"Just Walk Into That Cloud:" Bhutan in Books & Film

North of India, south of Tibet, with fewer than a million people, this landlocked Swiss-sized monarchy, “sandwiched between Methuselahs,” Russ and Blyth Carpenter aver in a memorable if odd metaphor, “seems like a printer’s error.”  Most accounts nod to its historical impenetrability, its vast vistas, and its mix of colorful folk tradition and impassive sophistication. Its Buddhist ethos encourages the personal touch: there’s a lack of any “impersonal” stoplights in its capital, Thimphu, even as it exceeds a hundred thousand residents-- where Michel Peissel found in 1968 but three small buildings next to its dzong or monastery-fortress. No cities existed in Bhutan until recently. Rapidly modernizing while directing its Gross National Happiness strategy, the region’s last independent Buddhist enclave aims to balance economic opportunities and educational progress in what many Westerners mistake as still a semi-feudal, isolated Shangri-La. With diverse ecosystems and regional cultures, the nation hunkers in below the jagged Himalayas. A central expanse of rugged mountain valleys separate linguistically and culturally diverse Buddhists, who have evolved to farm and herd two miles or more high. They are unsuited to live in the tropical lowlands, where Nepali and Hindu-dominant peoples raise crops on terraces and fields.

It will be expensive to explore: a daily tariff imposed of $250 keeps tourism low and requires guides and itineraries approved in advance. However, lodging and food will be covered; a third of this fee funds sustainable development.  The fear of becoming another Nepal, with a degraded ecology and sullied infrastructure, impels Bhutan to enforce “high value, low volume” on its visitors, by jeep or on trek. It discourages settlement by foreigners and it commands national dress to be worn by guides, those in schools and public service, and those visiting the center of any district, the dzong, on official business. 

For those who have not seen Bhutan firsthand, this review article surveys the books and media available. I compiled this after not finding an equivalent resource on the Internet or in print. The reading lists in guidebooks, while helpful, left me wondering what else lay on the shelves. By investigating histories, travel narratives, novels, photo-journalism, film, and guidebooks, you can learn a lot from an armchair—which will likely encourage you to begin to save up and plan your own excursion.

Histories:

The High Road to China: George Bogle, the Panchen Lama, and the First British Expedition to Tibet by Kate Teltscher (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)

Bhutan, through the middle of the last century, had only received thirteen Western expeditions. George Bogle reports on the first, in 1774-1775. He wished to connect the East India Company with China, via Tibet. In between lay Bhutan. In The High Road to China, Kate Teltscher retells in 2006 the young Scotsman Bogle’s journey. Out of cleverly chosen samples of British-made and Indian-exported goods, this first trade mission lobbied to sway the Panchen Lama. "How else to seduce a nation than with a tempting display of luxury goods, scientific instruments and mechanical toys?"

Views of Medieval Bhutan by Michael Aris (London: Serindia and Washington: Smithsonian, 1982)

However, Bhutan managed to dissuade the eager empires, Chinese, Tibetan, or British. Most Westerners further comparisons to "feudal" dzongs and "medieval" customs such as archery (the national sport, originally to repel Tibetan invaders) or unquestioned fealty when they encounter Bhutan. Its never-colonized, semi-feudal period under an absolute monarch lasted past when men landed on the moon. A handsome 1982 edition of Views of Medieval Bhutan features an introduction by Michael Aris, who tutored the Wangchuck royal family for six years when the nation was opening up to modernization. Aris (who would marry Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi) presents the meticulous observations of Samuel Davis. A surveyor and draftsman for the Bengal Army, he accompanied the second British embassy, in 1783, to Druk Yul, the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon.

These elegant depictions attest to the only foreign artist "of distinction" to show Bhutan, and the first outsider to paint scenes from these mountains. Aris notes that his fellow Englishman's "legacy played no part in the development of those imaginary utopias which the west continues to locate in the trans-Himalayan region." Aris annotates and excerpts Davis' journal, and nods to its secular, and largely un-Romantic tone, also a part of the naturalistic art Davis brings to the plates reproduced here. "If sublime and romantic qualities are sometimes found expressed in his art this is surely because Davis, like most of us, was constitutionally incapable of reacting otherwise to certain combinations of mountains, light, fortresses and forests."

Travel Narratives:

Lands of the Thunderbolt: Sikhim, Chumbi & Bhutan by the Earl of Ronaldshay (1923; Berkeley: Snow Lion Graphics, 1987)

The thunderbolt is the "dorje," the bell-like scepter wielded by lamas in the Vajrayana Tibetan tradition, the lands those of Sikkim, Chumbi, and Bhutan, the time, 1920. The Earl of Ronaldshay’s 1923 account, Lands of the Thunderbolt, while not free of its era’s imperial tone, given this "practicing Presbyterian" author, remains lively. In the footsteps of Bogle and Davis, the Earl shares their enthusiasm for leaving the humid plains of Bengal behind. He begins his ascent at Darjeeling into what at that time was a series of Buddhist-ruled principalities separate from the rest of patchwork British India's jurisdictions. One of the first visitors to the Eastern Himalayas who articulates a modern Western understanding of the unusual mindsets he analyzes, he combines wit with wonder, drollery with description.

Lords and Lamas: A Solitary Expedition across the Secret Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan by Michel Peissel (London: Heinemann, 1970)

Subtitled "A Solitary Expedition across the Secret Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan," Michel Peissel’s 1970 account, Lords and Lamas, of his September 1968 trek over four hundred miles of footpaths reveals a crucial moment of transition from a feudal, medieval fastness to a nation finishing the first span of an east-west highway that will change Bhutan irrevocably. India's fear, in the Cold War, of Chinese threats south of Tibet spurred them to fund a paved road to connect the shorter ones coming up steep valleys from the Gangetic Plain. Peissel, after six failed attempts to get royal and bureaucratic approval, finally is allowed in the country. Bhutan admits its first traveler to carry in foreign currency, and he resolves once inside to follow Captain Robert Boileau Pemberton's 1838 route across the six ranges and passes dividing the core of the corrugated and unstable realm.

Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan by Ashi Dorje Wangmo Wangchuck (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006) 

One of four sisters married to the fourth Dragon King, Ashi (an honorific for a royal woman) Dorje Wangmo Wangchuck takes us down paths Peissel yearned to follow, in what is now a constitutional monarchy. Treasures of the Thunder Dragon deftly introduces facts about its people; topography in the three zones (humid foothills, temperate valleys, and alpine highlands) as one follows the main lateral road west to east; history; monarchy, and modernity, all in twenty pages. This prefaces a necessarily "elevated" perspective, but a cogent 2006 overview. She then blends her family’s history with tales from treks to care for those neglected in its remote hamlets (see: Tarayana Foundation).

So Close to Heaven: the Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas by Barbara Crossette (New York: Vintage, 1996)

So Close to Heaven: the Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas focuses on the Wangchuck dynasty in its Bhutanese coverage. As a New York Times journalist based in India, Crossette favors a style akin to the Gray Lady. The 1996 book unfolds as if feature articles in a tone mixing personal encounters with interviews with diplomats, royalty, and, via translators at times, everyday folks. There's a distance between her and her interlocutors which is expected, given her position and strategy.

Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon: A Journey through Bhutan by Katie Hickman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988)

One of the first accounts by a Westerner who visited (as of the mid-1980s, although this is not specified) the then-less accessible eastern reaches, Katie Hickman's Dreams of the Peaceful  Dragon proceeds in expected fashion. That is, she's a competent travel writer and her integration of the remarks of earlier visitors helps give background for her own Raj-reminiscent trek by horseback. Oxford-educated, from a diplomatic family, with an international upbringing and dynastic sponsorship to cut red tape, she exudes the air of privilege.

Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa (New York: Riverhead-Penguin, 2000)

Under the Holy Lake: A Memoir of Eastern Bhutan by Ken Haigh (Edmonton: U. of Alberta P, 2008)

For longer tales from about the same relatively "early-modern" (the road paved, but not yet electricity, TV, phones, or the internet) period in the eastern region, the most popular remains Jamie Zeppa's Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan . Ken Haigh's Under the Holy Lake: A Memoir of Eastern Bhutan complements it well and deserves equal acclaim.   Both teachers of English from Canada, Zeppa and Haigh nearly overlap in place and time with Hickman, but their extended stints allow them a deeper insight into these districts. Their honest, unadorned reflections better the brief glimpses of many Westerners, on limited budgets and itineraries. Enriched by hindsight, Haigh and Zeppa apply literary sensibilities with precision to evoke wisdom and ponder lessons.

After Easter Sunday Mass in Khaling (despite the Buddhist state religion, teachers often come from India and Catholic regions), Haigh looks back over the scene. "There were bright green highlights on the pasture, almost yellow, and deeper green in the pastures of the ravines. A lone white cow ambled down the hillside and onto the road where it was struck by a passing truck."

What Haigh shares with Zeppa is a determination to avoid the soft-focus, combined with an acknowledgement of the love-hate feelings that may come once the initial confusion or infatuation wears off and the reality of separation from Canadian comfort sinks in.

Radio Shangri-La: What I Discovered on My Journey to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth by Lisa Napoli (New York: Random House, 2011)

The Blessings of Bhutan by Russ and Blyth Carpenter (Honolulu: U. of Hawai'i P., 1999)

A decade or two later, Western narratives feature consultants who land in Thimphu and remain for assigned periods, as the royal civil service expands and foreign aid flows in to assist the Gross National Happiness program. Just before the introduction of television, The Blessings of Bhutan features rural Oregonians Russ and Blyth Carpenter. They arrived in the late 1990s to become freelance advisers and eloquent if agnostic analysts of its GNH mindset. Brooklyn-born L.A. transplant Lisa Napoli’s 2011 Radio Shangri-La presents a media-savvy journalist’s efforts to jumpstart a fledgling station in the capital. Her big-city hustle and mid-life ennui meet a slowdown, and impel reorientation. Yet, most memoirs arrive from guests chosen to work from outside the United States; Bhutan favors European, Canadian, or Down Under expertise.

Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon by Martin Uitz (2006; London: Haus, 2008)

In a hundred pages of Hidden Bhutan, Austrian ex-pat Martin Uitz explores its off-road, off-beat side. Although he works in its Ministry of Finance, one of a hundred foreigners in its booming capital, Thimphu, he nods to the bureaucratic morass and civil service's perks only in the opening chapter. Rather, about the same time in the same place-- halfway through the past decade-- as Lisa Napoli’s radio endeavor, Uitz roams out of the city to explore scenery as close as a few hours walk up slopes to yak herders and a takin reserve.

Episodes on the Snowman Trek comprise a fast-paced chapter. Finding three recent accounts of “the toughest trek in the world” over twenty-five days and crossing many Himalayan passes over three miles high, I welcomed Trish Nicholson's Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon by Trish Nicholson (Collca e-books, 2012). She traveled there long before the other two writers I read--although she does not reveal this until an afterword. While Nicholson did not take the full Snowman Trek reported in diary form by Mark Horrell (Yakking with the Thunder Dragon: Walking Bhutan's Snowmen Trek, 2011 e-book), or at book length by Kevin Grange as Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World  (Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P., 2009), this New Zealand-based anthropologist in her shorter, 100-mile expedition (with other Westerners and a few guides, ponies, and yaks) allows more coverage of the less secluded countryside seen before and after the trek than that witnessed by her two male counterparts twenty-odd years later.

For those not wanting to read a whole book about a two-hundred mile trek, Uitz’s chapter conveys the gist of this difficult journey. Uitz loves the "tsachu" hot springs which entice the traveler to Gasa and ease the burdens of a summer trek--the exception to the narrative rule as the three accounts above take place in the fall, hastening before the snows set in.

Dragon Bones: Two Years Beneath the Skin of a Himalayan Kingdom by Murray Gunn (Hong Kong: Blacksmith, 2011)

Seasons matter. Summers plague trekkers and hikers with leeches and monsoons. Winters close mountain passes. Spring has less rain, but more visitors. Likewise with autumn, but the roads may not be repaired from the landslides that constantly threaten to close off the lone lateral highway. Meanwhile, experts keep trying to assist Bhutan with its logistical challenges. In Dragon Bones (2011), Australian IT engineer Murray Gunn accompanies his new French wife to Bhutan for an extended consultancy, where she's hired to advise its dairy industry's agronomists.

Like his compatriot Launsell Taudevin's "With a Dzong in My Heart" (1994; CreateSpace e-book 2011) memoir set in 1988, Murray Gunn finds that advising the locals about Western methods clashes with rank-pulling bureaucrats, a more lackadaisical work ethic than he expected, and a series of culture clashes mixed with awe at the kingdom's beauty, Buddhist traditions, and courtly atmosphere. While Gunn repeats many of the trekking adventures others do in his account, unique to what I've read in other versions, he listens to his guide: "This is our life. We have to come up here no matter what the weather's like and we do the same trails over and over until our feet are sore. And we can never go anywhere else. There's no holiday for us."

So You Are Thinking of Going to Bhutan by James W. Gould (Amazon Kindle, 2012)

Reports by Gunn or Uitz should be chosen over the holiday taken in James W. Gould’s So You Are Thinking of Going to Bhutan. At 8400 words, this 2012 e-book relates too casually the history, religion, and culture of a bit of Bhutan as seen by the author over a week. Even if this duration must endure as most likely for a less affluent traveler, given the per diem tariff increase, choose longer books by those lucky enough to stay longer in Bhutan. I have not covered two popular, New Age-filtered, memoirs in print, all the same; both of their authors achieved a permanence few Westerners can, by marrying Bhutanese men so as to stay there forever.

Novels:

Cressida's Bed by Desmond Barry (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004)

Almost all who enter Bhutan must leave. Based on a 1931 British expedition to award a knighthood to the King of Bhutan, Desmond Barry’s 2004 novel Cressida’s Bed features as its protagonist a character taken from a real-life doctor’s expedition, that of half-Irish expatriate Christina Devenish. In her early thirties in Calcutta, a free-love advocate, a Theosophist who finds no contradiction with the practice of medicine, she possesses her spirituality and her sexuality confidently. While Barry's depiction of her entry into a Bhutan divided between monarchy and theocracy lacks the sensual and visual evocations of many other writers who've visited this kingdom, it's refreshing to have a more physically rendered, less enraptured presence embarking there. "She set foot on the soil of Bhutan, Alice through the looking glass racked with menstrual cramps, the sweat cooling on her forehead and her back under her sticky frock, and she was desperate to empty her bladder in the shadows of the luxuriant rainforest."

