually Bhutan's distinctive red rice.

You add potatoes and then it becomes kewa dachi. If you add mushrooms or spinach you'll get other variations, but the basic formula is the same. It's cheese, chilies, and more chilies. And outside the Dachshi family, Bhutan shares some culinary DNA with its Himalayan neighbors. So you'll find momos, which are steamed dumplings.

stuffed with meat or vegetables, or thukba, which is a hearty noodle soup that's perfect, you know, for cold days in the mountains. There's also suja or butter tea. It's made from tea leaves, yak butter, and salt. Most first-time visitors I learned often really don't know what to make of it. It's very rich, savory, surprisingly filling. At high altitude it makes a lot of sense at sea level. It can be kind of a shock.

It is a homemade spirit distilled from grains like rice, wheat, or corn. Depending on where you are, it might be served warm, cold, mixed with ingredients like a butter or egg. Bhutanese people also drink chang, which is a lightly fermented grain beer. It's common throughout the whole Himalayan region. Also, archery is Bhutan's national sport. Calling a sport seems to undersell it. An archery match is like part athletic competition, but also part community gathering, part performance.

Like competitors sing and the spectators dance and opponents exchange elaborate taunts and I'm gonna share more about this on Patreon, but it's like a sporting event that feels more like a festival, which I think is really fun. Whenever people talk about Bhutan, the conversation eventually turns to gross national happiness.

And I think one of the questions about that, is it actually real? Is Bhutan genuinely trying to organize society around human well being? Or is that just a clever marketing slogan? The answer I think is a little bit complicated. We'll talk more about in the history section. But I think some parts of the philosophy are undeniably real. So if we're looking at this from a cultural perspective, traditional dress is not just reserved for holidays or cultural performances in Bhutan.

Bhutanese citizens are expected to wear the go and the kira in government offices. If you want to see what those look like, you can find that online, or you can also look at Patreon. I'll share that. They need to wear those at school, formal settings, many public institutions. And the policy was dis was designed to strengthen a shared national identity. And one consequence is that traditional weaving remains a living craft.

In Bhutan, unlike in most places around the world where it's more of a historical artifact, which I I think that's really exceptional. The Buddhist influence is also very real. Monasteries are central to community life. Monks play an important role in society. Prayer flags are very, very popular. And for tourists, you know, that's definitely part of what is sold on the internet about Bhutan. And that's for a good reason. The country's environmental commitments are also quite concrete.

So, forest protection is very important. We talked about that. Rivers remain very, very clean. Bhutan has consistently chosen to limit certain forms of development in order to preserve its ecosystem. But the story does not end there because while Bhutan's achievements are very real, so are its tensions and contradictions, some

You know, the same government that championed gross national happiness also has faced criticism over questions about cultural identity or minority rights or citizenship. And that's where Bhutan's history becomes especially important. So let's talk about it.

So Bhutan calls itself Drukyul, which means the land of the thunder dragon. And that's because when a storm rolls through these Himalayan valleys, the sound of thunder bounces off the mountains in a way that's really dramatic. And the ancient Bhutanese heard that sound and decided it was a powerful protective dragon.

That dragon is on the national flag. The national airline is called Druk Air. The people themselves are the Drukpah, the Dragon people. So this is a country that commits to its metaphors. And we talked earlier about how most of Bhutan is mountains and then the valleys between those mountains are where most people live.

So that's where almost everything in Bhutanese history has happened. People have been living in those valleys for a really, really long time, possibly as far back as two thousand BC. The historical record in that era is really, really thin.

But what historians do believe is that the earliest known organized society in the region was called the Loman, which is like translated to southern darkness. The original inhabitants are a people called the Monpa, and their descendants are still part of Bhutan today. Agriculture came early and it was very practical. Rice, maize, millet,

Most likely spreading into the region of southern China, northeastern India. Because so much of Bhutan is steep, mountainside, and narrow valley, these early farmers practiced what's called shifting cultivation. So you clear a patch of forest. You farm it for a few years until the soil is tired, then you move on, you let it recover. And in terrain like Bhutans, this makes a lot of sense.

