Word: wangchuck
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...evil spirits thinking of entering. We reached Thimphu in the 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...
...telling, and Internet chat rooms replacing the hubbub of the marketplace, this Himalayan kingdom perched between Tibet and India still has no traffic lights, no Starbucks and only 7,000 tourists a year. Those on a quest for the unspoiled will find it hard to fault King Jigme Singye Wangchuck's jealous guarding of the Land of the Thunder Dragon...
Under King Wangchuck's policy of limiting outside influence, the only way to visit Bhutan is on a tour (tailored to the individual) run by a local travel company and priced at a deliberately prohibitive $200 per person per day, including hotels, food and internal transport. Some may also feel the King's insistence on national dress?great belted coats (gho) for men and wraparound cloths (kira) for women?can give a feeling of a living pantomime. But with so few tourists to see it, this is not a show put on for outsiders. And a quick look...