The Circle of Karma by Kunzang Choden (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005)

Kunzang Choden’s 2005 novel The Circle of Karma, the first in English by a Bhutanese woman, tells over forty years the story of Tsomo. At fifteen, in the remote region of Kurtai, she soon falls in love with another woman's husband. This leads soon to pregnancy, but the results spur her not to a happy marriage, but family strife. She flees to pound stones to pave the first roads across the kingdom, putting this section somewhere about ten years after the Chinese suppression of Tibet. Years aren't mentioned; the novel unfolds in an indirect narration by Tsomo, who finds unhappiness often, and exiles herself to India.

The Heart of the Buddha: A Novel by Elsie Sze (Austin: Emerald, 2009)

Hong Kong-born, Toronto-based Elsie Sze integrates information into The Heart of the Buddha (2009) to situate Marian and Ruthie within the admittedly challenging scenario they find as their paths intersect in Bhutan. Sisters and twins, the two protagonists reflect upon their Chinese Catholic upbringing, their Canadian identity, and their position in a realm where Buddhism is the state religion, where a benign monarchy and compliant press rule.

Photojournalism + Film: 

The Dragon Kingdom: Images of Bhutan by Blanche Christine Olschak with photography by Ursula Markus-Gansser and Augusto Gansser (Boston: Shambhala, 1984)

Since Tantric Buddhism dominates, until very recently as the state religion, it merits attention. A Swiss-based trio of scholars in The Dragon Kingdom reports from nascent stages of the kingdom's connections with the West. The Buddhist-based analysis is therefore very light on modernization, which had just begun in the period they visited in the early 1980s. It can be perused in a sitting, as a quick introduction to Bhutan’s traditions and panoramas.

Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods by Christian Schicklgruber and Françoise Pommaret (Boston: Shambhala, 1998)

A folio-format study, Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods commemorates a Viennese exhibition at the Museum für Völkerkunde in 1997-1998. While scholarly, and hefty in size and substance, it endures as a corrective to romance or brevity in Western accounts. As co-editor Christian Schicklgruber introduces the collection, it mirrors how a visitor would approach Bhutan. Visual impressions, "the lay of the land," flora and fauna, architecture, history, art, politics, and regional peoples and their distinctive dress unfold.

Not an exhibition catalogue in the usual sense, Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods instead presents an in-depth examination of the nation. While very factual in tone and heavily academic, the contributors serve as a cross-section of native and European scholars best able to explain this kingdom seriously to an audience for which fantasy and effusion seem to suffice given its dominant portrayal in certain media as a happy hideaway. (This book reincarnated as an award-winning 2001 Austrian website, but that's long defunct.)

Bhutan: Kingdom of the Dragon by Robert Dompnier (Hong Kong: Living Colour, 1999)

Robert Dompnier in Bhutan: Kingdom of the Dragon offers photography taken in the 1990s, emphasizing tradition, “tsechu” dances which enliven vivid rituals through the year at many a dzong, and crafts such as weaving, costumes, and intricate architecture which persist not as folklore for tourists but as organic expressions of Buddhist perceptions in everyday settings. While short on text, the presentation is handsomely arranged. The bright textiles, dresses, and painted facades leap out. The size allows a map far larger than in most books on Bhutan--but a tiny caption warns: "The borders as shown on this map are neither authentic or [sic] correct."

Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom by Michael Hawley (Cambridge MA: Friendly Planet, 2004) fact sheet from MIT and Friendly Planet

As for size, "Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom" as the younger sibling to the world's biggest book continued raising funds for medical and educational projects. Friendly Planet, Friendly Planet, a charity spinoff of M.I.T., generated income in an innovative fashion, as digital photography and bookbinding skill combined with high-tech expertise under a team led by Professor Michael Hawley, who ran the campus Media Lab's special projects division. The big brother book, 5' by 7' and weighing 150 lbs., dwarfed the two Bhutanese schoolchildren the team "adopted" on their initial November 2001 visit, when displayed at Harry Winston's gallery in Manhattan. This 2003 book symbolized the meeting of high rollers with a worthy cause, and demonstrated how a $15,000 volume could support other schoolchildren and families in the remote areas of this region, reached only by trails, far from the touristy areas the book documents.

For the smaller companion, itself considerable at a foot by two feet and 15 lbs., this expands the original. It reproduces the immense photos and doubles their number, if in less stupendous manner, by explaining how the original was assembled, and how the team returned to Bhutan in 2003 to bring aid to villages and schools from the moneys raised by the big book. Now out-of-print, this follow-up 2004 volume also contributed its profits to Friendly Planet, and Hawley's text and captions, garnered from a cooperative of eleven photographers, conveys the appeal—if in rather soft-focus moods despite the digital accuracy--of the Buddhist kingdom and people.

Bhutan Heartland  by Libby Lloyd and Robert van Koesveld (Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle, 2010)

Libby Lloyd and Robert van Koesveld report in 2010 from spring times on the Lateral Road, the east-west connection across the vertiginous valleys and high passes that furrow between the Himalayas and the subtropical plantations. As these Australian-based photographers and social workers explain early on in Bhutan Heartland, the choice they faced, to move from west to east, is repeated, if perhaps in reverse, by the natives of this kingdom daily. That road, and increasingly the feeder routes paved along what have been yak trails and footpaths, represents for this constitutional monarchy's Gross National Happiness plan a way to increase access to within a day's hike of most of its still largely rural citizens.

The authors efficiently intersperse a lot of background (a glossary and too-short reading list are appended, and a link to van Koesveld's photo archive website) that some earlier authors have struggled to include. It's the right amount for a newcomer: less footnoted and less weighty than the Fortress study but more in-depth than Dompnier, and less-dated than Dragon Kingdom. For handsomely reproduced photographs and accessible text, it’s a great place to begin a virtual visit.

Dreaming Bhutan: Journey in the Land of the Thunder Dragon  by Nicole Grace (Santa Fe: Mani Press, 2011)

Nicole Grace’s Dreaming Bhutan presents in "a brief glimpse" over forty photos on the right side, and a spare text which could fit on a postcard on the left, leaving lots of blank space. Perhaps the slightly blurred resolution of some of the photographs fits the title, as she in promotional material for this 2011 book explains how she wants to show "dreaming" not "of" but "Bhutan" itself--as a portal to enlightenment. A romanticized approach directs Grace's gaze. It prefers "a world of enchantment, ancient rituals and dress that seems not to have changed in hundreds of years."

Bhutan: Between Heaven and Earth by Mary Peck (Santa Fe: Merlin Press, 2011)

From visits totaling seven months from 1999 to 2005 to this Himalayan kingdom, Mary Peck's fifty-six black-and-white photographs in Bhutan: Between Heaven and Earth, each on its own right-hand page facing a blank left, command attention. Many have captions as endnotes; a few do not. This 2011 removal of words from image (except four brief poems, one by Gary Snyder, another by W.S. Merwin, and a pair of his translations from Muso Soseki) allows the reader to look at the landscapes, people, ceremonies, and architecture as if witnessed first-hand. Grace’s captions inspire curiosity as to their short length; Peck’s pages suggest a trust in unpredictability ahead.

In her afterword, "Bhutan's Curve of Time," Peck relates how directions were given by Bhutanese. Each of her inquiries led to a local range of instructions--by a resident. "Just walk into that cloud." one man told her. Beyond circumscribed limits, hemmed in by gorges or peaks, paths or landmarks, the estimates faded, and new ones emerged with the next encounter, the next person down the trail.

