Bhutan

Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, sits in the Eastern Himalayas between Tibet and India, thirty-eight thousand square kilometres and eight hundred thousand people round the capital Thimphu, peaks above seven thousand metres with the unclimbed Gangkhar Puensum highest. Buddhism came up from Bengal in the first millennium; in the sixteenth century Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal welded the warring valleys into one Drukpa state, beat three Tibetan armies, subdued rival sects, wrote the Tsa Yig code, and set two desks, monk and minister, over the dzongs. His reincarnations ruled like Dalai Lamas while penlops fought; the British drew close in the nineteenth century, Ugyen Wangchuck took the throne in 1907, and treaties with India guarded a careful isolation through both world wars. Dzong architecture, archery, red rice and the accounting of happiness instead of product carry the thunder-dragon kingdom through 1945 uncolonised, the last Himalayan state never to bow to any empire.