Professional Documents
Culture Documents
S h a n g r i-l a
What I Learned in the Happiest Kingdom on Earth
ISBN 978-0-307-45302-0
eISBN 978-0-307-45304-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Th e Th un d e rb o lt,
Part One
Dear Lisa:
It was great to meet you last night. I owe you a drink for all
that change you dug up for me. When can you get together?
—Sebastian
I’d vowed not to repeat. My, I was getting way, way ahead of
myself.
Of course, none of this meant I just forgot him. Clicking
out of the Web sites about yuppie family-friendly condos, I did
what any smart, savvy person in the age of the Internet would
do. I Googled him.
He appeared, from what I could deduce, to be about my
age. He had been in the tea business for a decade. He had been
going to Bhutan, it seemed, for twenty years. It looked like
he’d started as a guide, leading people there on exotic treks.
Exhausting what I could dig up about him, I then searched
for “Bhutan,” and realized his offhand comment about my
tagging along was a joke. There was no just “getting a visa” to
this remote Himalayan nation. Tourism to Bhutan had been
permitted only since the 1970s, a time when the nation began
to step out of its long-imposed isolation. An airport hadn’t
been built until 1984, and even now there were many restric-
tions; the government-run airline owned only two planes. You
couldn’t just tool around the country unescorted; you had to
hire a guide to travel with you, and some areas still remained
off-limits. To keep out all but the wealthiest visitors, a $200 per
person, per day tourist tax was imposed.
Other colorful, curious facts unfolded: Bhutan was consid-
ered the last Buddhist kingdom, as others around it like Tibet
and Sikkim had been swallowed up in political battles waged
by giant neighbors China and India. Little, independent Bhu-
tan had been known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon since
the twelfth century, when an important religious man heard a
clap of thunder—believed to be the voice of a dragon—as he
consecrated a new monastery. The nation had long deflected
colonization and outside influence. Christian missionaries had
come calling in 1627, but the only lasting legacy of these Jesuit
priests from Portugal is a detailed written description of their
travels there and the hospitality they enjoyed from the locals,
who politely resisted conversion.
Today, the majority of the people subsist by farming. There
isn’t a single traffic light anywhere in the country, not even in
the capital city, the only capital in the world without them; in-
stead, a uniformed police officer directs cars at a handful of
particularly tricky intersections. As part of a campaign to pre-
serve the culture, citizens are obliged to wear the traditional
dress—intricate, colorful hand-woven pieces of cloth called
kira and gho.
The reigning king had married four sisters simultaneously—
the queens, they were called. Among them they had had ten
children—eight of them born before an official marriage cer-
emony had taken place in 1988. There was a surreal portrait of
the women standing shoulder to shoulder, wrapped meticu-
lously in brightly colored kira, perfect as dolls, each one gor-
geous and just slightly different from the next. What was that
family dynamic like? Multiple simultaneous marriages weren’t
reserved for royalty, it seemed; this practice was allowed for all
the citizens of Bhutan. Men and women, both. An Internet
search didn’t reveal how common this was.
King Jigme Singye Wangchuck and his father before him
had been progressive in a variety of ways: They’d been respon-
sible for nudging, then catapulting Bhutan into the modern
world after years of seclusion. Hard currency, roads, schools
other than that of the monastic variety—all had been intro-
duced in only the past forty years. Since Bhutanese would now
need to study abroad to become doctors and lawyers and scien-
tists necessary for the health and measured growth of the na-
Hi Lisa. How are you? Hope all’s well in L.A. Harris is being an
excellent sherpa on this trip.
—Sebastian
When you’ve been visiting a place for so long, very little about
it seems daunting.
One query Sebastian didn’t (or wouldn’t) answer was how
he first got involved with Bhutan. Becoming a tour guide in
Bhutan twenty years ago wasn’t like picking up and heading
to Tahoe to be a ski instructor. You had to have an in. “Ask one
of these guys to tell you the story when you get there,” he said
coyly, and he attached to his email a list of people to look up
when I arrived.
Soon, our trip consultations graduated to the telephone. We
were talking practically every day. He’d call with a quick
thought or reminder. Like the importance of bringing long
black socks as gifts for the men I’d meet; Sebastian said this
leg covering was essential not just for warmth in winter but
for style.
“Buy half a dozen pairs, or more. They prefer the Gold Toe
brand, because they stay up better and last longer. Get them in
solid black. Bring lip gloss or boxes of tea for women.” Not
fancy Asian loose tea, he added. Plain old tea bags from Amer-
ica would impress. I trekked to Target and loaded up on a
dozen pairs of Gold Toes, boxes of Celestial Seasonings, and
various lipsticks.
Finally, the most important detail of the trip had been ar-
ranged: I had in my hands a faxed copy of my visa from the
Royal Government of Bhutan permitting me to enter the
country. Now it was official. That’s when I marched into my
boss’s office to propose an unpaid leave of absence of no more
than six weeks. I was surprised at how easily he said yes. “Isn’t
that the place where there’s a two-hundred-dollar-a-day tour-
ist tax? And you don’t have to pay? Go for it. What an amaz-
ing opportunity.” Then he muttered something about an old