Left: A shop owner
poses in her store in
western Bhutan, near
Gangtey monastery.
Above: Storefronts in
downtown Thimphu,
the Bhutanese capital.
entrepreneur, he dined with us on our first evening at a table crowded
with plates of pomegranate salad, braised yak meat, and Bhutan’s nation-
al dish, ema datshi, or chili peppers with cheese. He had grown up in his
father’s hotel, and as a child he had witnessed the impact Bhutan’s nat-
ural beauty and spiritual depth had on its occasional visitors. Later, as a
young man attending university abroad, Dasho could appreciate even
better Bhutan’s unique appeal. His is a country skirted by the tallest
mountains in the world, protected for centuries from colonization or in-
fluence. His is a country that permits only a limited number of tourists
and did not allow television until 1999. In some respects, it is a culture
that is very new and very old, with little in between.
Perched on a mountain and surrounded by apple orchards, the
Six Senses Thimphu resort is a monastery-inspired lodge referred to
as the Palace in the Sky. An aerial motif touches everything. Clouds
pattern carpets. The ceiling of its restaurant, Namkha, is hashed with
beams chiseled in shapes that undulate like a cloud. A wall of win-
dows brings the sky into each villa and simultaneously pushes guests
out to the edge of the earth. In the main foyer, a painting of the medi-
cine Buddha reminds visitors that they are here for health. There
are no plastics. Even our toothbrushes will biodegrade. Housed in
something so healthy, we would similarly tend to the betterment ofour bodies. Maybe I’d find a box
of functioning eyeballs on my
nightstand.M
assage is not my
thing. I spend
too much time
steered by people,
grabbed, guid-
ed, or any number of other verbs
that involve touch. The help is
nice, but the guidance makes me
feel as if I’m in a chronic state of
correction. My wife and I, freshly
unpacked in our gorgeous room
in the sky, with its view of anoth-
er breathtaking valley I couldn’t
see, were about to receive our
first Bhutanese tenderizing.
When you think about it, mas-
sage is also a form of correction.
You’re about to be pushed back
into place, as it were. I bristled as
they brought in the tables.
Our masseuses practiced a
style called marma, which began
not with hands or oil, as I had
assumed, but with voice. A medi-
tation. Tracy and I were invited
to imagine the sky and smile at
the sky. To breathe the air and
smile at the air. Then flowers.
Soil. Again and again we were
encouraged to engage the world
around us and to feel a gratitude
that would relax our own physi-
cal being. As they chanted, each
masseuse played a singing bowl
and held it close to our ears until
the note collapsed into smaller,
cascading harmonics. The bowl
was then placed on my stomach,
sending its vibrations through
my skin, moving its tone through
my muscles and bones. A sound
massage. In our daily lives, we
forget that sound, being a vibra-
tion, is actually a form of touch.SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 AFAR 99