Now, before Buddhism arrived, the people of Bhutan practiced something called burn. It's an indigenous religious tradition that's animistic and shamanistic at its core. Now, what does that mean in plain language? It basically means that they believed the world around them was alive with spiritual forces. Mountains, rivers, forests, specific rocks, specific trees, all of it potentially inhabited by spirits or deities.

that could help you or harm you depending on how you treated them. So through rituals and offerings, you stayed on their good side. What I find compelling about Vern is how grounded and practical it was. You wanted good harvest, you wanted healthy children, you wanted protection from illness, you wanted a long life.

And in a mountain environment where bad weather or a failed crop really could be very catastrophic, religion was fundamentally about managing your relationship with the forces that seem to control whether you survive. You can still find traces of burn woven into Bhutanese life today. There's offerings made to local spirits, certain rituals and festivals. Buddhism eventually has become very dominant, but it didn't erase everything that came before it just kind of layered on top of it.

The first physical signs of Buddhism in Bhutan are two big giant temples. Tradition holds that they were built in the seventh century by a Tibetan emperor who was one of the great early patrons of Buddhism across the Himalayan world. But the person who really shaped what Buddhism looks like in Bhutan arrived about a century later. His influence is still felt everywhere. Now in Bhutan, he is called Guru Rinpoche, which means precious teaching.

He was an Indian Buddhist master and he traveled through the Himalayas in the eighth century, spreading a form of Buddhism called Vajrayana. This tradition is very rich in ritual, symbolism. contemplative practice and when he arrived in Bhutan, tradition says that he flew there on the back of a tigress, a female tiger, and meditated in a cave on the face of a cliff above the Paro Valley. That cave is now one of the most famous sites in Asia. It's called the Tiger's Nest.

and it sits nearly nine hundred meters above the valley floor. It clings to this sheer rock face and it is one of the most dramatic pieces of architecture you'll ever see in your life. It remains one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in Bhutan. It's visited by thousands of people every year. Now, the Buddhism that he brought with him, that's the Vajrayana,

Buddhism is worth a little extra explanation because it's distinct enough from what most people, at least in Western cultures, picture when they think of Buddhism. When most people in the West think of Buddhism, they're probably thinking something fairly spir spare Meditative among sitting really quietly, breathing. That's a real tradition. It's one branch of a much larger tree.

But Vajrayana is a different branch. It developed in India again. It spread through Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, and it has a lot of ritual imagery and symbolism involved. So if you walk into a Vajrayana temple, you're probably going to see elaborate murals covering every wall. You're gonna see statues of deities in fierce, multi armed forms, butter lamps burning in rows, probably the sound of horns, drums, chanting, monks in robes, very deep red robes.

performing rituals with precise and deliberate movements. So From what I can gather, it's intentional complexity. And the idea is that the mind is hard to transform. Sitting quietly and thinking your way to enlightenment works for some people, but most of us need more than that. And Vajrayana uses sound, image, movement, visualization, symbols as tools to work on the mind from multiple directions at once.

There is also a strong emphasis on the teacher student relationship. So in Vajrayana, you don't just pick up a book and figure it out yourself. You receive teachings directly from a qualified teacher called a llama. who transmits not just that information, but like this living lineage of practice going back for centuries. So Guru Rimpoche himself is the ultimate example of this.

He is an active present source of blessing and protection. He's not just this historical figure. People pray to him. They are not commemorating someone from the past. They're reaching out to someone they believe is still reachable, which is why you're gonna see him everywhere in Bhutan. And that's why the cave where he meditated is still this pilgrimage site twelve centuries later. So the line between history and living presence is very thin. So yes.

Guru Rinpoche is everywhere. In some areas of Bhutan, he's more prominent than the Buddha himself. In fact, the Bhutanese often call him the second Buddha. He didn't just bring a religion, he really helped shape a culture. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressives save over$900 on average.

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For roughly a thousand years after Buddhism arrived, Bhutan was not a unified country like we know today. It was more of a patchwork. Small kingdoms ruled by local leaders, monasteries holding enormous economic and political power, their competing Buddhist schools, each with their own loyalties and their own land, and

The most prominent of the small kingdoms was centered in a place called Boom Tang. So again, no unified country, no shared authority, lots of different valleys with their own power. In the twelfth century, one particular school of Buddhism began to spread throughout Bhutan. Over time, it would become the country's dominant religious tradition, eventually shaping Bhutanese identity itself. It's called the Drukpa Kagyu tradition.

Now according to tradition, a Buddhist teacher named Sengpa Giare in Tibet had a vision in which a dragon appeared in the sky and roared like thunder. He took it as a sign and named his monastery after it, and the word Druk means dragon or thunder dragon, and his followers became known as the Drukpa.

