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TIME Traveler
Get away with TIME's special travel issue
[10/17/2002] |
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| MATTHIEU PALEY |
| Magic Mountains: Bhutan's pristine environment and jaw-dropping scenery come at a price, but it's worth every cent |
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bhutan
The More Things Stay the Same
Bhutan is slowly opening up—but, thankfully, its antique culture remains resistant to change
By Aryn Baker
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Posted Monday, October 20, 2003; 21:00 HKT
Afew years ago, I met a Bhutanese who carried a carved wooden phallus on a key chain. He told me it was for good luck. In Bhutan, not only do these lucky charms, known as dorji, dangle from the corners of every roof, but imaginatively detailed painted penises grace the whitewashed walls of many homes as well. Spouting fire or draped in ribbons, and sometimes more than a meter tall, these lurid depictions are some of the first images visitors encounter on the drive from Bhutan's sole airport. Only after passing the fourth did my curiosity get the better of my bashfulness. I quizzed my guide, Tshering Dorji, a bon vivant who shares his country's Falstaffian predilection for earthy humor and double entendres. "Oh, the great dorji, my namesake," he winked, "I'll take you to where it all began."
A few hours later we arrived at the Chimi Lhakhang, a temple near Bhutan's former capital, Punakha. A low, square building capped by a golden peaked roof and surrounded by a thicket of white prayer flags, Chimi Lhakhang squats atop a bodhi tree-crowned hill that rises from a sea of rice paddies like a turtle's back. It was built in 1499 by one of Bhutan's favorite Buddhist saints, Lama Drukpa Kunley. Often called the Divine Madman for his outrageous teaching methods (which included womanizing, boozing and, some say, sleeping with his own mother to shame her into going on a meditation retreat), Drukpa Kunley is celebrated for whacking errant demons over the head with his steel-hard penis. So potent was his phallus that he was able to subdue all of Bhutan's resident demons and turn them into protective deities. Bhutanese now use the symbol to ward off evil and deflect gossip—vital in a tiny country where wagging tongues carry far more weight than the sole newspaper, a weekly called Kuensel.
Bhutanese children grow up on tales of Drukpa Kunley's adventures, and Kuensel carries a serialized (and uncensored) comic strip of his life. Although Bhutanese are in many ways highly conservative, their celebration of the Divine Madman's scandalous interpretation of Buddhist teachings and his unorthodox approach to handling problems extends across all classes. And like Drukpa Kunley, Bhutan has nothing but its natural endowments with which to battle the cultural and military Goliaths next door, India and China. To do so, in the face of an encroaching globalization that threatens to overwhelm the country's unique existence, requires a hardheaded cultural protectiveness that can appear to the outside world as visionary, quaint and Draconian.
Upon his coronation in 1974, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck declared that Bhutan would maintain a minimum 60% forest cover—a canny decree, considering that protecting the watersheds would in turn safeguard Bhutan's greatest export, hydropower. Other national policies, such as the wholesale banning of cigarette sales to preserve the health of the citizenry or the enforced wearing of a national costume (a knee-length kimono-like garment tied at the waist for men and a narrow, handwoven sheath for women), push Bhutan firmly into the realm of nanny states.
Some might think the country's heavy-handed tourism policy does the same, but the Bhutanese would disagree. Soon after his coronation, the young King—only 18 at the time—embarked on a controversial campaign. For the first time in Bhutan's modern history, foreign tourists would be allowed in, provided they paid a government-mandated minimum daily tariff. He called it high-value, low-impact tourism. Shaking down visitors may not earn Bhutan friends among the backpacking set, but as the government sees it, that's not the kind of visitor they want, anyway. "Travelers from the West come to Asia thinking they can spend less than the price of a cup of coffee back home per day to get the experience of a lifetime," says Thuji Dorji Nadik, joint director of the Department of Tourism. "What good does that do us?"
Bhutan can still afford to be picky about whom it lets in, but things are changing: the recent arrival of satellite TV—and the accompanying advertisements—has dangled before the Bhutanese such showy baubles as Toyota Land Cruisers, washing machines and microwave ovens, all of which require foreign currency. Seeking to increase visitor numbers, without diluting Bhutanese culture, the government has been looking for help. And in the absence of Drukpa Kunley, it has turned to the private sector.
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