“If you think it looks like we’re really close to those mountains,” the pilot says over the loudspeaker, “it’s because we are.” The other passengers and I chuckle—nervously—as the plane descends suddenly between two huge green mountains to land on a runway reminiscent of the average driveway. Out the window, I am searching for the airport—where is it? I pick up my red backpack and walk down the steps, and trailing the others towards what looks like a large black and white house. I’m here.
Bhutan is a small country in the Eastern Himalayas, wedged—and hidden—between India and China. I am here for a little over two months.
I have come as a guest of the Crown Prince, “Dasho Khesar” to those familiar to him. My eldest brother, Dan, went to Oxford with Dasho a few years ago and they were good friends. In the beginning, I think of him as just a friend of my brother’s. The day I arrive, Dasho stops by to welcome me. Eight bodyguards wait outside while we drink milk tea and chat about Dan, Boston, my work here in Bhutan for the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature. Later, Dasho meets me for dinner at “Druk Hotel.” We eat ema datsi, the national dish—an incendiary bowl of hot chilli peppers and cheese—as he tries to hide behind a roof support column so that diners and restaurant staff will stop bowing to him. I don’t know what to do—do I bow? My brother doesn’t usually make me bow to his friends—but apparently this is a special case.
When I walk through town the next day in my jeans and t-shirt, I may as well be wearing a string bikini; guys leer, girls giggle as I walk by. Bhutan has laws requiring citizens to wear national dress: a gho for men and kira for women. So on my second day, I go kira shopping. This turns out to be quite difficult. Unlike American retailers, eager to sell even the most hideous products, the woman in the textile shop immediately contradicts all my selections, simply saying “No” to each fabric I point to. Finally I just completely surrender to her judgment. Kiras come in a vast array of colors and prints, though I carefully avoid red, which only monks and nuns wear—a fact I learned after I had arrived wearing a red button-down shirt. “You’d make a great nun, Merritt,” my roommate Linda writes jokingly when I tell her of my fashion faux-pas.
Kiras are worn with a one-size-fits-all blouse underneath and cloth jacket on top. It provides neck-to-ankle coverage, to the delight of my three brothers. “It would be better if you were wearing a rosary and veil,” Dan says, “but this will do.”
The shopkeeper is about thirty but has teeth and gums stained dark red from years of chewing doma—beetlenut wrapped in a leaf and smeared with lime paste. (It is said to give a mild high but the one time I tried it, I got only nausea.) As she lays my purchases in front of me, I am feeling proud of myself for making this shopping trip by myself, excited to start blending in more when I walk through town. And then the shopkeeper says, “you know how to wear?” Uh…good point. So we do a quick lesson. As she starts to wrap the belt around my waist, all of a sudden the breath is yanked out of me! I gasp as she jerks the belt tighter, revealing muscles that I hadn’t thought possible, given her small frame. I mean, what are the odds I get the one sadistic shopkeeper?
“You can make tighter,” she tells me. Tighter? Was she kidding? This was seriously going to impede my food intake.
The next morning, I’m feeling pretty stellar when I am able to remember how to put it on. But a few days later, I am walking through town in my green full kira when it occurs to me that hey, it’s rather breezy back there. Sure enough, I reach my hand around and I feel bare thigh. Apparently I pulled too much material to make the pleat in front, because I am mooning the good people of Thimphu. In a panic, I grab frantically for the edge of my kira—but what only this morning was a cloth with huge, unmanageable edges, is now miraculously devoid of any edge. I cling with sweaty fingers to a random hunk of cloth, trying to yank enough of it over to the right to cover me until I can finally sneak into a hotel bathroom to redistribute the fabric.
With time, the embarrassing moments become less frequent and I begin to settle into Bhutanese life. I go to the vegetable market on Fridays, and take day trips on weekends. I am fortunate enough to be granted a visit with the Rinpoche (head monk) at Tango Monastery. He is the reincarnation of the monk who built the monastery 500 years ago. Nine years old but looking even younger, he peers out at me from a pair of glasses with lenses so thick I cannot see his eyes through them. I feel awkward and self-conscious, for although he is tiny, he has the composed presence of an old man. I think of my nine-year-old brother at home playing on his bike, and then of this nine-year old boy, sequestered in a house above a monastery to which the only access is a 2-hour hike through rainforest—and I am humbled.
August arrives, finally marking the end of the monsoon season, and one day I realize with surprise that I am truly happy here. In June, these months seemed to stretch before me like an eternity but now I have made friends, learned to dance to Hindi music. When I meet people in the street, they address me in Dzongka, the Bhutanese language.
As I board my flight home, I am left with one lingering question: Is life in the US really better than life in Bhutan? Sure, we have washing machines and department stores, flushing toilets and pizza delivery and real showers. But do we appreciate any of those things? And if the answer is no, then are we no better off? Are our lives happier, or just easier? In Bhutan, life is shorter but it is infused with meaning and filled with familial love—due in particular to the Buddhist beliefs that permeate every black and white farmhouse.
At the same time, I remind myself not to romanticize Bhutan. For all its natural beauty and fairy tale-like aspects, there is poverty and lack of education and even racism. One night, my friend Tshering, in a rare break from the usual unwavering Bhutanese patriotism, confides that she would love to travel to the US. “For good?” I ask, “Or just a visit?”
“Oh, it will be good,” she tells me. “But I’ll always come back to Bhutan.” And in the restless black of the Bhutan night, I pledge the same.
