Bouckova_Bhutan_cover

Bhutan, My Love

Original title: Bhútán, má láska
Publisher: Odeon, Prague, 2020
ISBN: 978 80 207 1958 4
221 pages
Travelogue

This richly illustrated literary travelogue is a very personal testimony about courage, self-conquest and finding happiness.

A small kingdom in the Himalayas, wedged between India and China: this is Bhutan, a country in which the happiness of the population has been declared a national goal. The prominent author heads there with a bicycle in her luggage. Her husband and six other cycling enthusiasts accompany her. Together they explore the untouched nature high in the mountains, encounter tantric Buddhism at every turn, also people who live in poverty, but seem to be happy. Tereza Boučková falls in love with Bhutan—the land of mountains and monasteries and of the holy penis, which is revered there as a symbol of fertility.
Immediately after her return she picks up the pen and writes a literary travelogue in which she not only describes the adventurous, physically demanding journey, but also her very personal experience. She
is bold enough to reveal her own fears to the reader, which she consciously overcomes through this exotic journey: her fear of flying, of heights and, last but not least, her fear of getting old and dying. The result is a sincere and joyful diary of a unique experience.

Boučková wrote a travel report, a series of sweeping diary accounts, thrown down dynamically, with gusto and zeal, and accompanied by numerous photographs. With her we conquer a height of four thousand meters on a bicycle, we visit monasteries, we breeze through the colorful forest, we are frightened by a giant yak—and especially we meet people who are communicative, cheerful, with a smile on their faces. Inside the shell of the report is hidden a meditation, something like an accounting. A continuous reflection, by the way full of self-deprecation and humor. But there is no final balance, the book is driven forward by a desire for further knowledge. For example, “in what way can people live in the twenty-first century. Modestly. And really happily.
Radim Kopáč, literary critic

Other books by Tereza Boučková

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2016
Memoir, Modern Fiction
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2016
Memoir, Modern Fiction
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2013
Short Stories
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2008
Memoir, Modern Fiction