Over the next few centuries, Drukpa teachers traveled throughout the Himalayas, founding monasteries and attracting followers, and eventually the tradition spread into Bhutan, where it grew steadily in influence. But bringing all of those different valleys under one roof, that was gonna take a person and a really important person. So let's talk about him.

In 1616, a Tibetan monk crossed the mountains into the Bhutanese valleys, and his name was Zabdrung Ngawang Namgyal. I'm gonna call him Zabdrung for the rest of the episode, because that's a really long name for me to pronounce. He didn't actually come by choice. He just lost a fight over who would lead a major monastery in Tibet and he needed somewhere to go. So he went south.

And he found this collection of valleys with these competing centers of power, and he discovered that there was a power vacuum. Now, Zabdrung was a high-ranking lama in the Drukba Gagyu tradition. And he had an established reputation, he had a network of followers, and many people in Western Bhutan already belonged to the same religious lineage, so he arrived with built-in legitimacy. And he began to convince enough local elites that they were better off under one system.

than under endless conflict. So over the next several decades he did three things. He fought off repeated invasions from Tibet, his former home, which wanted him back or at least wanted him neutralized. The Tibetans tried to dislodge him five separate times, they failed all five times, largely because even though they had larger armies, the Bhutanese had very difficult terrain on their side, so they used that to their advantage.

The second thing he did is over time he defeated the local rulers who controlled these valleys one by one, absorbing their territories into something larger. And then third, he built institutions. Structures that would outlast him, and they were both physical and political. On the physical side, he built Zong.

A zong is a fortress, a monastery, a government office. We talked about that. They were built in very strategic locations. They usually overlooked the valley or they would sit at river junctions, controlling mountain passes, Today, most of them are still functioning and they still serve as administrative and religious headquarters. Again, if you've ever seen Bhutan's pictures and seen like, whoa, that is an incredible building, you're probably looking at a zong.

On the political side, he created a dual system of governance. There would be two heads of state, not one. The J Kenpo is the chief abbot, he would oversee spiritual and religious affairs, and then the Druk Desi, kind of a prime minister of sorts, would handle day to day administration and politics. In theory, religious authority ranked over political authority. In practice it was pretty complicated, but the system worked at least for a little while.

He also did something more subtle, but also lasted a long time. He created the building blocks of a shared Bhutanese identity. The traditional forms of dress, the go for men and the kira for women, became symbols of belonging. the Zonka language expanded. as a common tongue. Religious festivals became part of a national calendar. The distinctive look of Bhutanese buildings, which are white walls, red bands, elaborate wooden roof lines. You know, all of that dates back to this era.

And when Zabdrung died, his followers faced a serious crisis. The entire system had been built around him, so what was gonna hold it together? And their solution is really unique. They pretended that he hadn't died. So officially, Zabdrung hadn't died at all. He had entered a deep state of meditation and would return when the time was right. That was the story, and it held for fifty four years.

By the time anyone officially acknowledged that he was gone, the institutions he built were firm enough, you know, they were established enough that they didn't really need him anymore.

So what he left behind was something that had never existed before, a unified Bhutan. And that system that he built with the two heads of power, it had a nice ring to it, but it actually required people to stay in their lane, which we all know is really hard for people to do, so it got complicated quickly. About two centuries at last. But by the 1800s it was unraveling. And the political office that Drew Desi had become something that people fought over rather than earned.

And the regional governors were essentially warlords at this point. They were each commanding their own territories, their own troops, their own ambitions. Nobody was really governing Bhutan after a while. They were just all competing for the right to do it. And then the British showed up.

Actually they'd been next door for a while. By the mid eighteen hundreds, Britain controlled India, and they were methodically expanding their influence across South Asia. Bhutan sat right on the edge of their sphere, controlling those key mountain passes and trade routes. That the British cared about. Tensions had been building for years, partly because Bhutan taxed goods moving through its territory and occasionally raided British controlled lowly.

In eighteen sixty five, the British decided they were gonna do something about that. The conflict that followed is sometimes called the Duar War, named after the Duars Plain, which is that long strip of fertile lowland that's at the southern border of Bhutan.

It was some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, so it was very strategically valuable to Britain. Again, sitting at the trade, you know, the foot of the mountains where the trade routes were coming down. And so the war lasted less than a month.

