Bhutan

• 1. Introduction

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  Bhutan sits tucked into the Eastern Himalayas, a kingdom where 98.8% of the land is covered by mountains, making it the most mountainous country in the world. Its highest peak, Gangkhar Puensum, stands at 7,570 metres and holds a remarkable distinction: no climber has ever reached its summit. It remains the highest unclimbed mountain on earth. The wildlife ranges from snow leopards in the alpine heights to Bengal tigers in the tropical lowlands, and a 2010 BBC documentary captured the first known footage of tigers living at 4,000 metres in the high Himalayas. How did a landlocked kingdom smaller than Switzerland, with a population of just over 800,000, remain unconquered by any colonial power, develop its own constitutional monarchy, expel a sixth of its own population, and then quietly begin mining bitcoin with its rivers? Those questions are what this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Thunder Dragon's Names

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  Since the 17th century, Bhutan's official name in its own language has been Druk yul, meaning "country of the Drukpa Lineage" or "the Land of the Thunder Dragon." The word Bhutan appears only in English-language official correspondence. The precise etymology of the name Bhutan is unknown, though it most likely derives from the Tibetan endonym Bod for Tibet, possibly through the Sanskrit Bhoṭa-anta, meaning "end of Tibet," as Bhutan sits at the southern extremity of the Tibetan plateau and culture.

  Names resembling Bhutan began appearing in European records around the 1580s, under forms like Bohtan, Buhtan, and Bottanthis. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier's 1676 work Six Voyages is the first to record the name Boutan. Those early references, however, appear to have described Tibet rather than Bhutan as we know it today.

  The modern distinction between the two regions only solidified through the 1774 expedition of Scottish explorer George Bogle. Realising the differences between the two regions, cultures, and states, his final report to the East India Company formally proposed calling the Druk Desi's kingdom "Boutan" and the Panchen Lama's kingdom "Tibet." The EIC's surveyor general James Rennell then anglicised the French name as "Bootan" and popularised the distinction between it and Greater Tibet. The first time a separate Kingdom of Bhutan appeared on a western map, it appeared under its local name "Broukpa."

• 3. Unification and the Fortress Builders

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  Portuguese Jesuits Estêvão Cacella and João Cabral became the first recorded Europeans to visit Bhutan in 1627. They met the Tibetan lama and military leader Ngawang Namgyal, presented him with firearms, gunpowder, and a telescope, and offered their services in his war against Tibet. Namgyal declined. After a stay of nearly eight months, Cacella wrote a long letter from the Chagri Monastery describing his travels. It stands as one of the rare surviving accounts of Namgyal from outside his own kingdom.

  Namegyal had arrived in Bhutan after fleeing religious persecution in Tibet. Until the early 17th century, the region was a patchwork of warring fiefdoms. He unified them, defeated three Tibetan invasions, and promulgated the Tsa Yig, a code of law that brought local lords under centralised control. He also built a network of dzongs, impregnable fortresses that served as administrative centres. Many of those dzongs still stand today as active centres of religion and district administration.

  When Namgyal died in 1651, his death was kept secret for 54 years. The secrecy was a calculated move to maintain political stability, and it worked. His successors served as the spiritual leaders of Bhutan, in a role comparable to the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Namgyal became the first Zhabdrung Rinpoche, and the title and lineage he established shaped the country for centuries.

• 4. Surviving the British

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  In 1772, the Maharaja of Koch Bihar appealed to the British East India Company after Bhutanese forces had invaded and occupied his kingdom. The Company assisted, ousting the Bhutanese and then attacking Bhutan itself in 1774. A peace treaty required Bhutan to retreat to its pre-1730 borders. The peace proved fragile. Border skirmishes continued for the next hundred years.

  Those skirmishes eventually led to the Duar War of 1864-65, a confrontation over control of the Bengal Duars. Bhutan lost. Under the Treaty of Sinchula, the Duars were ceded to the United Kingdom in exchange for an annual payment. The treaty formally ended hostilities.

  The power vacuum that followed fuelled civil war between the rival valleys of Paro and Tongsa during the 1870s. Out of that conflict, Ugyen Wangchuck, the penlop or governor of Trongsa, emerged victorious. From his power base in central Bhutan, he defeated his political enemies and united the country through several civil wars and rebellions between 1882 and 1885. In 1907, an epochal year for the country, he was unanimously chosen as the hereditary king by a gathering of leading Buddhist monks, government officials, and heads of important families. John Claude White, the British Political Agent in Bhutan, photographed the ceremony. The British government promptly recognised the new monarchy.