Karma Ura situates his nation within these same furrowed contours. As a distinguished leader of  the monarchy’s think tank implementing the nation's evolving Gross National Happiness policy, Ura explains in his thoughtful forward the scope of GNH. He sums up the country, full of micro-climates dividing one valley from the next. He notes how "the food chain is more or less completed within one's own valley." Therefore, the mythology, community, and the land are integrated over generations to support the people in an intimate, in-depth knowledge-- differing from the fragmented skills promoted today as a solution to education and modernization.

Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness by John Wehrheim (Chicago: Serindia, 2nd ed. 2011)

John Wehrheim’s Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness gazes, through words and via a camera. While limited of course to his choice, the combination invites the reader to become a viewer. This Chicago-born, Kaua’i-based hydrologist who mingles narrative journeys with black-and-white silver gelatin photography between 1991 and 2006 in his afterword warns: "The words and events are true but not always in the order and sequence implied."

Bhutan: Taking the Middle Path to Happiness (DVD Vendetti Productions, directed by Tom Vendetti, produced by Robert C. Stone and John Wehrheim, 2009)

Under the direction of its fifth king and such experts as Karma Ura, "Gross National Happiness" increasingly grows familiar as a catchphrase to sum up Bhutan's ambitions to orient itself within harmonious precepts as taught by Buddhism and shared equitably among its peoples to assure mutual comfort, educational advancement, and spiritual progress. Bhutan: Taking the Middle Path to Happiness, a one-hour 2009 video produced by Thomas Vendetti and John Wehrheim, introduces GNH. This kingdom's initiative under its watchful monarchy seeks to promote wise globalization while nourishing traditional lifestyles, as Bhutan perches between a covetous China and a teeming India.

Bhutan: Land of Serenity by Matthieu Ricard (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2008)

Unlike some photo-narratives on this often-mythologized kingdom, Matthieu Ricard’s Bhutan: Land of Serenity takes a sober, almost detached approach that reveals this monk’s calm. After a decade in the company of the Dalai Lama's tutor there (Tibetan refugee Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche), and now the Dalai Lama's French translator himself, French-born Ricard brings the same considered evaluation of Buddhist practice and culture that his sponsorship and appearance in the films Brilliant Moon and The Spirit of Tibet demonstrate about his devotion to his exiled mentors. What this has to do with Bhutan as a larger entity comes across more gradually. Three pages introducing each of these eight sections of his brilliantly reproduced color photography, 1980-2007, convey this more vividly than the miniscule font (too small, let alone the captions even smaller) do in this admittedly handsome, compact text, translated by Ruth Sharman.

Travellers and Magicians (feature film directed by Khyentse Norbu, 2003. DVD Zeitgeist Films, 2005)

As the first feature-length film from Bhutan, reincarnate lama-director Khyentse Norbu's 2003 follow-up to his festival success of soccer-mad Tibetan monks in 1999’s The Cup generates attention-- by that statement alone.

Travelers and Magicians nestles in a familiar frame: the varied cast hiking or hitching on the road hears a story along the way. The plot unfolds genially and gently. It's not fast-paced, and reflects the steady, shrewd sensibility of its makers and actors. Norbu wishes to offer the world and his own homeland a reflection of how Buddhist themes might enrich people, as if painting a traditional tapestry by the light of cinema. The bonus feature elucidates this philosophy as it underlies the film. For more backstory on the director, consult Lesley Ann Patten's nearly concurrent (if unevenly directed) documentary "Words of My Perfect Teacher" (2003, Festival Media 2008 DVD) about Norbu, under his Buddhist name, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.


(To link more interdependence in a small kingdom, while the cast of Travelers and Magicians--the first film in Dzongkha, the native language taught in schools there along with English--is billed as non-professionals, I understand that the lead character of Dondup is the exception. Played by Tshewang Dendup, a Thimphu-based radio actor, he appears in Jamie Zeppa's memoir, for Dondup in real life was the genial student with whom she as a young Canadian teacher fell in love. In turn, Martin Uitz discusses the reception of this and more low-budget films in Dzongkha during the past decade.)

Guidebooks:

The Rough Guide to First-Time Asia by Leslie Reader and Lucy Ridout (London: Rough Guide-Penguin, 5th ed. 2010){This is helpful for planning, checklists, advice, warnings, websites, and reading lists, even if Bhutan gets the same rapid coverage as two-dozen of its continental neighbors.}

Bhutan: Himalayan Mountain Kingdom (Odyssey Guide) by Françoise Pommaret (Hong Kong: Airphoto, 6th ed. 2009)

Bhutan Handbook (Footprint) by Gyurme Dorje (Bath: Footprint, 2nd ed. 2010)

Bhutan (Country Travel Guide) by Bradley Mayhew, Lindsay Brown, and Anirban Mahapatra  (Oakland: Lonely Planet, 4th ed. 2011)

For those who want to see more of Bhutan than a film depicts, three guidebooks mediate between the armchair and the adventure. Gyurme Dorje, as a Himalayan expert, offers in Footprint’s Bhutan Handbook practicalities similar to Lonely Planet's Bhutan (Country Travel Guide) by Bradley Mayhew, Lindsay Brown, and Anirban Mahapatra. The Footprint guidebook in format and layout resembles Lonely Planet, but Dorje’s background coverage in a separate chapter of religious, artistic, and literary contexts does not match the scope of Odyssey’s Bhutan: Himalayan Mountain Kingdom by fellow Tibetologist (and Bhutan-based scholar) Françoise Pommaret, who authored the first such guidebook, and co-edited Fortress. Rather, like Lonely Planet, Footprint provides a concise introduction; both in turn examine the capital Thimphu, followed by the western, central, and eastern regions.

Lonely Planet tallies nearly 300 pages; Footprint adds about 80 pages in a slightly larger font. Color photos are about equal; seven (blue-hued) Lonely Planet and nine (pink-shaded) Footprint chapters can be downloaded separately or together. I've sampled both guides in their PDF versions--they did not convert legibly to my Kindle Touch. Also, even kept as PDFs, a Kindle font cannot be matched to their format neatly or very legibly. On a PC, in color, the PDF files scan better; the maps hang together with the text, sidebars, and illustrations.

Footprint lacks Lonely Planet's verve and Odyssey's anthropological bent, but it instructs. Its background chapter delves into Buddhist contexts such as the auspicious symbols and prayer flags. Dorje explains: "The sparse population, the slow, measured pace of daily life and, in some sectors, an almost anarchical disdain for political involvement have encouraged the spiritual cultivation of Buddhism to such an extent that it has come to permeate the entire culture."

Bhutan: A Trekker's Guide by Bart Jordans (Milnthorpe, Cumbria: Cicerone, 2nd. rev. ed. 2012)

For those leaving its lateral highway behind, Bart Jordan’s Bhutan: A Trekker’s Guide (Cicerone; 2nd. rev. ed. 2012) details twenty-seven yak trails and footpaths across this vertically-biased kingdom. Jordans' "Dutch-English" describes affectionately and carefully (one drawback, if minor: a few glitches remain in his idiom, or the proofreading) many remote sights and dramatically situated sacred landscapes infused by belief. This same guidebook was taken along on the Snowman Trek by Kevin Grange; the practical itineraries and mythical lore it shares will reward anybody planning a few days--or weeks--in the unpaved northern or central regions.

