Bhutan

The information that can be useful for your travel.

Cities Bhutan  
Country information country code: BT
continent: Asia
capital: Thimphu
languages: Dzongkha

EU membership: no
NATO membership: no

GSM: 900
GPS: 27 30 N, 90 30 E
electricity: 230V/50Hz

currency:
Bhutan Ngultrum: BTN
1BTN = 0.022 USD
1BTN = 0.017 EUR

phone code: +975-2

Travel advices and warnings Bhutan
Tourism Tourism in Bhutan began in 1974, when the Government of Bhutan, in an effort to raise revenue and to promote the country's unique culture and traditions to the outside world, opened its isolated country to foreigners. In 1974, 287 tourists visited Bhutan. Since then the number of tourists visiting Bhutan has increased to 2, 850 in 1992, rising dramatically to 7, 158 in 1999. [1] By the late 1980s tourism contributed over US$2 million in annual revenue.
Culture Cradled in the folds of the Himalayas, Bhutan has relied on its geographic isolation to protect itself from outside cultural influences. A sparsely populated country bordered by India to the south and China to the north, Bhutan has long maintained a policy of strict isolationism, both culturally and economically, with the goal of preserving its cultural heritage and independence. Only in the last decades of the 20th century were foreigners allowed to visit the country, and only then in limited numbers. In this way, Bhutan has successfully preserved many aspects of a culture which dates directly back to the mid-17th century.
Cuisine Bhutanese cuisine (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཟས་; Wylie: 'brug-zas) employs a lot of red rice (like brown rice in texture, but with a nutty taste, the only variety of rice that grows at high altitudes), buckwheat, and increasingly maize. The diet in the hills also includes chicken, yak meat, dried beef, pork, pork fat and mutton. Soups and stews of meat, rice, ferns, lentils, and dried vegetables spiced with chilies and cheese are a favorite meal during the cold seasons. Zow shungo is a rice dish mixed with leftover vegetables. Ema datshi, made very spicy with cheese and chilies, akin to chili con queso, might be called the national dish for its ubiquity and the pride that Bhutanese have for it. Other foods include jasha maru, a chicken dish; phaksha paa and fried rice. Dairy foods, particularly butter and cheese from yaks and cows, are also popular, and indeed almost all milk is turned to butter and cheese. Popular beverages include butter tea, tea, locally brewed ara (rice wine) and beer. Spices include cardamom, ginger, chilies, garlic, turmeric and caraway.
Language There are over nineteen languages of Bhutan, all members of the Tibeto-Burman language family, except for Nepali which is Indo-European. Dzongkha, the national language, is the only language with a native literary tradition in Bhutan, though Lepcha and Nepali are literary languages in other countries. Other non-Bhutanese minority languages are also spoken along Bhutan's borders and among the Lhotshampa community in South and East Bhutan.
Climate Bhutan's climate is as varied as its altitudes and, like most of Asia, is affected by monsoons. Western Bhutan is particularly affected by monsoons that bring between 60 and 90 percent of the region's rainfall. The climate is humid and subtropical in the southern plains and foothills, temperate in the inner Himalayan valleys of the southern and central regions, and cold in the north, with year-round snow on the main Himalayan summits.
Currency The Ngultrum, often denoted by BTN, is the official currency used in Bhutan. Equal in value to the Indian Rupee (through a 1:1 peg), the currency is subdivided into 100 chertrums.

The Ngultrum was introduced in 1974 and was immediately pegged to the Indian Rupee because India was key in assisting the Bhutanese economy just a decade before. The Bhutanese Ngultrum does not exchange independently with other nations, but it is exchanged interchangeably with the Indian Rupee quite often.

Thimphu, Bhutan

Tuesday 19, March

From wikipedia about Bhutan

Bhutan (; Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཡུལ་; Wylie: druk yul; भूटान, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People s Republic of China. Bhutan is separated from the nearby country of Nepal to the west by the Indian state of Sikkim, and from Bangladesh to the south by West Bengal.

Bhutan existed as a patchwork of minor warring fiefdoms until the early 17th century, when the area was unified by the Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, who was guided by a prophecy, fled religious persecution in Tibet and cultivated a separate Bhutanese identity. In the early 20th century, Bhutan came into contact with the British Empire, after which Bhutan continued strong bilateral relation with India upon its independence. In 2006, Business Week magazine rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world, based on a global survey.

Bhutan's landscape ranges from subtropical plains in the south to the Sub-alpine Himalayan heights in the north, with some peaks exceeding. The state religion is Vajrayana Buddhism, and the population of 691, 141 is predominantly Buddhist, with Hinduism the second-largest religion. The capital and largest city is Thimphu. After centuries of absolute monarchy, Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy and held its first general elections in 2007. Bhutan is a member of the United Nations and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC); it hosted the sixteenth SAARC summit in April 2010. The total area of the country has been reported as since 2002. The area had previously been reported as approximately in 1997.
Description above from the Wikipedia, licensed under CC-BY-SA full list of contributors here.
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Bhutan, Thimphu