Bhutan's fighters were very courageous, but they were armed with swords and bows and muskets, and the British military had far more advanced technology. From what I can tell, only a few hundred people were wounded or died on either side, but Bhutan lost, mostly because it became very, very clear. that there was a serious mismatch in technology and Bhutan had no good options to keep the Duars playing.

There was a treaty. It was signed in November of 1865. It ended the war, and Bhutan had to hand over the Duars Plain entirely. In exchange, they received a small annual payment from the British. It was presented as a subsidy. It was really a lesson in who held the power in the region.

By the late eighteen hundreds, Bhutan was smaller than it had been, poorer than it had been, and still quite internally divided. And the country needed someone who could look at all of that wreckage and figure out how to build something from it. And this person was Uguen Wang Chuck. Uguin began his rise to power as a regional governor, and he was in a district that is central in Bhutan, so his position mattered because it

sat right at the main route connecting eastern and western Bhutan. So in a country where travel meant navigating mountains and narrow valleys, right, controlling this area meant controlling a very important corridor in the kingdom, kind of like controlling the spine. So everything was going to pass through this area. By the late 1800s, Bhutan was in a turbulent place. There were little civil wars breaking out, regional leaders competing for powers, rival factions.

And they were aligning themselves with different foreign interests. One major divide emerged between leaders who favored closer ties with British India and those who looked more toward Tibet. And between eighteen eighty two and eighteen eighty five, Uguin Wang Chuk defeated a series of rivals and rebellions and gradually emerged as the most powerful political figure in the country. By the end of the conflict, Bhutan was more unified than it had been in generations.

And really, he was a super interesting thinker. What set him apart was his understanding of the larger geopolitical forces reshaping. To Bhutan's south, lay British India. The British Empire had already absorbed vast territories across the subcontinent and had forced Bhutan to cede the Duars region. We knew about that.

British influence in the Himalayas was only growing. And then to the north lay Tibet, Bhutan's closest religious and cultural neighbor, but Tibet was increasingly caught up in the rivalry between Britain and Russia, part of the broader contest that historians called the Great Game. So Uguin came to the conclusion that Bhutan's future would be safer if it worked with the British rather than against them.

And in nineteen oh three, he accompanied the British mission to Tibet, led by Francis Young Husband, and Ugwin served as a mediator between British and Tibetan officials during the expedition is a pretty remarkable position for a Bhutanese leader to have. And hi Bhutan's religious ties to Tibet ran really deep. So he chose to incorporate that and help the British to work with the t the Tibetans and also work with Bhutan's long-term interests.

The British definitely appreciated him, and in nineteen oh four he was knighted for his role in the mission. Two years later he travelled to Calcutta to meet the Prince of Wales. Although he was not yet king, he was increasingly being treated as Bhutan's most important leader.

Back home, his position began to strengthen. He had military credibility, he controlled a strategically important region, he maintained strong relationships with Bhutan's religious establishment, and he had established valuable connections. But the dominant power in South Asia. By nineteen oh seven, everyone knew that he was gonna lead Bhutan.

On december seventeenth of that year, an assembly of monks and nobles and government officials formally chose Uguin Wang Chuk as Bhutan's first hereditary monarch. That old dual system is gone. And Nugwen bef became the first Druk Yalpo, the dragon king. The decision was unanimous, which is pretty remarkable. In nineteen ten, he negotiated a revised treaty with British India. Under its terms, Bhutan agreed to seek British guidance in foreign affairs.

while Britain reaffirmed Bhutan's internal autonomy and security. On paper it looked like a concession, but in practice it helped secure Bhutan's independence at a time when many smaller states were losing theirs.

Ugyan Wang Chuk died in nineteen twenty six at the age of sixty-four, but the dynasty he founded still rules Bhutan today, the Wang Chuk dynasty. His son, Jigme Wang Chuk, inherited the throne in nineteen twenty six.

He reigned for twenty six quiet years, which in Bhutan's context was kind of an achievement. So while the world was Really struggling with the Great Depression, World War II, the violent partition of India and Pakistan, Bhutan stayed deliberately out of it, maintaining the stability and isolation that his father had worked so hard to build.

But the event that really shaped Bhutan's position in the world didn't actually happen in Bhutan, it happened in India. So in nineteen forty seven, Britain left India, right? There was that whole independence movement in India. And almost overnight, the careful relationship that Ugyan Wangchuck had built with British India became obsolete because British India no longer existed. The new independent Indian government needed to figure out what to do with all of Britain's old treaty relationship.

