Bhutan jealously guards its lifestyle and ancient traditions.

The beauty of the pastoral landscape can seem unreal to travelers from the industrialized world: houses with brightly decorated window frames and shingled roofs, patchworks of green paddy fields, plots of tawny buckwheat, oak forests, a covered bridge bedecked in colorful prayer flags, fences of intricately woven bamboo, a man leaning on a wooden rail trampling his harvest, a women weaving in the open air, a baby laced into a horse’s saddlebag, yaks browsing in a grove of giant rhododendrons.
Such scenes remain in the memory forever. But it is the symbols of Bhutan’s religion which leaves the deepest impression: the chortens (commemorative monuments) dot the landscape, fluttering prayer flags, prayer wheels turned by the water of swift mountain streams and the awesome monasteries. Buddhism is everywhere, determining attitudes, molding thoughts.
Impenetrable jungles to the south, and daunting ranges of snow-capped mountains to the north have always barred access to the remote valleys of the kingdom. In spite of many incursions by both Tibeto-Mongol troops and the armies of the British Empire stationed in India, the country has not been colonized since the 8th century. Bhutan has therefore kept alive its extremely rich heritage, doggedly maintaining its distance from the modern world, proud of its own values and traditions.