In the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon

A selection of the photographs, thoughts and impressions recorded by Joanna Lumley on her televised trip to Bhutan. The actress followed the steps of her grandparents' epic journey of 1931; and this book also contains some of the photographs and documentation of that original trip as well as some of Joanna's drawings.

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In 1931 Joanna Lumley's grandparents travelled to the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan to invest King Jigme Wangchuk as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire. They journeyed for three-and-a-half months through dense jungles and across mountain passes and uncharted plains, taking with them a film camera. In this book, their granddaughter records her thoughts and impressions of Bhutan as she follows in their footsteps, trekking across the country from west to east, on foot and on ponies. The book includes photographs from her trip, archive pictures from her grandparents' album, drawings by Lumley herself, and extracts from her own journal and her grandmother's diary. It is peppered with recipes, remedies, customs and, all through, a vein of personal family history and the author's own thoughts and observations.