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Eight welcoming questions about the essentials of Bhutan. Everyone can join in, young and old, and discover something surprising along the way.
Valley newcomer 0–3 · Himalayan hiker 4–6 · Friend of Bhutan 7–8
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It is the Druk, or Thunder Dragon, and in their own language, Dzongkha, Bhutanese people call their country Druk Yul, often translated as 'Land of the Thunder Dragon'. On the flag the dragon holds a jewel in each of its claws.
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Today about 70 percent of Bhutan is forest, home to animals such as tigers, red pandas and snow leopards. These forests soak up more carbon dioxide each year than the whole country gives off, so Bhutan takes more of this warming gas out of the air than it puts in.
Photo: A. J. T. Johnsingh, WWF-India and NCF, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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The traffic police wave the cars on with smooth, dance-like movements of their arms and hands, and the city is proud of them. When a traffic light was once tried at one crossing, people missed the friendly officers, and it was soon taken away again.
Photo: Christopher J. Fynn, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Its bowl-shaped flowers often open purple and turn blue, and it grows at about 3,700 to 4,300 metres above sea level. Only in 2017 did scientists realise that it was a species of its own, and they named it gakyidiana, after a Bhutanese word for happiness.
Photo: Yoshida, Toshio; Yangzom, Rinchen; Long, David., Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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They arrive from the Tibetan Plateau in late October, and at the Crane Festival every November, children dressed as cranes perform crane dances. To keep the birds safe, the valley's electricity cables run underground instead of on tall poles.
Photo: Phuentsho, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Television and the internet both arrived in Bhutan that year, and by the end of 2000 one cable company already offered more than 45 channels. Before then, owning a TV set had been banned since 1989, although a few sets still picked up channels drifting in from India and Bangladesh.
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The mountains around the valley rise to about 5,500 metres, so pilots must steer between them and land by looking out of the window rather than relying on instruments alone. Flights may only land in daylight and in good weather.
Photo: Doug Knuth from Woodstock, IL, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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One yak cheese, hard chhurpi, is so tough that people keep a piece in their mouth and chew it slowly like gum, and a single block can last up to five hours. Yak butter goes into butter tea, a salty, warming drink that is popular all over Bhutan.
Photo: Alexandr frolov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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