Bhutan: How Will the World’s Last Independent Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom Survive?

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 03.20.08 | 12:30 PM ET

The once-isolated country has welcomed tourists, satellite television and Matt Lauer in its efforts to engage the world. Now, as Arthur Lubow writes in the latest Smithsonian, the country has begun efforts to preserve its culture by displaying it outside its borders. Two major exhibitions are set for the United States this spring and summer, displays of Buddhist art in New York and San Francisco, and “demonstrations of traditional Bhutanese dancing, weaving, metalworking, woodcarving and herbal medicine” at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. Lubow traveled to Bhutan to see how these efforts, as well as larger issues of globalization, are changing the country.

One person Lubow spoke to, Dasho Penden Wangchuk, Bhutan’s Secretary of Home and Cultural Affairs, put it this way: “We feel ourselves a drop in the ocean. And what do we need to survive? Our culture. You want to preserve a plant or the black-necked crane because they are endangered. But [people] are the highest form of living being. The world goes gaga over a particular variety of orchid, but here is a nation. Would you like to see Bhutan disappear?”

Bhutan faces another transformative, first-time event Monday: elections. The country’s citizens will go to the polls to elect a parliamentary government to replace the existing monarchy. Clashes have already been reported in advance of the election. To police the situation, some of Bhutan’s borders will be closed leading up to the vote.

Photo by babasteve, via Flickr (Creative Commons).