Bhutan

The Land of the Thunder Dragon — from Guru Rinpoche's blessing to the world's first kingdom of Gross National Happiness.

Bhutan traces its spiritual identity to the 8th century, when the tantric master Guru Padmasambhava is said to have carried Buddhism into the Himalayan valleys. A patchwork of feuding lords and monasteries was forged into a single theocratic state from 1616 by the Tibetan lama Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, who built the great dzongs and a dual system of religious and secular rule. After civil strife and two treaties with British India, the penlop Ugyen Wangchuck was crowned the first hereditary king on 17 December 1907, founding the Wangchuck dynasty. Over the following century Bhutan opened to the world, joined the United Nations, championed Gross National Happiness, and in 2008 became a constitutional democratic monarchy through a transition handed down by its own kings.