And Bhutan was one of them. Two years later in nineteen forty nine, Bhutan and India signed a new treaty of friendship. Treaty with a capital T and Friendship with a capital F. The terms were similar to the old British arrangement. India would guide Bhutan's foreign policy. In return, India would guarantee Bhutan's security and sovereignty. On the surface,

Bhutan had simply swapped one powerful patron for another. But there was an important difference here. India was a neighbor, not a colonial empire. So the relationship was closer, it was more intertwined, in some ways a little more complicated. It is also the direct origin of the India-Bhutan relationship that we see today, which we'll talk more about at the end. The next k the next king was Jigme Dorji Wang Chuk, and he reigned from 1952 to 1972.

He looked at this country that he'd inherited and he understood that this quiet modernization thing wasn't going to be enough anymore. The world was changing too fast. So he made some moves. He abolished serfdom, which was a system where peasants were essentially bound to the land and the nobles above them. He built roads, which sounds

kind of unglamorous, but when you understand that before his reign, Bhutan had almost no major roads. So getting from one valley to another meant days on foot or horseback through mountain terrain. So roads didn't just connect places, they connected the country to itself. He built schools and hospitals. He opened Bhutan very cautiously and selectively to the outside world. He even brought Bhutan into the United Nations in nineteen seventy one.

He is remembered as the father of modern Bhutan. He died suddenly at the age of forty-four, and his son was sixteen years old when he inherited the throne. And his name is Jigme Singye Wangchuk. So this is the year nineteen seventy two. Bhutan was still, by most global measures, pretty poor. The illiteracy rate was high, infant mortality was high, there's some roads, not a whole lot. Most people lived as their grandparents had lived. And this new king was a teenager.

He'd been educated in India and England, and as the fourth king he had a lot of decisions. From the beginning he seemed to understand something that's easy to say, very hard to actually do, that modernization and cultural preservation are not the same project, and you can lose one while pursuing the other. So his father built the roads in the schools. But Jigmay had to now decide what Bhutan did with them or what Bhutan was gonna keep out.

So he faced this choice basically, grow fast and break things or grow slowly and keep some things. And he chose slowly. And he coined the phrase gross national happiness. I think this is so fascinating. He was a teenage boy, he was a very young man. And the idea was pretty simple in its statement, but really radical in the implications. The idea was that the government's job is not to maximize economic output, it's to maximize human well being. And human well being is not the same as income.

So a person can be poor and happy, a person can be rich and miserable. And a country can be growing at 8% GDP and destroying everything that makes it worth living in. So let's measure something different. Let's measure happiness. And the GNH framework that's the Gross National Happiness Framework. as it has developed over the, you know, many decades since, rests on four pillars, sustainable development, environmental protection, cultural preservation, and good governance.

Tourism opened in nineteen seventy four, barely. In that first year, just two hundred and eighty seven tourists visited the entire country. What it would have been like to be one of those tourists. This was intentional. Bhutan adopted what it called that high value, low impact philosophy we talked about earlier. Visitors were welcome, but they had to pay significantly for the privilege. And the number was kept very, very small. The goal was to have some revenue without cultural erosion.

He'd watched other small nations be destroyed by mass tourism over time, right? And so Bhutan was very not interested in that. In the 1980s, the king initiated the establishment of district and village development committees. basically local bodies that are designed to give communities a voice and governance, promote more grassroots decision making. This was a pretty big departure from the centralized authority that had really defined Bhutan through the whole Wangchuck dynasty.

The power was slowly beginning to move outward. And then there was TV. In nineteen eighty-nine, the Bhutanese government ordered the destruction of all television antennas and satellite dishes as part of an effort to protect the national culture. The foreign minister explained the thinking to the Washington Post, quote, We are trying to modernize our country, not westernize it. We feel television will erode our country in no time. Within a year or two, our value system would change, end quote.

The rules were ignored. Some people had satellite dishes hidden in their barns or they watched movies on pyr pirated tapes, but officially Bluton had no television, no internet, no satellite.

It was in this one respect a country that had kind of chosen not to know. Just like I don't wanna know. But this changed on June second, nineteen ninety nine, and that is when Bhutan became the last country in the world to legalize television and introduce the internet to its citizens. Mobile phones were followed in two thousand three.