  Three years later, the Treaty of Punakha gave the British control of Bhutan's foreign affairs in exchange for internal autonomy. Bhutan was never formally colonised, but it operated within the British orbit. When India gained independence on the 15th of August 1947, Bhutan was among the first countries to recognise the new nation.

• 5. The Lhotshampa Expulsion

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  In 1988, the Bhutanese government conducted a census in southern Bhutan, requiring each family to produce a tax receipt from the specific year 1958, no earlier and no later, or a certificate of origin from their place of birth. Previously issued citizenship cards were no longer accepted. The census targeted the Lhotshampa, a largely Nepali-speaking community that unofficial estimates placed at roughly 45% of the population in that census year.

  The Bhutanese government's policy since the late 1980s had moved toward cultural uniformity under the banner of "One Nation, One People." Teaching of the Nepali language was discontinued from schools at the start of the 1990 school year. Citizens were required to wear traditional Drukpa dress in public. Those who could not prove residency under the narrow 1958 criteria risked denationalisation.

  Demonstrations swept across southern Bhutan, some of which turned violent when government buildings and schools were burned. The state response was harsh. Between 80,000 and 100,000 Lhotshampas were forcibly deported. Members of the Bhutanese army and police were accused of burning homes, confiscating land, and committing torture and rape. According to the UNHCR, approximately 107,000 Bhutanese refugees were documented in seven camps in eastern Nepal. The Nepalese government refused to grant them citizenship, leaving them stateless.

  Since 2007 and 2012, the United States admitted 60,773 of these refugees. Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Australia also accepted resettlement. The Bhutanese government has not recognised political parties associated with these refugees and continues to view them as a threat to the country's stability.

• 6. Gross National Happiness and Its Limits

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  In 1999, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck lifted a ban on television and the internet, making Bhutan one of the last countries to introduce television to its population. In a speech marking the occasion, the King described television as a critical step toward modernisation and a contributor to what his government had called Gross National Happiness, while also warning that misuse of the technology could erode traditional Bhutanese values.

  The Gross National Happiness framework positioned wellbeing, culture, and environmental conservation alongside economic growth as goals of state policy. Bhutan's constitution requires the government to maintain at least 60% forest cover, and more than 40% of its territory has been designated as national parks, reserves, and protected areas. In 2018, Bhutan's Forest Landscape Integrity Index score ranked it 16th globally out of 172 countries. The country currently produces a net negative greenhouse gas output because its forests absorb more carbon dioxide than the country emits.

  By 2022, however, the Gross National Happiness Commission was dissolved. Businesses and industry had found its criteria too constraining and lobbied for the reintroduction of GDP as the national measure of success. The framework was abandoned. Around the same period, Bhutan faced a mass exodus of young people, with at least 50,000 people, more than 6% of the population, emigrating after the pandemic. The tourism industry contracted by 10% during COVID-19, and tourism numbers had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels as of 2025.

  On the 13th of December 2023, Bhutan was officially delisted as a least developed country. That same month, the King announced the creation of a special economic zone at Gelephu, a planned city modelled after Dubai and Singapore, with its own gold-backed currency and a Singaporean CEO.

• 7. Rivers, Bitcoin, and What Comes Next

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  Bhutan holds one of the largest reserves of hydropower potential in the world, with an estimated capacity of 30,000 megawatts. Its largest operating plant, the Tala Hydroelectric Power Station, has an installed capacity of 1,020 megawatts. Electricity generated from Himalayan rivers is the country's largest export, sent primarily to India.

  Those same rivers have quietly powered a more unusual asset. Bhutan began mining bitcoin in 2019, using green hydropower. As of the 15th of November 2024, the country held around 12,206 BTC, worth over US$1 billion, making it the fifth-largest state holder of bitcoin behind the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. The chief executive of Druk Holding and Investments, Ujjwal Deep Dahal, confirmed that the country "started mining those assets in 2019 with our green hydropower." Bhutan aims to expand its mining capacity to 600 megawatts by 2025 in partnership with Bitdeer, a Nasdaq-listed technology company. According to a World Bank report, Bhutan invested US$539 million in cryptocurrency mining operations over the two fiscal years from July 2021 to June 2023.

  Melting glaciers caused by climate change are a growing concern. Japan has stepped in to help Bhutan cope with glacial floods by developing an early warning system. The planned Gelephu Mindfulness City, meanwhile, is intended to include a new international airport and an extension of the Indian rail network, built in a country that currently has no railways at all. The last country Bhutan established diplomatic relations with was Qatar, on the 16th of October 2025.