Wrapping It Up

Leaving this short shelf, I wonder how Bhutan can welcome those of us who peer or edge in—through books, through videos, the authors and filmmakers introduce change-- without too many gatecrashers. Few Bhutanese deny themselves their new television, internet, or cellphones. The New York Times featured the kingdom as one of this year’s top destinations: luxury eco-resorts proliferate. Pico Iyer surmises how Bhutanese with formidable etiquette mingled with skillful deference-- inherited over centuries of civil service, monastic preferment, and feudal hierarchies--enforce customs which admit visitors at a polite distance. Traversing the east-west highway, one follows the ancient routes past the formidable dzong guarding each district. Housing monks and officials, these monastery-fortresses force any approaching along a single path through the vertiginous terrain of steep slopes and sudden ravines to reveal themselves. Travelers have to trudge through or ride by the dzong. Passes can be patrolled, and roads checked to monitor jeeps and tourists-- just as trails have always been, to protect princesses or to patrol among pilgrims.

Perhaps Bhutan will survive so both visitors and natives will coexist happily. In John Wehrheim's last chapter, at a bar in Thimphu, he tells an ambitious Indian who wishes to push Bhutan twenty years forward that such a jolt will leave it like Sikkim: invaded by immigrants, overrun by India. Forty years behind its neighboring fellow (ex-)Buddhist principality Bhutan may lag, but better that than the fate of tiny Sikkim--let alone giant Tibet during the past half-century. In a parallel conversation with a Tibetan-descended man, whose family in part escaped Chinese decimation, Wehrheim sums up his subject slyly. "Happy peasants in bountiful fields. A King who's too good to be true. The usual. I'm making photos, shooting video and collecting stories. Everybody in Bhutan's got a story--some of them might even be true."


(P.S. My budget and the limits of my local libraries narrowed what I could evaluate. Detailed reviews of each title above appear on my blog and Amazon US. This article in slightly edited form, different headings, and without hyperlinks appeared in Pop Matters as Just Walk Into That Cloud: Bhutan in Books & Film on March 19, 2013.)

P.P.S. For assistance, thanks to: Cathie Crooks (Alberta); Eliza Ferrier (Footprint); Harry Hall (Haus); Steve Hirashima (Hawai'i); Leah Koontz (Norton); Claire Miller (Fremantle) and Meaghan Miller (IPG); Patrick Rosca (Mani); Sarah Spencer (Cicerone); Pete Spurrier (Blacksmith); Britney VanBurkleo (Lonely Planet); Naomi Weinstein (Penguin). Veteran travelers to Bhutan, Kai von Hirschfeld and John Wehrheim, suggested superb selections. (Photo: #48 of 50 by John Wehrheim from the Bhutan book via Serindia.)

Michel Peissel's "Tibet: The Secret Continent": Book Review

This Himalayan explorer's renowned for his four decades in Greater Tibet. In 2002, this serves as a fitting survey of his twenty-six expeditions, and a teaser for his earlier narratives such as from Mustang in Cold War Nepal in 1964, a Bhutan facing India's intervention in 1970's Lords and Lamas, and his stays with the Minaro (The Ants' Gold") along Kashmir's forbidden zones in the early 1980s.

Tibetan Pilgrimage conveys with his watercolors and his architectural emphasis some of the same terrain. What this large-format collection of his photographs and reports adds is an overview of how the vast open territories, as he has it, demonstrate the youthful vitality and energy that has characterized this realm since it was united under the sixth-century Songsten Gampo around 650. After introducing the land, flora and fauna (pandas gain credit for their Tibetan origins), the people and society (ditto, polo), and the rise of the nation, the early medieval period ushers in the empire that burst forth.

Peissel reminds us, if in gentler fashion than some passages in "Pilgrimage," of how later Tibetan progress towards a land wealthy enough to allow first sons to inherit land, but restricted in size and resources so as to steer second and younger sons to study at monasteries. Not cloistered, monks (maybe a third of the male population) were supported by their farming family's plots and in return often returned to help their siblings learn and harvest. This broadens perceptions of Western readers, who may too quickly transfer feudal models of the Church and fealty from Europe to Central Asia.

He later critiques the Dalai Lama, starting with the Fifth, who started an unstable domination by Lhasa over the rest of Tibet, beyond the third of the terrain it ruled directly. A particularly lively chapter shows how the Europeans began to enter the guarded kingdoms, or how they tried to. Peissel emphasizes: "Tibet remained one of the few lands in Asia where the Westerners were neither gods nor masters." (172) The outer areas began to be taken over by British and independence-era India, Bhutan, Nepal, China, and Pakistan.

Later sections unfold the collapse of the Tibetan kingdom. However, Peissel takes pains to present the Chinese side, and he rightly shifts no small blame to the imbalance of power that gave Lhasa and the Panchen and Dalai Lamas too much control, and too many pro-Chinese advisors who feared Britain as the alternative ally. Soon, Nehru's India was courted by the Communist Chinese to counter any politicking the Dalai Lama in exile might make.

As one who witnessed the fate of the Khampa freedom fighters courted before abandoned by the CIA in Mustang during the Cold War, Peissel relates vividly the predicament of those caught on the ground and on borders who could not go along with the elite who appear to continue their "court intrigues" in Dharamsala. "Such people tended to have a greater concern for power and fortune than for prayer, and in the past they had taken their services to the highest bidders, be they Mongol, Manchu or Chinese." The present Dalai Lama by way of his allegiance to the same "monastic theocracy" does not escape diplomatic criticism for the "lack of foresight and for not having established sufficient links with the international community." (203)

This tone infuses the near-present illustrations of Tibet poignantly and honestly. Peissel writes of his love for the people and their homeland, but he does not offer a soft-focus perspective in words or imagery. A couple small slips in proofreading (as in "Greek Marco Pallis" when that mountaineer turned mystic scholar was of Greek parentage but Liverpool-born; see my review of "Peaks and Lamas") do not detract from this volume's value. While parts may appear to gloss over his own encounters, they are often quick snippets gleaned from his past books reporting on regions. This book appeared before his death in 2011, more as a capstone for his career. He stays frank, and he lives up here to his life's ambition, to visit and share Tibet with us.

While the language and largely Buddhist culture endures under pressures exerted all around its heartland by foreign powers, Peissel ends with guarded optimism for the survival of Tibetan mentalities and customs as its peoples realize the fate of the heartland and the frontiers is connected, by their vulnerability and their necessary flexibility--as its art and architecture symbolizes. (Amazon US 2-4-13)

Michel Peissel's "Tibetan Pilgrimage": Book Review

Nearly half a century of Himalayan and Tibetan exploration and nearly thirty expeditions on, this handsome edition offers nearly a hundred watercolors from a renowned adventurer-anthropologist. The late Michel Peissel illustrates "what the lens of a camera cannot see," and he tries to express the inner construction hidden on the outside of the fortresses, homes, monasteries, cave dwellings,  chortens, and castles he surveys. From the western realms of Zanskar, Mustang, and Guge to the Tibetan heartlands around Lhasa and Tsang, to the sites on the eastern Chinese frontiers, this covers immense terrain.

Skillfully suggesting solidity in his lines, yet open to a range of colors symbolizing monastic affiliations and cultural alliances, the exteriors Peissel documents unfold as the clear and cogent narrative keeps pace. It begins with the Songsten Gampo early-medieval dynasty which forged a national Tibet, and shows how the revival of Buddhism enabled monasteries to emerge as akin to universities. Second sons, freed from the land by relative wealth of farmers under a form of feudalism secured by armed power and remote terrain, became monks. This also kept land freed up, as fewer populated it and as brothers commonly shared a wife.

