disbelief as Max spoke casually about yeti lore—the
footprints he had seen in the snow, the howls villagers
heard in the night, the hulking figures his ancestors had
glimpsed in blizzards. The fact that nobody had found a
live yeti was only logical, he explained, because many
yetis can become invisible. Others had feet that were on
backward so they were impossible to track.
The creature’s elusiveness felt oddly enviable. I could
do with a few yeti tricks myself.O
n my last day, the contradictions of Bhutan came
together at the Tiger’s Nest Monastery. This
fantastical series of temples, which seems almost
glued to the side of a sheer cliff and can only be reached
via a two-hour hike along a steep, twisting path. In
December, even though it was sunny and 20 degrees,
there were only a handful of hikers. For most of the time,
my only company was a pious dentist from Sikkim, India,
who took selfies along the route. I entered the Tiger’s Nest
solo, was waved into its labyrinth of lanes by a drowsy
guard, and wandered through echoing chambers lined with
age-old murals.
Up in the last ornate shrine, a lonely monk was
chanting to himself, and I joined him cross-legged on thestone floor. I had to admit that behaving like a
pilgrim—going where everyone else was going,
doing what everyone else was doing—wasn’t so
bad if you could find scenes like this. And while
Bhutan’s system has its frustrations, it’s hard
to imagine what the alternative would be.
Tourism is thriving, and the government is
debating deregulating portions of it in the east
of the country, where there are fewer travelers.
(The idea is being considered, but mass tourism
is opposed by everyone I spoke to.) The
country’s single highway, until now an obstacle
course of SUV-size potholes, will be paved this
year. More pessimistic observers say that in
five years Bhutan will lose its innocence. I
realized that being able to visit under the
current restrictions was a blessing in disguise.
When I got back to New York, I tracked down
Reinhold Messner’s book, My Quest for the Yeti:
Confronting the Himalayas’ Deepest Mystery,
which recounts his pilgrimage to the Gangtey
Monastery and hike across the country. I was
bemused to find that Messner declared the relic
a fake. Outraged, he said the four-century-old