Welcome to Bhutan. Bhutan is a Himalayan country that really stands out amongst countries of the world. Bhutan is the least urban, and most rural, country in the world. It was the last country in the world to get television and the last country in the world to get the internet – both quite recently. Bhutan has never been conquered by anyone and has never been occupied by anyone in its entire history. It sits in the Himalayas between the mountain peaks separating it from Tibet and the malarial jungles of India. It has only been an official ‘country’ for about 100 years. Before that, it was just a place where the Bhutanese people lived. Bhutan did not have a single road in their country until the 1960s, and they don’t have many roads today. The people are rather small and were really quite friendly. Many people would say hello to us and talk to us, especially the younger people. Bhutan is a Buddhist country. Many of the men in Bhutan shave their heads, so I really fit in quite nicely.

We were barely out of the airport and Paro itself when we made our first unscheduled stop. Our guide saw a family threshing their rice and asked if we wanted to stop and get a closer look. We did, of course, and just like that, we were into life in Bhutan. Most people in Bhutan are farmers and they do most of their work by hand. I don’t remember seeing any “real” tractors in Bhutan. We did see what our guide called something like tractors, but they were actually a Japanese product that was the equivalent of a ‘drivable’ roto-tiller. We did see a lot of those, both in fields and on the roads.

At any rate, these first photos are the family that we met threshing their rice. Their house was just up the terraced hills to the right of the first photo.

In the second and third photos, you can see the outskirts of Paro in the background. Mind you, there are lots of farms right ‘inside’ most towns. After watching the rice threshing for awhile, our guide asked for ‘volunteers’. Naturally, I sent in the ‘first string’ (see Vicky in third photo).

Eventually, I couldn’t help myself and had to give it a try as well.