Told in the hills
The takin that a saint made from leftovers
Bhutan's national animal looks as if it was assembled from spare parts: the head of a goat on the body of a cow. Bhutanese legend says that is exactly what happened. The 15th-century saint Drukpa Kunley, the 'Divine Madman', was asked by villagers to show a miracle. He demanded a whole cow and a whole goat for lunch, ate both, then stuck the goat's head on the cow's bones and told the creature to get up. It rose and walked off to graze, and people called it the takin. The takin was declared the national animal in 2005.
The Motithang Takin Preserve has its own true story. Thimphu once kept takins in a small zoo. Wikipedia records that the king felt it was improper for a Buddhist country to keep animals confined, so they were released. The takins did not head for the hills; they wandered the streets of Thimphu for weeks looking for food. The answer was a fenced patch of forest on the edge of the city at Motithang, where they live today and where you can watch them from a raised walkway.
Pinned to the board
Did you know
Thimphu has no traffic lights; police officers direct traffic by hand at the main junctions.
The Buddha Dordenma statue above Thimphu, finished in 2015, holds 125,000 smaller gilded Buddha statues inside it.
Simtokha Dzong, built by the Zhabdrung in 1629 just south of Thimphu, is considered the oldest surviving dzong in Bhutan.