Peissel terms this a golden age, for four centuries, Greater Tibet could afford to feed its people and defend them, while not letting the balance of humans to resources tip against sustainability. While the Fourteenth Dalai Lama represents a peaceful mien, his predecessor the Fifth ruled ruthlessly, bringing to an end the amity. Peissel reminds us that the Dalai Lama, ruthlessly, dominated a third of Greater Tibet, in earlier times by a far more hostile attitude which alienated and persecuted those who opposed rule from Lhasa. We understand why so many monasteries resemble fortresses.The Fifth lama sided with the Mongol and Manchu patrons; he pushed out right, left, and center competing Tibetan families and powers, spreading opposition to Lhasa and the Potala, which housed a palace and prison.

It's noteworthy how Peissel counters the popular image such as Robert Thurman and New Age proponents simplify of a benevolent realm enduring free of strife. Armies, assassinations, and fear dominate the Tibetan past as much as the recent era, and the cease-fire lines across Kashmir, the borders shutting off ancient trade with Bhutan, and the Chinese crackdowns show all too well. These perpetuate the logistical and diplomatic, as well as expedition and geographical difficulties Peissel tells of in his journeys to Mustang in Cold War Nepal in 1964, a Bhutan facing India's intervention in 1970's Lords and Lamas, and the Minaro (The Ants' Gold") along the Kashmir forbidden zones in the early 1980s.

This elegant, readable narrative is short, but long enough to join Peissel's many journeys across his beloved landscapes. Focusing on the man-made environment it does not attend to the human, animal, or ecological encounters of his travel books but it provides an accessible introduction to his career. A short list of his expeditions and books appends this large-format, appealing collection of art and words which take you into the perspective of an artful tale-teller showing us his favorite sights. (Amazon 2-1-13)

Ken Haigh's "Under the Holy Lake": Book Review

While another Canadian teacher of English in the late 80s in this Himalayan kingdom's eastern remote reaches has gained nearly a hundred reviews on Amazon US for her well-written narrative, "Beyond the Sky and the Earth," appearing in 1999, this Ontario native, who parallels in his decision to leave grad school and no job prospects for a (nearly parallel in time) immersion instructing youth in grammatical niceties should be equally known. I liked Jamie Zeppa's account (see my own review in May 2012). But I did not know of Ken Haigh's 2008 story until I looked for more well-crafted, no-nonsense encounters in print from this often-romanticized realm.

After Easter Sunday Mass in Khaling (despite the Buddhist state religion, teachers often come from India and Catholic regions), Haigh looks back over the scene. "There were bright green highlights on the pasture, almost yellow, and deeper green in the pastures of the ravines. A lone white cow ambled down the hillside and onto the road where it was struck by a passing truck." (70)

What Haigh shares with Zeppa is a determination to avoid the soft-focus, combined with an acknowledgement of the love-hate feelings that may come once the initial confusion or infatuation wears off and the reality of separation from Canadian comfort sinks in. He relates his training, his hesitation, and his acceptance. He inserts a few excerpts from his diary to share his frustrations during the first summer's monsoons. Then, he adjusts with winter's better weather. He braves the bus to the capital, Thimphu, and he begins to get the hang of local habits.

Curricula debates, rodents, fatalism, preparing students as critical thinkers despite the rote parroting expected for the antiquated exams occupy his time. He even gets elected chairman of the Community Development Association, despite himself. The titular lake, diplomatic dinners, always more bureaucracy, the "tsechu" festival, a haunting glimpse of a blue-eyed stranger in a forlorn canteen: these typify the range of his chapters. He heads down to the Indian border, and up for his second Christmas among the Brokpa herders in truly remote Sakteng.

Unlike his counterpart's initial teaching situation, he's not in a hamlet accessible only by a day's journey from the "ghally lam," the east-west lateral paved highway. He's at the high school on the main road, not far from where Zeppa will later teach at the nation's first junior college--whose original site is now Haigh's assigned post. Still, at least in 1988, this is not a frequently visited spot, and taking into account the changes that such a road accelerates since Haigh's two-year stint, you get a sense of vast differences amid the relative (dogs aside) silence.

He writes straightforwardly, free of affectation. Simple black-and-white photos convey the sense of the places and faces. A small map suffices but it's not detailed; a glossary, reading list, and a few footnotes document his search for a rebel king's holdout near Khaling, for instance. He covers the essentials of the area's politics and history quickly in the "Accidental Area" chapter, and he keeps a keen eye out for the culture shock that's inevitable for any long-term foreigner. He realizes the temptations to play up the eccentricities and oddities, but he balances this with a frank representation of the interwoven familial and class connections that entangle the Bhutanese in a system that Haigh shows us in as honest and direct a fashion as he can, given his reliance on the English-language medium chosen by the monarchy to teach its citizens, across a land easy to praise but more difficult to analyze from a Westerner's perspective. (Amazon US 12-31-12)

Murray Gunn's "Dragon Bones": Book Review

This Australian IT engineer accompanies his new French wife to Bhutan for an extended consultancy, where she's hired to advise its dairy industry's agronomists. Like his compatriot Launsell Taudavin's "With a Dzong in My Heart" memoir set in 1988, Murray Gunn finds that advising the locals about Western methods clashes with rank-pulling bureaucrats, a more lackadaisical work ethic than he expected, and a series of culture clashes mixed with wonder at the kingdom's beauty, Buddhist traditions, and elevated atmosphere. He unfolds his own adjustments gradually, as do the Australian team of Libby Lloyd and Robert van Koesfeld in their 2010 photographs and narrative "Bhutan Heartland"--conducted around the same time the past decade as Gunn's residence with Dominique.

She only arrives two weeks before him, but adjusts rapidly. Her shepherding of Murray allows us a way to learn the customs, cuisine, and etiquette. The expatriate community in the capital, Thimphu, shows the strain of that city's emergence. It's more than doubled the past decade; now the grand "tsechu" festival cannot accommodate in its vast dzong (fortress-monastery) the crowds who flock to watch the dances. Similarly, housing prices geared at foreign workers threaten to skew the market against Bhutanese, while crime (endured by Taudavin in an earlier stay), laziness, pollution, corruption, and tensions appear to increase.

This isn't the New Age Shangri-La marketed by the country by or for Westerners. Gunn does reveal the glorious vistas (he drives its harrowing roads, where more trucks and more drivers do not bode well for safety) and the calculated, carefully expressed charm of his often coy hosts. Yet, to be fair, he nods more to the modernizing pressures and his sympathies for "Southern Bhutanese" as he attempts to get behind the whispers and allusions. This lacks most of the cultural and historical context of other narratives, and he appears to gloss over the fragility of Bhutan's geopolitical predicament.

He does rush past in too few paragraphs what John Wehrheim's Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness (2011 rev. ed) details, as well as "Bhutan Heartland" in a vignette: the manner in which the Bhutanese had to advance to eliminate the Indian rebels, to ease the steady push from the largely Hindu Nepalese to move north into a small, undefended frontier region with limited resources, the last surviving kingdom under Vayrajana Buddhist rule--given the fate of Sikkim nearby to the same demographics and politicking that Bhutanese fear will overwhelm them. Not to mention the cultural turmoil that has happened across Nepal, Ladakh, and Mustang.

