Word: dzongs
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...late afternoon. Home to just 40,000 people, the capital scarcely qualifies as a city. Brightly painted facades and narrow lanes stretching up to the wooded slopes of giant mountains reinforce the feeling of a medieval mountain village. King Wangchuck rules his people from the imposing Traashi Chhoe Dzong, an 18th century monastery that surveys Thimphu from the banks of the Wangchhu River. Only under the cover of darkness do his subjects let their hair down and change into Western clothes...
Snakes & Tiger Skins. Bhutanese art, the Swiss team found, is almost exclusively kept in the fortresslike dzongs, which serve as the administrative and religious centers for each district. Once inside the whitewashed stone walls capped by pagodalike roofs, they found the monastic quarters magnificently decorated with tapestries, sculpture and paintings. One of the most impressive was Paro Dzong, located on the old caravan route from Tibet to India. There, the Swiss group witnessed the traditional New Year's dance beneath the giant prayer banner, or thangka, which portrays Padmasambhava (Lotus-born), the Indian missionary-and central figure in Bhutan...
After that, the Chinese were forced to deploy their own men. In May, near Shekar Dzong in southern Tibet, Chinese forces engaged 6,000 guerrillas in battle. Though the guerrillas lost 800 casualties, it took 15 heavy trucks to cart away the Chinese dead-and the Chinese wounded overflowed hospitals all the way back to the town of Shigatse, 120 miles to the northeast...
...start of the expedition was made in May, 1922, from Phari-Dzong in Tibet, and from this point upward a number of camps were established. In the work 60 Hindu coolies and 32 mules yaks, cows, and donkeys were used...
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