And I when I think about this, this is a huge deal because the transition was really fast. T V and internet around the same time, in a country that had officially banned television, you know, for decades earlier, suddenly connected to the entire world. It's pretty significant. There was a two thousand and two crime wave. A lot of people attributed that to the influence of television.

I think that claim is probably a little too simple, but it does point to the idea that rapid cultural exposure creates rapid cultural disruption. And Bhutan was experiencing it in concentrated form. During this same period, that's the 1980s into the early 1990s, something else was happening in southern Bhutan that sits in direct tension with the country's carefully constructed image of harmony and happiness.

You may remember from the beginning of the episode that I talked about a minority group in Bhutan. These people spoke Nepali as their first language. They were of Nepali heritage who had lived in the southern Bhutanese lowlands for generations. These were the Lonchampa.

Some were brought in as laborers during the British colonial period to clear forest and farm the Duars. Many migrated independently, seeking land and opportunity, but they were Bhutanese citizens. They paid taxes, their children went to school. They lived there in some cases for four or five generations. By the late nineteen eighties, Bhutanese elites regarded the growing ethnic Nepali population, that's the Lonchampa.

They were Hindu, not Buddhist, and they viewed them as a demographic and cultural threat. So they launched a one nation, one people campaign, and what followed was a systematic effort to make the Lonchampa Culturally invisible. Nepali language instruction was removed from schools. The traditional Nepali dress was banned from public spaces. The goal and kira were mandatory for everyone.

Two citizenship acts tightened the definition of who was actually Bhutanese, and the new definitions applied retroactively and stripped thousands of their citizenship. people who could not prove their ancestry to the government satisfaction were reclassified as illegal immigrants in the country their grandparents had farmed, in many cases. Protests broke out in nineteen ninety,

The government responded with arrests, detentions, and by human rights watches, documentation, sometimes torture. Houses were burned, the army arrived, tens of thousands of Lonchampas were forced to sign forms renouncing any claim to their homes in their country. They were expelled.

By 1996, more than a hundred thousand Bhutanese Lone Shambas, that's roughly forty percent of the Lone Shampa population at the time, were living in refugee camps in Nepal. They were mostly in UNHCR administered camps. in the part of Nepal that's closest to Bhutan, flat, hot lowlands near the Indian border. And they stayed there for decades. Their children were born in those camps. And the question of whether they could return was deadlocked.

Bhutan said that most of them had come illegally. Nepal said Bhutan needed to take them back, neither side was moving. The world was more focused on the breakup of the Soviet Union, the war in the Balkans, the genocide in Rwanda at this time. So the expulsion of the Lonchampa went largely unnoticed on the global stage.

It r still remains one of the largest mass expulsions in modern South Asian history, and it remains pretty absent from the way that Bhutan presents itself to the world. The resolution when it did come was resettlement, not return. So starting in the mid-2000s, the United States, Canada, Australia, several European countries agreed to take the refugees. About 115,000 Bhutanese have since been resettled in third countries.

The largest resettlement in the US of any refugee population, many of them are now in cities like Columbus, Ohio, Burlington, Vermont, places with Bhutanese communities large enough to have their own grocery stores and temples and community organizations.

I think this history is worth sitting with. It's something we can't ignore. Expelling one-sixth of the population along the southern border and also having a philosophy of gross national happiness is a pretty clear mismatch and I think it's worth knowing about.

Let's go back to the king in the late 1990s. He's now much older and he did some really genuinely unusual things. First, he created the position of prime minister. Then, the king voluntarily transferred executive powers to a council of ministers. A king giving away his own power without being forced to, no revolution, no external pressure. It's historically really quite unusual. And then he went further, he researched the constitutions of more than fifty nations,

Sought comments from the public, and began the process of drafting Bhutan's first democratic constitution. This announcement initially met. was met with a lot of resistance from many Bhutanese who revered their king and feared that democracy would destabilize their peaceful society. There were citizens who genuinely did not want democracy because they trusted their king and they didn't see the problem he was trying to solve.

It's kind of a strange thing to hand people a vote and have them ask if they can give it back, but that did happen in some cases. In two thousand and six Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated, he handed the throne to his son, Jigme Kiesar Namgyel Wangchuk, who was twenty six years old.

