Minister of sponsored walks

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is facing a medical crisis - but its health minister has a plan. He wants to set up a British-style NHS, and to raise the $25m he needs for it he is going on a sponsored walk. Luke Harding talks to him.

This weekend, Lyonpo Sangay Ngedup will strap a large blue rucksack to his back and set off briskly into the mountains. As he climbs uphill, the path offers a fine view over Thimphu, the tranquil capital of Bhutan, and its dense forested valleys. But Ngedup is not your average walker. He is Bhutan's health minister. And he is also in training. Next month he will embark on what is arguably the most ambitious sponsored walk of modern times - a difficult and treacherous slog right across the small and normally obscure Himalayan kingdom.

His epic 560km (347 mile) route follows an old mule trail through thick virgin forest, uninhabited jungle, over tricky rivers and a 4,260m (14,000ft) high mountain pass. Each walker will carry a 25kg (55lbs) backpack that contains a tent, sleeping bag, bed mat, and dried rations. There is a strong possibility of attack by wild animals: six people were mauled to death by Himalayan bears in Bhutan last year, so an armed guard is going too. Then there are the leeches.

"The most important thing is that the minister makes it," Ngedup says at his ministry in Thimphu. "If any of my colleagues drop out that's OK. It's not a defeat."

The aim of the walk is simple: to create a trust fund of $25m to provide free primary healthcare for Bhutan's rural poor, who account for 79% of the country's 658,000 population. Assuming he attracts enough sponsors, and evades the bears, the money will be dumped in an international investment account in the US. Half of the interest, about $1.5m, will then be spent annually on essential medicines and vaccines. These will be conveyed into remote areas by mule and yak. The remaining interest will be ploughed back into the fund.

Ngedup says he "drew inspiration" for his ingenious scheme from Britain's national health service: "We have tremendous respect for the British system." He has written to the health secretary Alan Milburn asking for sponsorship. He has yet to reply.

The idea of providing free drugs for the poor through a sponsored 16-day trek may strike outsiders as eccentric, but then Bhutan has always had a reputation for doing things its own way. The mountainous nation squeezed between India and China is known as the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon. It has an image in the west as the world's last great Shangri-La, and its Buddhist monasteries and rare orchids have attracted rich adventure tourists such as Prince Charles and Bill and Melinda Gates (the Gates have each given Ngedup $1m in sponsorship). Bhutan levies a fee of $200 per day on all western visitors, thus ensuring that only the seriously well-heeled make it on to carefully supervised tours.

But both friends and critics agree that Bhutan is a real country with real problems. For decades, Bhutan's conservative rulers pursued a policy of isolation, in an attempt to preserve its Buddhist traditions and pristine forests from all western influences. They have also stifled political dissent. "We don't want to lose our culture and environment like Nepal," one government aide points out.

Over the past decade, however, Bhutan has cautiously emerged into the modern world. Its British-educated king, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, recently gave up some of his royal powers and also introduced a few democratic reforms. Three years ago he lifted Bhutan's celebrated ban on television, introducing MTV to a stunned and mesmerised Thimphu. The internet arrived soon afterwards. But the king still imposes a dress code on his subjects, and has done little about the plight of 100,000 ethnic Nepalis forcibly expelled from southern Bhutan more than a decade ago.

These days, Thimphu (population 60,000) can scarcely be described as hectic, but traffic jams are now increasingly common on the country's only two major roads. Also on the increase are health problems previously unknown in Bhutan, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. "In the past we had to wrestle with leprosy, goitre and polio. Now we suffer from western afflictions associated with a sedentary lifestyle," one health official says. There is also the growing problem of Aids, which officials blame on Bhutan's "porous" border with northeast India, where drug abuse is rife.

Ngedup says he hopes his trek will encourage urban Bhutanese to rediscover walking again - something their grandparents had to do every day. "When I was a boy I used to walk from my village to get to primary school. I used to walk for five days across three valleys," he recalls.

Villagers across Bhutan's 20 provinces have been encouraged to carry out their own mini-treks. Friends of the 49-year-old minister have no doubt he will make it ("He has always been active," one says) but have their doubts about his colleagues. The minister has not been provided with a rescue helicopter, but is carrying a satellite phone in case of emergencies.

"We face a number of problems," he says. "One is falling boulders. The other is that the route has not been used for decades now. We will be the first people to traverse it for a very long time. And there are other dangers from wild animals. There are bears, tigers and leopards along the way - there are a lot of bears and they attack without warning." He hopes that making a lot of noise will scare them off.

The four-man team sets off in Bhutan's eastern Trashigang province on September 25, carefully avoiding forests in the south of the country where separatist militants from India have set up a series of secret jungle camps. After plodding over gorges and through sub-tropical, temperate and alpine zones, Ngedup is due to finish in Thimphu's national stadium on October 10, with thousands of schoolchildren joining him on the last leg.

The team is hoping that local villagers will act as guides where the route has become blocked by fallen vegetation. At the end of each day the walkers will find a clearing and pitch camp. They will then settle down to curry and rice. Who will do the cooking? "I'm the best cook of the lot. When we went on a dry run none of them could cook rice. They will depend on me," says Ngedup, who is also education minister.

Royal aides are also keen to point out that the walk will contribute to a unique concept devised by Bhutan's king - that of Gross National Happiness, or GNH. This "guiding philosophy", invented by the monarch in the 1970s, provides an alternative to western models of economic development - and stresses his people's spiritual and emotional needs, as well as their material ones. The trek is a "humble effort" towards this goal set by "our beloved king", Ngedup explains.

Now all that remains are for some more sponsors to come forward. Some $16m in sponsorship has already been pledged, and Ngedup is looking for the remaining $9m. It is hard to imagine Britain's health ministers devising a similar exercise across the Yorkshire Dales or the coastal paths of Cornwall. But there are surely worse solutions to the problems of the crumbling health service than going for a very long walk.