United colours of Bhutan

Click for more photos Bhutan Unspecified Photo: Keith Austin The tiny kingdom in the Himalayas is an extraordinaryrefuge in a crazy world, writes Keith Austin. O173;ne of the best things you can take a Bhutanese man as apresent, say the guidebooks, is a fancy pair of kneelength Argylesocks. Yeah, sure, I thought, and instead stocked up on thoselittle koalas that cling to your bag or lapel. But here we are and there's our guide, Sangay Dorji, standingoutside Bhutan International Airport with a smile as wide as thejet we just flew in on. He is dressed in a gho, the nationalcostume of Bhutan, which it is compulsory to wear during the day onpain of a fine. Advertisement: Story continues below The gho looks, basically, like a threequarterlength wrapoverdressing gown. On his feet are shiny black formal shoes. In betweenare, you guessed it, kneelength Argyle socks. It is an incongruous mixture and yet it works. He looks smartand full of wellplaced pride. A lot like Bhutan itself. Here is acountry that is the flavour of the moment, at least in the travelbusiness and among the famous, where it's not so much a causecelebre as a celebrity clause. Joanna Lumley has made a documentary about it; budding BuddhistRuby Wax wrote about it for Britain's Daily Mail; DemiMoore has been there; and the eternally bemused Michael Palintravelled through it, one dubious eye on the penis wall murals, forhis documentary Himalaya. Here in Australia the former magazine editor Bunty Avieson livedthere while her partner, the producer Mal Watson, worked on thefilm Travellers and Magicians with the moviemaking lama Khyentse Norbu. Her book about that experience, A Baby in aBackpack to Bhutan, is a fascinating insight into everydaylife in what she calls "a little pocket of sanity in a world gonemad". Holy Himalayas, even Bruce Wayne Rosetta Stone Spanish Spain supposedly ended up there inBatman Begins, the latest instalment of the Dark Knightsaga. And when a comic book character has been there, you know it'sfinally on the map. (He didn't really go there those scenes werefilmed in Iceland, probably to avoid altitudesickness problems ina country that is, literally, in the clouds.) Which makes it the place to which everybody, and nobody, hasbeen. It's traditional when writing about this tiny Himalayan kingdomto resort to cliches: comparing it with the hidden paradise ofShangriLa (from James Hilton's 1933 novel, Lost Horizon)is the horse that's most dragged from the stables and flogged toexpiration. It's also the Land of the Thunder Dragon, a mystical countrythat time forgot, a time machine, a step through the lookingglass. What it is is an absolute monarchy where the king, Jigmi SingyeWangchuck, truly is revered and where that same king is trying todo himself out of a job by introducing democracy while alsodeclaring that gross domestic happiness is more important thangross domestic product. Whatever that means. It was the last place on Earth to allow in the dreaded TV (in1999, and they're still not convinced), the first place to bansmoking but not betelnut chewing, which gives you throat cancer,and where the national sport is archery played by men inmanycoloured ghos using stateoftheart bows. It's a place where stray dogs roam the streets and howl and barklate into the night because the people are Buddhists who won't killthings but who are happy to eat meat if someone else has done theslaughtering. Most people find it endlessly fascinating even those whohaven't been there and yet one wellseasoned traveller I knowdescribed it as "passionless". My overriding impression? Disneyworld. Couldn't get it out of myhead (except on a fiveday trek when I developed bronchitis and allthoughts were concentrated on not coughing up a lung).

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