Before last Friday, the only thing I knew about Bhutan was that it is the only country in the world to measure the Gross National Happiness of the population, which was enough to awaken my curiosity.

 So when a friend told me about the presentation of the latest issue of the magazine Works That Work all about Bhutan at Pakhuis de Zwijger, I motivated my sister and a bunch of friends to check it out. We enjoyed an eye-opening evening of stories and learnt the most improbable things about this small country we rarely hear about.

The stories told by the journalists, who had spent 3 weeks in Bhutan, painted an intriguing picture of the country. For example, environmentally Bhutan is a frontrunner with their constitution stating that at least 60% of the country’s surface must be covered with forest, which leads to incredible bio-diversity and the country being carbon neutral.  Other myths were busted, such as the fact that nobody smokes there. We discovered that when a movie is made in Bhutan there is only one copy of it, and a team including the director travel for several years to show the film one village at a time throughout the country.  

If this makes you curious (or if you want to learn about how penis streetart has been elevated to whole new levels), I would recommend you check out the magazine 🙂