Bhutan Quotes

Seven years is a short time in the history of a country's democracy. But in this short time, people of Bhutan have developed faith in the institutions of democracy. ~ Narendra Modi

am late for my afternoon coffee with Linda Leaming, an American who has lived in Bhutan for the past nine years. Asia has attracted its share of spiritual seekers, or lama lickers as they're sometimes called, but Bhutan was closed to outsiders until the 1970s. Even after that, it was not an easy country to get to. You had to want it. ~ Eric Weiner

Bhutan is a very serene country with an incredible history. It has an incredible group of great artisans. ~ Christian Louboutin

Then, just for a blessed few hours, he had climbed out of that chopper into the high, cold, piney air of Bhutan, and gone for a ramble in the king's Land Rover, and hiked up a misty mountain that had struck him as being straight from a 1970s album cover. And he had done some introspection about the fact that he couldn't even take such a lovely place at face value but only liken it to such pop culture references. ~ Neal Stephenson

This is my favorite part of the day. "Good morning, Class Two C," I say. The entire class leaps up and sings out, "Good morning, miss!" Twenty-three faces are smiling at me. Sometimes they shout it with so much conviction that I laugh. ~ Jamie Zeppa

I would not have done anything differently. All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I am not saying that they were all good or that they happened for a reason...but they have been right. They have been okay. As far as revelations go its pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self help movement. Okay won't get me on Oprah, but okay is a start and for that I am grateful. Can I thank Bhutan for this breakthrough? It's hard to say […] It is a strange place, peculiar in ways large and small. You lose your bearings here and when that happens a crack forms in your armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light. ~ Eric Weiner

I've just been transferred to Kanglung," I say. They look at me to see if I am joking, and then they look at each other. There is a long, terrible silence and we all look at the floor. Karma Dorji wipes his runny nose on his sleeve and looks up. "Oh, miss," he says sadly. "Please don't go."
"Just a minute," I say, and go into the bathroom. I latch the door and turn on the tap full force. When the water is running noisily, I lean my hot forehead against the damp, flaking concrete, and cry. ~ Jamie Zeppa

Bhutan all but bases its identity upon its loneliness, and its refusal to b assimilated into India, or Tibet, or Nepal. Vietnam, at present, is a pretty girl with her face pressed up against the window of the dance hall, waiting to be invited in; Iceland is the mystic poet in the corner, with her mind on other things. Argentina longs to be part of the world it left and, in its absence, re-creates the place it feels should be its home; Paraguay simply slams the door and puts up a Do Not Disturb sign. Loneliness and solitude, remoteness and seclusion, are many worlds apart. ~ Pico Iyer

To be associated with a film that just flat-out makes people happy is such a blessing and a tremendous privilege, and I'll always be grateful for it. People's eyes light up when they talk about it. I've been in Asia, Africa, Europe and even Bhutan; people know the movie there. It's just an amazing thing. ~ Michael J. Fox

There was something intoxicating about this. I kept wanting to laugh, just at the lavish giddy freedom of it: relatives and countries and possibilities spread out in front of me and I could pick whatever I wanted, I could grow up in a palace in Bhutan with seventeen brothers and sisters and a personal chauffeur if I felt like it. ~ Tana French

There is a difference between arrival and entrance. Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plan touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your luggage. You can arrive a place and never really enter it; you get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over, slowly, in bits and pieces. [ ... ] It is like awakening slowly, over a period of weeks. And then one morning, you open your eyes and you are finally here, really and truly here. You are just beginning to know where you are. ~ Jamie Zeppa

By any definition, what happened in Bhutan in the years 1989-93 was ethnic cleansing. The Bhutanese government denies this and has refused to repatriate any of those forcibly expelled. ~ Kai Bird

What I love is how seamless everything is. You walk throw a forest and come out in a village; and there's no difference, no division. You aren't in nature one minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars. ~ Jamie Zeppa

Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That's nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world's poorest people. ~ Walter Williams

We stop when we reach the top, climb out, shivering in the cold and ghostly mist under wind-blasted trees, to read the sign erected by the Public Works Department: "You have reached Trumseng La, Bhutan's highest road pass. Check Your Brakes. Bash On Regardless. Thank you." ~ Jamie Zeppa

The Rough Guide to Nepal; The Great Sights of Canada; America by Car; Fodor's Guide to the Bahamas; Let's go Bhutan. ~ John Green

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In ~ Madeline Drexler

Time has become a melding of minutes and months and the feeling of seasons. [ ... ] Leon says it is the Bhutan Time Warp and I know what he means. Time does not hurl itself forward at breakneck speed here. Change happens very slowly. A grandmother and her granddaughter wear the same kind of clothes, they do the same work, they know the same songs. The granddaughter does not find her grandmother an embarrassing, boring relic. ~ Jamie Zeppa

Bhutan does seem a bit unreal at times. Hardly anybody in the U.S. knows where it is. I have friends who still think the entire country is a figment of my imagination. When I was getting ready to move there, and I told people I was going to work in Bhutan, they'd inevitably ask, "Where's Butane?"
It is near Africa," I'd answer, to throw them off the trail. "It's where all the disposable lighters come from."
They'd nod in understanding. ~ Linda Leaming

If I had to name the biggest difference between Bhutan and the rest of the world, I could do it in one word, civility. ~ Linda Leaming

Bharat for Bhutan and Bhutan for Bharat. The colour of our passports may be different but our thinking is the same. India stands committed to Bhutan's happiness and progress. ~ Narendra Modi

It is remarkable, the lines that connect people. You can strike up a conversation with someone, a stranger even, and discover that you have a friend in common, that your aunts were from the same town, or that his best friend can grease your way into Bhutan. It seems on those occasions that we are all like strands of DNA, spun around each other in a double helix. ~ Francis Slakey

Ask yourself if you are happy and you cease to be so." That was John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century British philosopher who believed that happiness should be approached sideways, "like a crab." Is Bhutan a nation of crabs? Or is this whole notion of Gross National Happiness just a clever marketing ploy, like the one Aruba dreamed up a few years ago. "Come to Aruba: the island where happiness lives. ~ Eric Weiner

Bhutan is the land of la. The monosyllabic word serves as all-purpose affirmation, honorific, and verbal tic. Mostly, it is a softener, appended to almost everything. La means "sir" but also "ya know." I like the way it sounds and, during my weeks in Bhutan, use it myself, but always self-consciously, never finding the right rhythm. ~ Eric Weiner