Two years later the Constitution was enacted and elections were held, giving birth to democracy in Bhutan. The gross national happiness framework, which has had existed in philosophy for you know many decades, at least three decades. was finally written into the Constitution, it was institutionalized, it was made official, it was given teeth, and the country that had never had a traffic light until the nineteen nineties just had its first democratic election.

The GNH Commission, that's the Gross National Happiness Commission, was established They created a formal GNH index surveying citizens at 33 indicators across nine domains. psychological well being, time use, health, education, cultural resilience, good governance, ecological diversity, living standards, and community vitality. They do actually measure these things. Critics have pushed back. The pushback might seem fair to you, it might not. Ujan is a small, relatively ethnically homogenous.

or Drukpa dominated country, with a monarchical structure that, whatever its democratic reform, still concentrates enormous power in a royal family. The happiness framework is real, but it also served as extraordinarily effective national branding. Some people see it as a way of making Bhutan's selective modernization and cultural conservativis conservatism look like enlightened policy rather than resistance to change.

There are a lot of different opinions on this, and I'll let you choose what you think for yourself, but I just wanted to present a couple of different perspectives. So let's talk about Bhutan today. The current king inherited this stable, peaceful, mostly internationally admired country, but he also inherited a country working through a lot of transitions. I mean, the last 20 years.

have seen a lot of change throughout the whole world. In many ways, Bhutan has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Internet access, urbanization is accelerating, more people are moving to to the capital city. Higher education has expanded, tourism grows, tight controls, but still, still growing. At the same time, Bhutan faces challenges like youth unemployment has become a growing concern. Many educated young Bhutanese struggle to find the kinds of jobs they want.

In recent years, thousands have emigrated to countries like Australia in search of better economic opportunities. And for a country with fewer than a million people, that matters. I also learned that Bhutan doesn't have a country it openly views as an enemy. Its foreign policy strategy is mostly about avoiding conflict altogether. But if Bhutan has a geopolitical concern, it would be China.

Bhutan and China share a border that's never been fully demarcated. Several areas remain disputed. To understand why you have to go back to 1720 when the Chinese Xing dynasty invaded and took control of Tibet, and in doing so, they also inherited Tibet's historical claims over parts of Bhutan, claims that Bhutan has never recognized and has never been able to fully dismiss either, given the power imbalance involved.

When China absorbed Tibet in nineteen fifty, those old claims came back with a modern army behind them. The two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations, although they've been holding talks for decades. have made progress toward a possible border settlement. The issue isn't just territory. Bhutan is tiny. While China is one of the world's greatest powers, Bhutan watched what happened to Tibet in the nineteen fifties. and has always been acutely aware of the imbalance in size and power.

One of the most sensitive areas is the Doklam Plateau, which is near the India-Bhutan-China Trijunction right there. That region became internationally famous in 2017 when Indian and Chinese troops faced off there for a month. Bhutan found itself in a pretty uncomfortable position of being the small country in the middle of a dispute between two giants. And Bhutan does not treat China as an enemy, but it is probably fair to say that would be the country that Bhutan worries about the most.

India, on the other hand, is Bhutan's closest partner, largest trading partner, biggest source of development assistance, and principal security partner. Bhutan exports most of its hydropower to India, and they have very close ties.

Another thing I wanted to learn in the study of Bhutan was how normal average Bhutanese people live. So I started looking at various resources to get an idea of daily life. And what I found is what I find for most places. Most people are working, raising families, paying bills, worrying about jobs, deciding whether to stay in Bhutan or move abroad, just like a lot of places.

And I've said this um many times. I will die on this hill. I do think most people around the world just wanna live their lives. in quiet ways, find meaning, be happy. And the Bhutanese are no different. Bhutan is still more rural than many countries. Again, a large share of the population lives in villages. Urbanization is accelerating, but if you visit a rural valley, life feels surprisingly traditional. Families often farm small plots of land.

They grow rice and potatoes, vegetables, fruit, they keep livestock. Multi generational households are common. Religious festivals remain major community events. At the same time, most of these households also have smartphones and internet access and television. Agriculture is still one of the country's largest employers. Roughly forty-four percent of workers are employed in agriculture.

Forty one percent work in services, fifteen percent in industry. So a typical Bhutanese worker might be a farmer growing rice, potatoes, apples, oranges, cardamom. a teacher, a government employee, a shop owner, a tourism guide, a hotel worker, a construction worker, a hydropower engineer, a technician, a doctor. I've learned that government jobs are especially important.