He's an experienced ex-pat himself; his own internal threat comes when his knee injury limits his trekking. Dominique, who works out with taikwondo, appears miffed by her husband's capitulation to his body. Ironically, Gunn himself can be snarky, (103) as when he puts down tourists (obviously less buff than he or his wife) who struggle up the easy Paro day-trail. Altitudes can fell even the most fit climbers, by the way. His own ten-day trek, the initial part of the Snowman Trek recounted in
Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World by Kevin Grange, Yakking with the Thunder Dragon: Walking Bhutan's Epic Snowman Trek by Mark Horrell, and in partial form as Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon by Trish Nicholson, shows how both he and his wife face their own physical limits, although the irony or inevitability of their own frustrations appears to escape them and their robust comrades at the time. Yet, unique to what I've read in other versions, he listens to his guide: "This is our life. We have to come up here no matter what the weather's like and we do the same trails over and over until our feet are sore. And we can never go anywhere else. There's no holiday for us." (134)

But sometimes Gunn's honesty makes him appear insensitive. Not all are as in shape as he and his wife. He bristles that those who can afford to visit are out of shape while most would-be younger visitors could tackle the treks, but the high tariff exacted (which he does not have to pay) limits intentionally tourism, to raise taxes and keep the specter of another Kathmandu distant.

Two years is longer than any tourist or trekker can arrange. Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa offers the standard account of a longer posting, but as that's from nearly two decades earlier when modernization appeared more an aspiration than a condition, Gunn's account's valuable. It's similar in its urbanizing situation to Radio Shangri-La: What I Discovered on My Journey to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth by Lisa Napoli, from a time in the mid-2000's. Unlike Napoli's thematic chapters, however, Gunn prefers a jump-cut, edgier pace. It resembles a documentary or "reality t.v." edited version of his experience: he slips in cultural information or relevant contexts quickly before leaping off to another topic, whose connection may remain subtle. 

This style may challenge some readers. Gunn chooses a more novelistic approach, although he prefers a straightforward explanation of what goes on. One of the few metaphors he uses compares his tall self in hiking boots beneath the Bhutanese male dress, the "gho," to a Christmas tree in a pair of buckets. He tells of his growing discomfort with the built-in resistance to work by Western standards among Bhutanese who expect to start up call centers and infrastructures comparable to India, and he laments how the evasive, blame-karma-and-others mentality stunts change. However, an encounter late in his stay at a roundabout serves as a surprising if apt analogy for his own lesson.

He relates his two years in the standard style of many immersed abroad: the initial plunge and the adjustment take up much of the narrative, and the second year comes near the end of his book. His difficulties with Dominique come across in suitably muted but honest exchanges which must have been not easy to reconstruct, and while characterizations and scenery may remain less vivid than in accounts told by others who have visited Bhutan, Gunn strives for a more episodic, fragmented representation of what "two years beneath the skin of a Himalayan kingdom" reveals, beneath the colors and facades. (Amazon US 12-12-12)

Desmond Berry's "Cressida's Bed": Book Review

Based on a 1931 British expedition to award a knighthood to the King of Bhutan, this 2004 novel continues this Welsh writer's exploration of the impact of violence, power, and corruption upon cynical leaders and eager followers seeking meaning within or despite relentless machinations of empire and greed. This is an area that Barry has already shown he knows well. He delved into the impacts of a similar story of Jesse James and Robert Ford in his 2000 epic "The Chivalry of Crime". 

Here, a character taken from a real-life doctor, half-Irish expat Christina Devenish, begins dramatically. In her early thirties, a free-love advocate, a Theosophist who finds no contradiction with the practice of medicine, she possesses her spirituality and her sexuality confidently. She and her Indian comrade find themselves barricaded and then set on fire as their birth control clinic in Calcutta is attacked by mobs seeing their feminist cause as an insult to Muslims and Hindus alike. Christina, recuperating, decides to answer her father's appeal to see him in Bhutan, where he advises the revered religious figure of the Shabdrung, who's caught up in the Great Game between China, Russia, and Britain for control of Tibet and the larger Himalayan region. Opposed by what Barry calls the "Maharaja," the King resents competition and Britain sides with him against what the Shabdrung has entered as a Chinese and Gandhi-allied counterforce to Raj-friendly geopolitics. 

While Barry's depiction of Bhutan lacks the sensual and visual evocations of many other writers who've visited this kingdom, it's refreshing to have a more physically rendered, less New Age enraptured presence within this often romanticized realm. "She set foot on the soil of Bhutan, Alice through the looking glass racked with menstrual cramps, the sweat cooling on her forehead and her back under her sticky frock, and she was desperate to empty her bladder in the shadows of the luxuriant rainforest." (112)  She falls in love with her escort, the Welsh-born Political Officer Owen Davies. He has reconciled his status from a lowly class and a resented principality with his service to the Crown, and he steers Christina's visit to her father--with its own challenge to the Raj--with his own desires, sexually and diplomatically.

These emerge convincingly. Sex happens naturally and in appropriately related if graphic detail, and the drives impelling Owen and Christina entangle with the Bhutanese mission to the competing rulers that the Raj must please, appease, and tease into submission. However, the Bhutanese, who have resisted occupation by any foreign regime, manage their own forces. These fight back via first a mystic medium and then the Shabdrung. Here, Barry faces a difficulty. How to create on the page as vivid a sensation of the spiritual as the temporal and sexual powers contending for Christina and Owen's allegiance? 

Her father interprets the Shabdrung's teachings of the cosmological present, our Iron Age, when the "dregs of time" overwhelm humans, and "devoured the physical body and clarity of mind." (213) These dramatize what the author heard from Vajrayana teachers himself, and Christina filters these through an increasingly tilted sensibility. I liked these scenes, and the novel concludes with a very haunting change in the protagonist that accelerates this shape-shifting that begins in Bhutan. However, the later chapters of this novel, as with his preceding one, prove less gripping. 

The shifts in tone and mood appear more erratic than "The Chivalry of Crime," and the promise of this novel's entry into a place where psychic battles within Christina and Owen erupt as their political and spiritual forces swirl remain half-realized. It's frustrating as the clash of the ethereal with the practical, the exotic and the vicious within historical material suggests such rich possibilities, which Barry keeps at a distance amidst the politicking that overtakes the passions of the two main characters. Furthermore, Bhutan doesn't come as alive as I expected on the page, and the slow pace before the conclusion diminishes the impact of the innovative final scene. Still, given few novelizations set in pre-Independence, guerrilla-threatened India not to mention the usually soft-focus depictions of neighboring Bhutan, it's worthwhile for adventuresome readers. (Amazon US 12-31-12)

Russ + Blyth Carpenter's "The Blessings of Bhutan": Book Review

Previous reviews (Amazon) have been brief if enthusiastic; here's mine with more detail. Russ and Blyth Carpenter offer short "sketches" about eight cultural aspects of this Himalayan kingdom. Coming in 1996 to visit and then do community improvement work there, this 1999 book comes quickly given their recent immersion. However, as with Martin Uitz's similarly pitched Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon (reviewed by me Dec. 2012) from a decade later in this rapidly modernizing nation, the Carpenters provide a thoughtful Western p-o-v that avoids romanticizing or ethnocentrism. This rural Oregonian couple diminishes the personal touch and entertaining or dramatic anecdote common to others who report from this realm often seen from afar and close in soft focus. Instead, they accentuate the mindset that Bhutan tries to perpetuate by Gross National Happiness and its nuanced adaptation of global technologies and expectations. They remind readers of wisdom, in balanced, ecological perspectives.

