TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM / APRIL 2018 77
FROM FAR LEFT: A novice monk pores over his studies
in Punakha; this is a land shaped by fast-flowing
rivers and Himalayan peaks; women in their
traditional kira; the iconic Tiger’s Nest Monastery.ready—I hoped—to take up the challenge. After all, you
don’t come all the way to the Himalayas and miss a good
yeti relic.
This flurry of excitement was something of a
breakthrough on my weeklong trip to Bhutan. Three
days earlier, when I’d first arrived in the world’s most
remote Buddhist kingdom, I found myself experiencing
some not-very-Buddhist feelings—frustration,
impatience, anxiety. No matter how often I took a deep,
meditative breath, a cantankerous mood descended.
On the face of it, this was a dream trip. The coups de
théâtre had begun with the heart-stopping flight into
Bhutan’s international airport in Paro, with the plane
tilting its wings 45 degrees to squeeze between snowcapped
peaks. At 2,225 meters above sea level, the airport itself
was promisingly exotic, with a terminal that resembled a
temple and a billboard-size portrait of Bhutan’s young
king and queen flashing smiles like Bollywood stars.
Within an hour, I was walking a rope bridge
across a river gorge to a fortress, accompanied
by farmers in handwoven traditional garb.
What’s more, in the midst of this deluge of
culture, I would be spending my first night in
the lap of Bhutanese luxury. My entire suite in
the Amankora Thimphu Lodge—located above
the tiny capital city, Thimphu, and one of the
five high-end Aman lodges that opened across
the country a little more than a decade ago—
was crafted from polished wood, with a terrazzo
bath placed in its center like a site-specific
sculpture. As dusk fell, we gathered around a
fire blazing on an outdoor deck overlooking a
pine forest.
The reason for my cantankerous mood was
simple. Bhutan, which opened to the outside
world in 1974 and which has a near-mythic