I'm in Darjeeling, India right now. IT IS BEAUTIFUL. I love this town. I'll be posting pictures in a couple of weeks when I get them developed.

I'm leaving in an hour to go back to Birtamod, Jhapa, Nepal. It's amazing here.

Here's a brief low down:
The three main ethnic groups in Bhutan are the Drukpas in the north (from Tibet), Sarchops in the northeast (from Burma and believed to be the earliest settlers), and the Lhotshampas in the south (from Nepal). Bhutan is the only Buddist absolute monarchy in existence. And it's pretty silly since the monarch was only established in 1907 by the British.
- The Drukpas are the ruling class.
- About 45% of the population of Bhutan consist(ed) of the Lhotshampas.
The majority of the Lhotshampas were forced out of Bhutan between 1990-1993 where they recieved refugee status in Nepal.
- There are around 100,000 refugees in the camps in Nepal plus close to 30,000 in India

The Bhutanese government now considers them Ngalops (anti-nationals). Many of them were tortured and forced into signing voluntary migration forms.

In March, the governments of both Bhutan and Nepal agreed to form a Joint Verification Team to repatriate the refugees who were split into 4 groups:
1. those forced to leave (the Bhutanese Govt. denies that this group exists)
2. those who left voluntarily
3. criminals
4. anti-nationals

I think that this whole process is a big fat joke. It's extremely slow (around 10 families a day) and there are about 17,000 families. And it doesn't seem that anything is going to result from it.

They're exile is the product of ethnic cleansing policies enforced by the Bhutanese govt.

What can be done?

International pressure looks like the best thing to put on Bhutan and India since Bhutan is heavily supported by India.

But Bhutan is in a bitch position between India and China... What to do, what to do...

There are many websites now that cover the issue in better detail.

I'll be in Kathmandu in a week; I'll update again there if I can.

Hopefully some of this info is useful...and correct since I've been getting different stories from almost everyone I meet.