They begin with a geographical and historical overview, then move into archery (in more depth than any other book I've read on Bhutan); Tantric Buddhism (more commonsense and demystifying, refreshingly); art and medicine (same applied to a more agnostic, balanced East-West perspective on traditional Tibetan remedies and the attitudes that they instill); reincarnation's impact on environmental policy (subtle: how does "you only live once" clash with "what goes around, comes around"?); Drukpa Kunley (given the rarity of this source material available in English, welcome excerpts from the "Divine Madman"); sexuality and women (an honest appraisal of the cost-benefit of matriarchal inheritance of the land vs. education and careers for girls); and the GNH policy (with comments from its proponent Karma Ura--see Mary Peck's Bhutan: Between Heaven and Earth photo collection with Ura's essay, reviewed by me Dec. 2012).

Just a couple of highlights of this unpretentious, casually presented but accessible essay collection: comparing and contrasting Dante's "Inferno" with the Buddhist Wheel of Life to show the differences between a linear and cyclical, ends-based and care-based, eternal vs. reincarnated worldview. Distinguishing the left-right brain with the folk Bon practices and the "intellectual polish" of formal Buddhism to show how Bhutanese beliefs integrate these approaches sensibly.

Commonsense is crucial. Ice can break, water can flow; colors in a rainbow or prism show the evanescence of what appears so tangible: this is the teaching transmitted by Khyentse Rinpoche (see reviews Dec. 2012 of the films Brilliant Moon and Words of My Perfect Teacher for more). The book in earlier sections can feel uneven--probably as it's a joint effort--and tonal shifts and sudden transitions in some portions slow the pace. The Carpenters deepen their appreciation of the circularity of life, as the book progresses. The study of Bhutan's attempts to live in a delicate, harsh, and rugged "Southern Land of Medicinal Herbs" (to use an old Chinese placename) ethically and spiritually, while moving towards more justice and equality, gains traction.

The Carpenters show how in a fir forest in Oregon, lessons learned in Bhutan reverberate, and how stewardship within the ecosystem can challenge those in Bhutan as they try to protect their fragile heartland while accepting--in an overly bureaucratic and civil-servant dominated system--the need for progress, however controlled and gradual. "Sacred paint" can show sexual liberation and psychological understanding; they look at a depiction of "yab-yum" male-female union with fresh eyes and find meanings that work for themselves, not what a prominent if over-indulgent scholar or New Age website might peddle. This honesty speaks well for this unassuming, but well-illustrated (snapshots try to express some of the colors that can overload the senses) and welcome introduction to this too-often idealized, but still appealingly idealistic, realm that few of us will be able to afford to explore outside the pages of such books. (Amazon US 1-11-13)

Martin Uitz' "Hidden Bhutan": Book Review

In a hundred pages, Austrian ex-pat Martin Uitz explores the off-road, off-beat side of Bhutan. Although he works in its Ministry of Finance, one of a hundred foreigners in its booming capital, Thimphu (which as of 2006  had about 70k residents--now it's near 100k), he nods to the bureaucratic morass and civil service's perks only in the opening chapter. Compared to other accounts by those from abroad stationed in Bhutan, such as Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by rural teacher Jamie Zeppa, or With a Dzong in My Heart by Thimphu consultant Lansell Taudevin, Uitz does not reveal much about himself or his family's experiences.

Rather, about the same time as when Radio Shangri-La: What I Discovered on My Journey to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth by Lisa Napoli takes place, Uitz roams out of the city to explore a countryside even there as close as a few hours walk up mountains to yak herders and a takin reserve. Most of his narrative riffs off of two themes. Episodes on the Snowman Trek (see Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World by Kevin Grange; Yakking with the Thunder Dragon: Walking Bhutan's Epic Snowman Trek by Mark Horrell; Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon by Trish Nicholson) comprise a fast-paced chapter. For those not wanting to read a whole book--or the three above--this chapter conveys the gist of this difficult journey well. Uitz loves the "tsachu" ("hot water"--that is, hot springs) which entice the traveler to Gasa and ease the burdens of a summer trek--the exception to the rule as the other accounts take place in the fall.

He also goes on a "Thousand Lake" trek in Dugala, and this is refreshing as an example of an excursion not discussed by others. The challenges on the narrow paths and steep inclines, amid yaks, bears, and leopards, demonstrate the rigors of life for many in Bhutan who don't live in its capital or near the highways, even as these stretch deeper, along with electricity, medical centers, and schools, into the furrowed heartlands of the kingdom. He even runs into a royal entourage, as one of the land's four sister queens, Ashi Sangay Choden, makes her way to visit those in the steep central highlands. 

Another theme is that of the supernatural attractions, as well as the natural wonders. His tale of a "tsechu" holy dance festival at Jambay in Bumthang appeals for its wry look at his fellow Westerners, tourists bent on the long road there and the "dance of the naked monks." This turns out anticlimactic. He gets hit up as a "rich" chilip ("foreigner") at his home by an importuning self-styled "enlightened one" scavenging for grub and cash. He roams around the healers claiming powers, and speculates.

What's intriguing, after I've read Dragon Bones: Two Years Beneath the Skin of a Himalayan Kingdom by Murray Gunn, is an overlapping perspective. The two worked around the same time in the capital, and Gunn's pal Mike beat the author out for the "chilip" part in a locally made film. He dyed his hair blond but left his beard black, as the director directed. Uitz notes he suspected "the young man walked into the role by chance"--which is, according to Gunn's version, the truth. Uitz also enjoyed the uneven, if more ambitious, film exhibited abroad, Travellers and Magicians, although it's not the "three-hour epic" but half that length, at least in the version I reviewed. Again, overlaps occur, as its star, Tsewang, is the ex-husband of Jamie Zeppa.

Other connections extend. The hydroelectricification of the nation, to supply India with power and Bhutan with funds, was engineered with the advice of such as John Wehrheim, whose photo-narrative Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness documents the changing and unchanging landscapes. Author and intellectual Karma Ura explains the nation's transition from a feudalism where "Lords and slaves ate from the same plates" until recently (see Michel Peissel's 1968 visit across a then-unpaved hinterland in Lords and Lamas: A Solitary Expedition across the Secret Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan) to a constitutional monarchy integrating democracy in its striving for Gross National Happiness.

Finally, the temptations abound. As Laudevin and Gunn noted in their stay, the Bhutanese army funds its pensioners by the sale of whisky. Hunting is outlawed, but to meet the demand for dried yak meat in a land where farming crops can be a problem, they tend to "fall off cliffs" and wind up butchered. Plastic bags banned helps reduce pollution, but trash often litters the place. Tobacco apparently (as in the "Travelers and Magicians" star's role) entices many but its presence, Uitz reports, diminishes. Marijuana, grown wild, however, as media enter the realm, is starting to be experimented with by the young. The betel-leaf snack, "the national drug" as he glosses "doma," remains cheap and universal.

I recommend this as an educational and entertaining overview. It sums up efficiently much that is in other media and books (all above reviewed by me Nov.-Dec. 2012) on Bhutan, yet Uitz conveys his information clearly and without pretense or elaboration. Translated by Nathaniel McBride (2008; 2006 German original) smoothly, this can be perused in a sitting or two; its easygoing pace expresses information in a straightforward, but thoughtful, often self-effacing manner. While his sources, frustratingly, are not always credited precisely, and while the lack of a map may frustrate readers unfamiliar with the region, he bridges the gap between guidebooks, histories, and travel narratives in this little entry in the fittingly named Armchair Traveller series. (Amazon US 12-16-12)