I woke up to a glorious morning today. The skies were clear. And the heavens promised a warm, sunny day. That’s how it’s supposed to be at this time of the year – warm, sunny and bright: perfect weather for harvesting paddy. And that’s why some of our farmers, prompted by BBS’s forecast for sunny [...]
Thank you for participating in Big Picture -12. It was fun to follow your comments – most of you recognized the picture, but you still spent the time to craft interesting answers. Thank you. My favorite answer comes from “Thinlay”, whose keen sense of observation, meticulous research and precise composition bags our prize: bragging rights! [...]
I am in Dorikha. I got here this evening having walked up from Dorithasa. My ancestors did this journey every year, at this time of the year, over the course of many centuries. They migrated to escape the oppressive summer heat of Dorithasa in favor of the much cooler Dorikha. And in the winter, they [...]
Farming in Bhutan is difficult work. Our farmers toil from dawn till dusk, in the sun and the rain, and with rudimentary tools, just to secure a basic harvest, which, at the best of times, is barely enough to feed their families through the year. Farming in Bhutan is also a notoriously risky business. [...]
I’m in Shaba, a small village in Sombaykha. The recent earthquake damaged all 12 of its houses. Luckily, no one was injured. And thankfully, most of the houses have suffered only minor damages. But one house was hit hard. It has been damaged beyond repair. It’s still standing. But barely so. And it is no [...]
I stayed at Yangtsena yesterday. It’s a small village on the southern slopes of the Pu-la overlooking the Amochhu river. Yangtsena has only seven houses. But all of them are handsome, traditional farmhouses. It wasn’t always like that – just 14 years ago, they lived in basic bamboo huts. That’s about when, when Yangtsena’s residents [...]
Today is the 24th of March. So it’s exactly three years since PDP got clobbered in the kingdom’s first general elections. Actually it wasn’t that bad – 33% of the voters had supported us. It’s just that that, unfortunately, translated to only two of the 47 seats in the National Assembly. Anyhow, it’s now three [...]
The people of Lopa village in Haa, Samar Gewog, did not sleep last night. They stayed up to guard their village – a cluster of mostly old farmhouses at the edge of a pine forest – from wild fires that was spreading through the woodland above their village. The fire had started yesterday afternoon. And [...]
A popular attraction at the recent Tarayana Fair was the Lhop house. The house, which barely measures 8 feet by 9 feet, had belonged to Ap Pen Tshering, and in it, he and his wife, Aum Gagay Lham, had raised their four children. 75 year-old Pen Tshering’s house had been dismantled and transported to Thimphu, [...]
Sombaykha is the latest of our country’s 16 dungkhags. It was established barely two years ago to serve the two remote gewogs of Sombaykha and Gakiling. The offices of the dungkhag, which consists of three makeshift houses, are located in Sibthang along the banks of the Amochu. Last Sunday, on 21 February, farmers from Gakiling [...]
Tshering Tobgay is a Member of Parliament representing Sombaykha Constitutency in Haa. He is the Leader of the Opposition Party in the National Assembly of Bhutan.
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