Bhutan has a relatively large public sector, and civil service positions are often seen as more stable and desirable. Many young Bhutanese. don't necessarily want to spend their lives farming steep mountainsides the way that their grandparents did. So they moved to the Capitol for education and jobs. This creates some challenges like housing costs and youth unemployments and concerns about economic opportunities.

Have you talked to older Bhutanese, you'll often hear concerns about villages becoming less populated, traditional ways of life fading. From everything I've read and learned, Bhutan feels less materially affluent than places like the United States or Singapore or much of Western Europe. Also less hectic. You don't see many giant shopping malls. Or giant McDonald's or Starbucks or these global fast food chains, smaller cafes, small shops.

Schools, monasteries, local businesses, they dominate more of the urban landscape landscape, excuse me. In the capital, buildings are required to follow traditional architectural styles. So the city feels modern but also very traditional at the same time. To shed more light on what it's like to live in Bhutan, I am thrilled to share messages from two Bhutanese tour guides. I reached out to DrookAsia, a company that specializes in Bhutan tours and asked two questions.

One, what do you love most about your country and its culture and people? And two, what is something you wish people from around the world knew about your country? And both Kinley Dorji and Chencho Lam responded, and I think you're gonna love their thoughts. One thing to note is that the word la is often heard at the end of sentences in Bhutan, and it's a common expression of respect and politeness. It's used to convey humility, courtesy, and warmth toward the person being addressed.

And it forms an important part of everyday Bhutanese speech. So first I'll share Kinley's thoughts and then Chencho.

You feel it when you walk into a Bhutanist house. You feel it when you meet someone on the road. I am proud of my country. Our love for Bhutan runs very deep. We have a rich culture passed down for centuries, our traditional dress, our festivals, our secret art. Our language, each one tells the story of who we are. The quite genuine pride, that is what I love most about being Bhutanese.

Happiness matters more than money. If you come with that openness Bhutan will give you something you will never forget.

Here's uh something I wish people around the world knew about Bhutan is that we are much more than a beautiful Himalayan destination. Bhutan is a country that values balance between development and traditions, between human and well being and environmental conservation tool. Bhutan remains one of the world few carbon negative countries and is well known one of the happiest countries in the world.

Yes, I would like people to know that Bhutan offers a unique opportunity to experience a living culture where judicial are still practiced and nature remains largely unto. It is a place where visitors can slow down, reconnect with nature and gain a deeper appreciation for a simple, meaningful living.

So creating meaningful and transformative travel experiences that inspire deeper connections with people, cultures, and places. So if you're planning a trip to Bhutan, check out jukeasia.com and soultrips.co. Both of those links are in my show notes as well for more information.

All right, let's wrap up this episode on Bhutan. If I had to summarize Bhutan's challenge in one question, it would be: how do we engage with the outside world without becoming the outside world? And that's an incredibly difficult question. Young people want opportunity, parents want stability, many citizens want to preserve traditions. Climate change is affecting the mountains.

More Bhutanese are immigrating for work and education. Bhutan wants modernization, but not too much. Wants economic growth, but not at the expense of culture. Wants tourism but not mass tourism. Globalization, but selective. Democracy, but also deep loyalty to a monarchy.

These are difficult balances to maintain. So far, from what I can tell, Bhutan has managed them better than many countries would have. Whether it can continue to do so remains an open question. What is clear is that Bhutan remains one of the most unusual political and social experiments in the world.

Most countries organize themselves around the goal of producing more. Whutan has at least attempted something different. It has asked whether the purpose of a country might be to help people live good lives. Whether or not it has succeeded depends on which part of the story you want to emphasize. But I think all of the stories have truth in them. And I think that's probably the final lesson I have from Bhutan, is that the country is not a utopia or a fraud, it's a real place.

It's inhabited by real people trying to solve problems that every society faces. How to preserve what matters, how to adapt to change, how to define a good life. And it just happens to be doing it in the Himalayas in a really unique way. And I loved learning about it.

If you enjoyed learning about Bhutan with me today and want to look into a few more resources, head to patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast. You can also sign up for my free weekly email newsletter at wiserworld.com or follow us on YouTube and Instagram at wiserworldpodcast.

If you enjoy learning about the world, click the plus button so that when new episodes drop, you get them. I love learning about the world with you. I hope you'll come back next week to learn more about the world with me. And until then, let's make the world a little wiser.

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