Exotic world of Bhutan comes to Chicago Heights

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

The Far Eastern country of Bhutan is about 36 hours from the Chicago area by plane, one way.

It costs more than $6,000 to get there, visit for two weeks and come home.

You can’t fly in at night because there are no runway lights at the airport. Electricity and toilets that flush are a luxury. Drinking bottled water is a must. Most of the comforts of Western civilization are a world away.

Once you get to Bhutan, which lies between China and India, you can expect stunning views of the Himalayan mountains. You can climb 3,000 feet to visit 400-year-old monasteries built into the sides of cliffs and sample dried yak cheese so tough you need to gnaw on it for hours to be able to eat it.

But you don’t have to travel to Bhutan to learn about this exotic nation. You can visit the “Into Bhutan” exhibit that starts Friday evening at the Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights.

Cecily Hunt and Nancy Frazier, Flossmoor residents who have traveled to Bhutan for vacation, organized the exhibit, which has stunning photographs of the Bhutan countryside and a collection of artifacts from the country.

Hunt leads yoga tours to Bhutan, which has about 700,000 citizens and is about half the size of Indiana.

“They are more interested in measuring national happiness than measuring gross national product,” she said.

The country’s name translates to “Land of the Thunder Dragon,” a reference to violent storms that roll in from the Himalayas. Hunt said tourism is highly regulated, and Bhutan wasn’t opened to visitors until the 1970s.

Hunt, who has a master’s degree’s in documentary photography from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, fell in love with the country’s geography and people a year ago when she visited for two weeks with her husband and Frazier.

Years before, she had heard about the tiny nation from her landscaper, who described it as “a magical place.” Hunt certainly thought it was.

Three months after returning, she opened Bhutan Yoga Tours, which organizes yoga-themed trips to the country. Her first tour group was in October, and her next trip is scheduled for November.

A certified yoga instructor, Hunt has led yoga exercises for the Homewood-Flossmoor High School girls swimming team and varsity football team. She’s now teaching yoga at Flossmoor Community Church and a local cancer support center.

Bhutan, Hunt discovered, was the perfect place to teach her art.

“We went to the Lake of the Burning Lamps, and you couldn’t help but feel meditative,” she said. “I thought, ‘this is a place you could do yoga.’ ”

But the tours aren’t cheap. Traveling in Bhutan requires a guide, and the government charges $2,400 for the total package. The two-week costs include accommodations, bottled water and three meals a day.

Round-trip airfare costs anywhere from $4,000 to $4,500. Each one-way trip takes about 36 hours with all the layovers.

Different destinations in Bhutan are showcased in the art exhibit. One of the photographs was taken outside the Tiger’s Nest, a Buddhist monastery built in 1692 on the side of a cliff.

The exhibit also contains many of Hunt’s collectibles from Bhutan. A hallway of the gallery features items created out of yak, an animal central to the economy of Bhutan. And a room has other yak-related items such as yak hair rope, skull beads carved out of yak bone and a bracelet composed of 108 yak beads for meditating.

In the lobby of the gallery are tiny hardened bars of dried yak cheese known as “chuma,” hanging from a string like bath soap. Bhutans eat the dried yak cheese by sticking it in their mouths and chewing on it for several hours until it softens.

“It took all day,” Frazier said. “It’s like sucking on a marble.”

Other pieces in the exhibit are ceremonial beads, traditional Bhutan robes for men and women and Hunt’s handmade thangka — a Buddhist scroll.

Hanging from the ceiling of the exhibit are colored prayer flags that were blessed by Bhutan monks. Hunt recalled seeing the prayer flags everywhere. Strings of flags can be seen in her photographs, stretching across the foggy mountainsides.

“They would blow in the wind, and the wind takes the prayers across the universe,” Hunt said. “You can’t turn your head anywhere without seeing prayer flags. They are a reminder of how deeply spiritual the country is.”

The exhibit’s grand opening will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the gallery, 1527 Otto Blvd. It runs until May 14.

Hunt and Frazier encouraged local residents, teachers and students to visit it.

“People should come out to see it because it moves you to a different place where living is kinder, gentler, people are about each other, and stuff is not important,” Frazier said.