Customer Reviews

Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan

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This is a very fun and illuminating book. It has a very warm and engaging style and the perspective on this charming little country it offers is impossible to find elsewhere. I am a big Bhutanophile and wrote my undergraduate dissertation on it, but I still learned something new and interesting on every page.

This book was written by one of the previous Queens of Bhutan. She and her three sisters married the previous king who recently abdicated in favor of his oldest son who has now become King.

The book is a breezy and rather charming read. It begins as a memoir of the author who talks about her childhood in a small village and her trip to an Indian boarding school. And continues with a retracing of the changes that occurred in her life and that of her country. She then spends the second half or so of the book recounting her many walking/trekking tours across the country including to some of its remotest parts meeting the local people along the way.

This is certainly not a Bhutan travel guide. It is more of a discussion of the modernization of a very isolated country and the culture of its people. I suppose you might be able to hike to many of the remotest places she talks about but they would take a great deal of logistical planning. Of course other places mentioned in the book are very much on the normal tourist itinerary. She, of course, had the advantage of being the Queen. But that is not to say that she was carried around on a litter. She certainly did a lot of hard walking and hiking and I think her aim and goals were admirable. But as a relatively well-off person, even as a child, I think she probably had a number of advantages over not just foreigners visiting Bhutan but also certainly over the average villager. Her family traces its lineage to one of the most important figures in Bhutanese history.

Ultimately I enjoyed this book very much. I will be spending a few weeks in Bhutan later this year so I have been reading about the country.