Featured Web/Blog: Introduction to Bhutan – Unbelievable Photographs!

Bhutan.  This little-known Himalayan kingdom, nestled between the giants of India and China, is the world’s last remaining Shangri-La.  This is an extraordinary country, unlike any on Earth, where traffic lights do not exist, buying cigarettes is illegal, the wrestling channel and MTV are banned, as well as Western-style billboards and plastic bags, and Gross National Happiness has been deemed more important than Gross National Product.  While neighboring countries have catapulted themselves into the modern world and embraced tourism with such ferocity that their cultures have been both compromised and neglected, Bhutan has recognized that the only way to move forward and ensure both its survival and sovereignty is to protect the unique culture and environment that makes the country so special.

Up until 1960, Bhutan had been visited by only a handful of early British explorers and during the decade that followed the few foreigners permitted into the country were guests of the royal family.  It was not until the coronation of the fourth king in 1974 that a hotel was built and the first group of paying tourists arrived, organized and led by Lars Eric Lindbald (founder of Linbald Travel) who encouraged the government to limit tourism and to charge high fees.  This set the standard by which tourism would evolve in Bhutan and small groups began to enter the country, permitted only to visit the dzongs and goempas in Paro and Thimpu. Continue reading Featured Web/Blog: Introduction to Bhutan – Unbelievable Photographs!

Bhutanese royal wedding to be held in October 2011

Source: BBC 20 may 2011: The 31-year-old king of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan has said that he intends to marry in October, local media report.

The British-educated Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck said his future wife, 20-year-old student Jetsun Pema, would be a “great servant to the nation”.

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Wangchuck is widely revered in the country of some 700,000 people.

The king took over after the abdication in 2006 of his father, who began the country’s democratic transition. Continue reading Bhutanese royal wedding to be held in October 2011

Bhutan’s 31-year-old king to marry in October 2011

Friday, 20th May, 2011: This morning, I attended the opening of the 7th session of the Parliament and to everyones’ surprise (a pleasant one), His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, possessing a warm smile, announced his wedding with Jetsun Pema. I almost clapped. The royal wedding is to be held in October this year. It is a joyous day in Bhutan. A welcome news indeed!

 

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Courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/KingJigmeKhesar

 

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Ashi Jetsun Pema (Pic source: Bhutan Observer)

Fri May 20, by Adam Plowright (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The 31-year-old king of Bhutan, an Oxford-educated bachelor crowned in the remote Himalayan country in 2008, set up another royal wedding on Friday by announcing his engagement.

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who helped usher in democracy in the Buddhist nation, revealed his intention to marry 20-year-old student Jetsun Pema during an address to parliament.

“As king, it is now time for me to marry. After much thought I have decided that the wedding shall be later this year,” he announced, according to a copy of the speech sent to AFP.

“While she is young, she is warm and kind in heart and character,” he said of the future queen, who appeared in traditional Bhutanese dress in a joint picture released of the couple.

The announcement clears the way for another wedding in a year of royal nuptials that has already seen Britain’s Prince William marry Kate Middleton in London in an event that captured the world’s attention. Continue reading Bhutan’s 31-year-old king to marry in October 2011

Is happiness overrated? A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness

MAY 16, 2011 By JOHN TIERNEY

Martin Seligman now thinks so, which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pyschological Association in the late 1990s, he criticized his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study life’s joys, and wrote a best seller in 2002 titled “Authentic Happiness.”

But now he regrets that title. As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it?

And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends. Continue reading Is happiness overrated? A New Gauge to See What’s Beyond Happiness

Getting Smart on Aid

May 18, 2011 By 

One cost of the uproar over Greg Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building story in the best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea,” is likely to be cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.

But there are also deeper questions about how best to make an impact — even about how to do something as simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty straightforward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, what could make more sense than building schools?

How about deworming kids?

But, first, a digression: a paean to economists.

When I was in college, I majored in political science. But if I were going through college today, I’d major in economics. It possesses a rigor that other fields in the social sciences don’t — and often greater relevance as well. That’s why economists are shaping national debates about everything from health care to poverty, while political scientists often seem increasingly theoretical and irrelevant. Continue reading Getting Smart on Aid

When It Comes to Helping Others: Just Do It

May 18, 2011, 6:26 PM By RYE BARCOTT

It’s graduation season, and for the past two months I’ve been traveling to campuses in the United States on a book tour to talk about service in the Marines and social entrepreneurship in Africa. One point seems to resonate with students above all of the others. From a commuter college in the plains of Indiana to Stanford and MIT, students have been latching onto one simple sentence: be a doer.

I use this line to emphasize the larger point that you don’t have to wait to make an impact. You don’t have to wait for wealth, status, or age. This is true more so today than perhaps ever before.

Rye Barcott, co-founder of the organization Carolina for Kibera and author of
Jason ArthursRye Barcott, co-founder of the organization Carolina for Kibera and author of “It Happened on the Way to War,” exchanges a “gota,” or fist bump, with a young member of his organization. Continue reading When It Comes to Helping Others: Just Do It

The Value of Blogger Press Trips

Interview with Jordan Tourism Board’s Managing Director

JTB Managing Director Nayef Al-Fayez with Leslie Koch in Madaba JordanI met Jordan Tourism Board’s managing director Nayef Al-Fayez in April 2011, during the “Restoring the Journey” trip to Jordan and Egypt. (May 18, 2011, By Leslie Koch

What is the goal behind your blogger outreach campaign?

Bloggers differ from traditional media outlets because they give a more realistic, firsthand account of the country they are visiting, especially in times of special circumstance. What is more, their coverage is more immediate and can sometimes be more influential. People can relate to the person writing the blog and can depend on their honest, unbiased perspective. A blogger’s integrity is closely tied to their ability to provide a real, honest and unselfish view of their experience; it is what makes people relate. We needed people whose opinions are highly-regarded and genuine to make sure people trusted that Jordan was indeed safe, and not only that, but that it had so much to offer, any time of the year.

What is also great about bloggers is their continued interaction with their audience and their sincere recommendation of a country or experience if they truly believe in it. It’s like getting a recommendation from a friend you trust, as opposed to reading a recommendation in a mass-produced magazine. Continue reading The Value of Blogger Press Trips

Why it Costs $200 a Day in Bhutan?

MAY 17, 2011 By Mary Kay Magistad for the THE WORLD (PRI): Download MP3

Bhutanese are proud of their traditional Buddhist culture – a culture tracing centuries back to Tibet, which has given Bhutan both its written language and its strain of Buddhism. As an independent country, Bhutan has been able to preserve its traditional culture far better than Tibet. And it wants to share that culture – with a select few, well-heeled tourists.

Many climb – though, in sneakers or hiking books rather than in heels – to the Tiger’s Nest in Paro, a Buddhist monastery with gilded roofs that seems to hover ethereally above a sheer cliff face. The hike on steep forest trails winds past rhododendrons and ghostly Spanish moss. With the high altitude, it takes even a young, fit person a couple of hours to make the ascent – and that’s before you get to the more than 700 stairs leading to the monastery at the end.

A Different Kind of Tourist

But few of the foreign tourists on the trail when I visited – or in Bhutan in general – were young or fit. Many rode donkeys up, and used walking sticks to gradually make their way down. Not exactly the energetic young trekkers of Nepal – but then, Bhutan’s tourists are different. Continue reading Why it Costs $200 a Day in Bhutan?

On the Ground with a ‘Gap Year’

May 3, 2011, 9:00 AM By GREGORY KRISTOF

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Gregory Kristof, who took a gap year in China before starting college.

I’ve periodically recommended that high school students take a “gap year” after graduation, by deferring college entrance for one year. Most colleges encourage students to take a gap year, partly because students then arrive a little more mature, a little more ready to study, a little more worldly. It’s becoming a bit more common, and Princeton now pays for some kids to travel during their gap year, but most people are still wary of the idea. In fact, almost every kid I’ve talked to who has taken a gap year raves about the idea, so I thought I’d commission a guest column from my eldest son, Gregory, who is currently taking a gap year in China. He spent most of the year studying Chinese at Tsinghua University and then at a language school in Dalian, and soon he’s going to finish up the year studying Spanish in Peru. On the side, he worked and volunteered. Here’s his take:

–Nicholas Kristof

It took place on a frosty peak tucked away in the Tibetan highlands: my friend Rick and I walked in on a group of monks as they were on their knees, groaning.

They were performing secret rituals involving yak butter.

Peeking out from behind animal fur curtains, Rick and I hoped that they hadn’t noticed us yet. They hummed and sat in rows facing a stage of yak butter candles that threw images against the walls like kicked hacky sacks. Back in the shadows, I worried: What would happen if they saw two white dudes chillin’ behind the furs? Continue reading On the Ground with a ‘Gap Year’