A minibus, with driver and guide awaits passengers at the terminal. It's a two-hour drive from the landing field at Paro to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. If you are one of these passengers, you are certain to be mystified by the whole experience. You may find it hard to believe your are in Bhutan, the most remote kingdom in the world. Young monks look down from a monastery wall.
Monks spend a lifetime in monasteries in Bhutan.
An archer with modern bow takes aim. A winding, twisting road cuts across the high mountain range of central Bhutan. An elderly man with his grand daughter. Everything, of course, will be strange, and for good reason, Bhutan is an isolated mountain kingdom that has been independent for all its recorded history, more than two thousand years. And only a little more than 20 years ago, in 1974, did the monarchy open its doors to the outside world.