The magic kingdom

Read / lees in : Nederlands

As soon as you enter Bhutan from India through the gate on the picture to the left, everything changes like magic. What immediately draws your attention is that on the other side of the border the streets are clear from garbage, the drivers do not honk non-stop and obey the traffic rules. What a tranquility. Apart from that the Bhutanese don’t walk around in rags but bathrobes with knee stockings. And while Bhutan imports almost everything from India, they served us in the first restaurant we found their own national beer together with pork and beef, which you have to search for in India with a magnifying glass. After arriving however we still had a long drive over a small mountain road to Paro ahead of us, in the dark. That’s why we didn’t get to see much more of the country at first. But when we looked out of the window this morning it was a magical moment for us.

We saw a perfectly blue sky, without the pollution we had become accustomed to in the last few months, and a mountainous landscape with beautiful little house scattered around. All in the same (mandatory) style. It looked like we woke up in a fairytale.When we were able to see those house from up close later that day, we noticed they all had big dicks painted on them to scare off bad spirits. After I saw that this country and its habitants could no longer do anything wrong in my opinion. On top of all that, a little while later, we saw a group of Bhutanese men playing darts. And by saying that I’m not referring to that silly bar game that Raymond van Barneveld and his mates play. No sir, here they throw humongous darts over a distance of at least twenty meters on a dart board the size of a postcard. Hitting that is nothing short of a wonder.