I have a new favorite country – Bhutan. I highly recommend visiting it if you ever travel to India, Nepal or Southeast Asia. It may seem expensive at first with the $250 per day tourist fee, but it includes almost everything: a guide, transportation, accommodation at 3 star hotels, three meals a day, entry fees to all the sites, so you end up spending almost nothing beyond the initial cost. The country is very diverse and has areas ranging from warm tropical jungles to high Himalayan peaks. Whether you like comfortable tours or challenging tracks you’ll have much to see.
Visiting Bhutan in January turned out to be a very good decision. Not only did I get the “off season” discount on the daily fee, but I was the only visitor with that agency so I got a private tour of the country with my own guide! We hardly saw any other tourists and although it was a bit cold the skies were always cloudless and clear. Together with the driver there were always laughs in the car and I was very sad to leave after a week.
Even though Bhutan has a lot to improve in the area of infrastructure, I think that most countries of the world could learn a lot from it. The concept of Gross National Happiness is used to strive towards social equality, and because of it many citizens are willing to sacrifice some of their personal comfort, trusting the leadership to have an overall plan. Also, as devote Buddhists the citizens and leadership are committed to protect all life in the country and take great effort to do so. For example, because Bhutan is the winter home of the endangered Black Necked Crane it is forbidden to put up electric power lines in valleys where they are nesting. Instead, people use local solar power or take the extra cost of putting power lines underground.
School lessons in Bhutan are taught in English so it’s easy to communicate with everyone. People are friendly and the girls are pretty – what else could you ask for?! Go already!
