The Road Less Travelled

Watching the news in Thimpu , Bhutan 's capital city, is an education in itself. This is widely seen as a ‘closed country' but, and unusually so, there is little poverty of which to speak and no pent-up national anger. There's no crime worth reporting. The economy barely gets a mention and the King, the leader of this tiny Himalayan recess, is the greatest folk hero of them all! Indeed, he tried to step down not too long ago and push his 600,000 people toward democracy. They would have none of it and he's back where he was, now into his 34 th year as King of the ‘Thundering Dragon', as Bhutan is affectionately known. And his motto? Well, in Bhutan few are concerned with ‘Gross National Product'. All the talk is about ‘Gross National Happiness'!

It's the environment that consistently makes the headlines in Bhutan . The colossal pine forests that cover more than 70% of this mountainous land, the hydroelectric plants feeding energy to northern India and of course the unparalleled flora and fauna that make Bhutan into an endemic bird zone. Don't dare drive over a Black-necked crane or you'll be behind bars before you know it!

But beyond the natural beauty, what makes Bhutan most noticeable is its nationalised religion. Every fibre of this country's culture is soaked in Buddhism. From the King down, everybody lives and breathes their faith. A million prayer flags wave incessantly. The prayer wheels, the monasteries and monks are universally present. Oddly enough, it was the seemingly millions of dogs lounging around the streets that gave us a bizarre introduction to Buddhism. Dogs aren't unusual of course, not in Asia anyway. In Bhutan , they were everywhere and while we might have been all but exasperated at the racket in the middle of the night and ready to shoot them, the Bhutanese had a very different and tolerant perspective. To them, the packs of dogs, with the incessant barking, yapping and howling, fighting and scrapping as they were, were on a spiritual journey from one life to the next, a canine pilgrimage out of the animal life and into a next stage. No Buddhist in his right mind would interrupt that process! And so our learning began!

Most of Bhutan can only be reached by footpath but with the blanket on tourism being lifted ever so slightly, roads are beginning to snake through the mountain passes and ravines. Around 6,000 tourists a year make their way to this Kingdom. We travelled from east to west, driving from the airport in Paro, just about the only piece of ground flat enough in Bhutan on which to land a plane, to the depressing province of Bumthang . In fact, it's not all that far, maybe only 150 miles or so but it took us most of a week to manoeuvre ourselves around a thousand hairpin bends and crawl along the cliff edges. It's not for the faint hearted, that's for sure. It's beautiful when it's dry. There's no more breath-taking sight than an expansive, panoramic survey across the Himalayas , peering down, as we did, onto the tops of the clouds. But when it rains and we slipped and slithered our way perilously close to the muddy cliff edges, it was a different story!

But this was not a tourist trip. Our job in Bhutan was two-fold. On the one hand we were anxious to spend time with Bhutanese believers and understand – as best we could – what it means to be a disciple here. Imagine, then, the humbling joy of huddling together with several tiny groups of worshippers. We were among the first to arrive in the front room of this most ordinary of houses. There were certainly no signs outside, no welcome boards here, no list of public meetings or children's activities throughout the week. The Bhutanese race has never welcomed the Gospel nor those who believe it, much less practice it. It was dark and behind closed doors and as each person quietly pulled back the curtain and entered through the back door, we couldn't help but stare at them. We were filled with respect and complete admiration. These were people who had chosen to swim against the overwhelming tide of Buddhism. Men, women and children came and sat quietly, perhaps 25 of them altogether. Someone led in prayer and then they sang together, all from memory of course. There were a few Bibles but only in the Nepali language, nothing was available here in the native Dzongkha language spoken by the Bhutanese.

Persecution in Bhutan is often more intellectual than outright brutal. Generally, it is not a violent opposition. It's subtle and organised, discriminatory but suffocating. People always want to know if you are Buddhist, or rather, if you are not. Fill out a form, any form, and you had better be prepared to nail your faith-colours to the mast immediately. “Are you Buddhist?” Little wonder believers rarely get the good jobs or an offer of promotion. Nor is it any surprise to see their children closed out of schools. In Bhutan , to be Bhutanese is to be Buddhist.

We went to several little fellowships and our joy was immense. We were on top of the world and among some of the Lord's giants. And yet it didn't last very long. The other reason for visiting Bhutan was to try to sense something of its spiritual culture. We had been in Laos before where Buddhism is similarly practiced. But Laos is also communist. Bhutan , however, offers the visitor the full, unabridged, undiluted version of popular Buddhism. We continued our journey westwards and eventually entered Bumthang. This is a Buddhist heartland and we at once sensed and felt it to be a sinister and thoroughly dark environment. There are several people groups in this region; the Brokpa and the Bumthangpa, Lap and Kurtop to name but a few. Most groups have no believers at all among them.

Visiting the monasteries was a miserable experience. These were Bhutan 's impenetrable fortresses with hundreds of chanting, shaven heads, the drums and the horns generating a constant, monotonous drone in the background. The copper, red and saffron colours were blowing everywhere while streams of churning water powered the spinning prayer-wheels. Perhaps most disturbing of all was to see the six-year olds, the boys who were there for life, safe inside and forever chanting their way toward something they could never be sure of. Their whole lives, it seemed, were already mapped out for them. It's a brutal existence. Several times we heard the leather whips cracking and lashing and we knew some poor child had missed his cue. It was here that we suddenly felt ourselves to be in the presence of real evil and in an atmosphere of utter hopelessness.

But it wasn't just the monasteries. Buddhism in Bhutan is a cultural norm. As our time in the country drew to a close, we found ourselves caught up in one of Bhutan 's annual festivals. An enormous, woven tapestry representation of a Buddha was unfurled like a banner - so immense it more than covered the side of a large building. And the people came, not the monks this time but the ordinary folk – the farmers, the women and the children and en masse they spread themselves flat out on the ground, prostrated before the idol. Still more kept coming and we were pushed along, shoved in unison like an enormous, frenzied scrum and somehow we found ourselves at the very front of the crowd. We watched as multitudes filed past the Buddhist priest, living for his touch, longing for his blessing. This was their chance for redemption. The raising of the eyes and looking upon the Buddha was all it would take. And in their thousands they did it, to a man utterly convinced their sins had been expiated.

Bhutan has enormous splendour, host perhaps to the most fantastic beauty of anywhere in this world. There are still only a few foreigners who make the journey. As we criss-crossed the valleys and repeatedly bumped into the same small groups of tourists with whom we had first entered the country, we realised that on any given day we were part of no more than perhaps 25 or 30 outsiders who had been allowed to see beyond the veil at any one time. This was ‘The Road Less Travelled'. It proved a deeply moving experience, reminded as we were of the reality for many who remain enveloped in Buddhism, multitudes that – we could be lured into thinking – are completely unreachable. The depression is overwhelming. Faced with the enormity of the work, we could be tempted to lose heart. But the Lord has his ways and is doing good things and the fellowship we enjoyed in the Himalayas with the few people who had chosen a path of trial and testing, proved that some Bhutanese at least have found ‘The Road Best Travelled'.