Exploring Bhutan, you imagine yourself catapulted hundreds of years back. This is enhanced by its people, Bhutan mother and child are hardly influenced by Western mass consumption and lifestyle. Instead, they still wear their self-woven traditional outfits, leading a calm, simple and peaceful life.
The first records of people settling in Bhutan go back 14.000 years ago. It is very well possible though that Bhutan was already inhabited by scattered clusters of tribes. The Drukpa are Bhutan’s indigenous population. They can be divided into three main ethnic groups: the Sharchops, Ngalops, and Lhotsampas.
The Sharecrop are believed to be Bhutan’s original inhabitants, living predominantly in Eastern Bhutan. Their roots lie in North Burma and Northeast India.
Bhutan’s second tribe is the Ngalop. Importers of Buddhism to the kingdom migrated in the late 19th century from the Tibetan plains. You find them mainly in Western Bhutan. In the early 20th century, the Lhotshampa nestled in the southern plains of Bhutan, looking for agricultural land and work. They are of Nepalese origin and you’ll recognize them by their ‘topi’, a very specific headgear. This minority group was so heavily discriminated against in the late 1980’s, that in 1990 they massively fled to Nepal. Nowadays they still can’t return to Bhutan and live mostly in Nepalese refugee camps of the United Nations.