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Audrey Topping is a prize-winning photojournalist and author of nine books. China Mission, A Personal History, earned the 2013 Prose Award from American Publishers. Her photo exhibits and lectures include The Metropolitan Museum, Hallmark Gallery, Overseas Press Club, Explorers Club, Harvard University, the Katonah Gallery of Art, Royal Ontario Museum and Westchester Community College.

Look closely at this abstract detail of a Buddhist temple mural and you may see the tail of the Thunder Dragon enfolding a tale of this Buddhist Kingdom which was sealed from the outside world until the 1970’s. The land had no roads or hospitals and never experienced, for better or worse, the world wars, industrial and sexual revolutions, racial riots, television, Hollywood and the glitches that permeate modern societies.

Bhutan is different. To enjoy Bhutan, one must abandon rigid beliefs, common rationality and any tendency toward impatience. Bhutan is a country in transition from an absolute Monarchy to a modern Democracy while carefully guarding Buddhist traditions and culture inherited from the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon.