When Paradise comes closer

During our village school days, while we used to graze our cattle on the vast rice field, we often witnessed a glowing series of hills on the northern horizon illuminated by the evening sunlight; it was the Land of the Thunder Dragon, officially known as the Bhutan Kingdom in the eastern Himalayan foothills.

- NAVA THAKURIA

During our village school days, while we used to graze our cattle on the vast rice field, we often witnessed a glowing series of hills on the northern horizon illuminated by the evening sunlight; it was the Land of the Thunder Dragon, officially known as the Bhutan Kingdom in the eastern Himalayan foothills. We also encountered a group of Bhutanese traders, who came every year to participate in Makhibaha Sabha (an important rural socio-religious fair in western Assam) to sell their domestic products in the Eighties. An endless curiosity developed among us about the mystical place (then we had no idea that it was a neighboring country to our north named Druk Yul in the Bhutanese language Zongkha). Later, whenever I visited the land of Buddhist Gompas with less than one million cheerful Bhutanese nationals nurtured by a series of dark green mountains, fertile hills with vegetation, clean river streams, picturesque valleys, and the paradise on earth unfolded astonishing experiences every time for me. When I arrived in Thimphu soon after our marriage, my wife was mesmerized with the eternal beauty of the land and proclaimed, if we have a daughter, she would be named Shangri-La.