But flaming thunderbolts have not warded off change. Nabji’s primary school, established almost a decade ago, is part of an educational revolution that has lifted Bhutan’s literacy rate from 10 percent in 1982 to 60 percent today. The clinic next door is part of a push that has raised life expectancy nationwide from 43 years in 1982 to 66 today and, during the same span, reduced infant mortality from 163 deaths per thousand to 40. Nabji has no full-time doctors. Yet the day after the temple ceremony, three physicians from the district hospital in Trongsa hiked across the mountains to immunize the village children.

Nabji’s isolation diminishes by the day: The booms reverberating across the valley are the sounds of a road being blasted through the forest several miles away. A rotating crew of 15 villagers from Nabji contributes labor, hauling 150-pound bags of plastic explosive up the mountain slopes. The new road won’t reach Nabji for another year or two, but when it arrives, electricity, television, and commerce will follow. Some elders worry that Nabji’s innocence will be lost. But the younger villagers prefer listening to Karma Jigme, a 26-year-old painter in baggy NBA-style shorts who recently returned to Nabji after five years working in the towns of Paro, Punakha, and Trongsa.

Jigme’s tales from the modern world have all the magic of Bhutan’s traditional legends. The first time he saw television, he says he hid under his bed, fearing that the angry pro wrestlers on screen “would jump out of the box and hurt me.” A bigger shock came when he and his crew were repainting Taktshang Goemba, the famed Tiger’s Nest monastery above the Paro Valley. Perched on a plank of scaffolding some 2,500 feet up the cliff face, Jigme heard a deafening roar and then, not 300 yards away, “I saw a house in the shape of a fish flying through the air.” The airplane terrified him so much he almost tumbled off the platform.

Life in Nabji brings no such drama. Jigme toils long hours in his family’s rice and potato fields, earning extra cash painting traditional scenes on village houses—including, yes, a few thunderbolts. He needs the money to buy an ox. But what he really wants, he says, “is a Nokia.” It doesn’t matter that, for now, mobile phones don’t work in Nabji. He just wants a little piece of the modern world.