Trekking in the Kingdom of Happiness

For several years, I had a WSJ  article tacked to my bulletinboard titled "Measuring Wealth in Happiness".  It talked about the little mountain  kingdom of  Bhutan, a place that was more concerned about the well-being of its people than its national wealth. (Turns out, it doesn't have anything to get wealthy from but that's another story). Since I wasn't very happy about turning 50, I thought Bhutan might just be the place to cheer me up.

Bhutan is hard to get to which accounts for it waaay off the beaten track status -  until recently, anyway. When we were there last year, there was just one flight in and out a day and from only a handful of locations - Calcutta, New Dehli, Bangkok and Katmandu. And first, of course, you have to get to those places.

We broke our journey up by flying to Bangkok where we spent three days in the smog-choked city being ferried around by a chipper tour guide and a driver who looked like Mr. T.  Had I bothered to look at a map before I made our plans, I would have realized that we could have cut hours off our journey by flying to India instead.  But I probably wouldn't have done that anyway - I definitely need more than a week for India.

We used our time in Bangkok to recover from jetlag, see a bit of the city and eat and eat and eat. Due to the fall-off in tourism, following the devestating tsunami, we scored an elegant room at the 5-star Oriental Hotel at a ridiculously cheap rate. It even came with a butler although we never figured out how to take advantage of that fact (I definitely didn't want him unpacking my decidedly unelegant underwear).

After three days of cheesey tourists shows, elephant rides and cheap trinkets we gratefully boarded our Druk Airlines flight for Paro, Bhutan.  Boy, What a difference a country makes!

Happy? I was so happy when we landed I could have kissed the ground. I think it had something to do with being scared witless on the way in. Actually, it wasn't that bad - waving at the people on the ground, counting the number of yaks in the yard (wasn't there a song about that - "two yaks in the yard, life used to be so hard ..." but I digress) and yes, those are chilli peppers drying on the roof. But hey, I got to see Everest, which made me cry.

Our planeload of sensibly shod eco-tourists was quickly sorted out and packed into waiting Toyota minivans. And then, suddenly, there was just the two of us standing bravely at the airport exit looking a little bewildered. I confess, I had a brief moment of panic when I thought we had come all the way to Bhutan on the strength of a few emails but then we spotted Kinley. It was easy - he was the only person left in the airport besides the two of us.  So what if he looked about 14? He was smiling, holding a sign with what sort of looked like my name on it and two tattered white welcome scarves which he gently draped around our shoulders. The phrase "you had me at hello" comes to mind.

We were ushered into our "van" - a beat-up Chevy that our driver, who had been a policeman until the week before, had borrowed from his brother-in-law. As we drove away from the airport, dodging dogs and monks, past fields of rice surrounded by the majestic Himalayas, we were overwhelmed with, well, happiness.

I will write more about the specifics of our trek, how we planned it and our experiences on the trail later. In the meantime, I would love to hear from anyone else who has visited this truly special country.