Kindness of Strangers

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

For the past six months, I’ve been harboring a secret obsession: to travel to Bhutan. I even wrote a post about it a few months ago. This all began when I read Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, in which I learned that Bhutan – a country I had never even heard of before – was profiled as one of the world’s happiest places. Rather than measuring its success as a nation by Gross Domestic Product, as most countries do, Bhutan instated a sweeping social policy to measure their worth by Gross National Happiness.

I’m not sure what exactly captivates me about Bhutan, but I have a few theories. The first is that Bhutan is one of the least-visited places on the planet. It wasn’t even open for tourism until the 1970s, and still today receives less than 10,000 visitors a year. I am quickly discovering that getting off the beaten path is a difficult thing to do, and that the world is becoming a highly homogeneous place. Bhutan was the last country in the world to receive television, a little over 15 years ago, but today I can access WiFi in a cave in rural Turkey! The opportunity to take in one the planet’s last frontiers is mesmerizing.

But there are other reasons, more deeper and compelling, that draw me towards Bhutan. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I have been on a lifelong quest for happiness. It is an elusive thing for me, a mirage in the landscape of my life. Just when I think I’ve found it – making huge sweeping motions with my arms to hug it close – I find it’s retreated further into the distance. There is a sense that being able to observe one of the happiest places on a earth – a place that most people couldn’t locate on a map — might unlock some secret answer to my life that has been waiting for me. This might sound like a silly and naïve reason to travel thousands of miles to a place that I know virtually nothing about, but I can’t get Bhutan out of my mind.

We began discussing our trip to India, and what we would like to do there. One day, I found myself saying out loud, “I just want to go to Bhutan.” There is only one airline that serves Bhutan, and Delhi just happens to be one of handful of cities that services the only airport in the country. The biggest barrier is cost: in order to keep tourism to a minimum, the national government charges a flat rate of $200 per day per visitor to visit the country. The upside is that this fee includes a private guide for the duration of your stay (visitor are not allowed to tour on their own), all transportation, accommodations, food – basically, everything. A visit to the country must be contracted through a governmentally-approved travel agency, who will even process your visa for you.

It’s an expensive endeavor, about $4,000 total for two persons for one week. But the more we investigated what initially looked to be a harebrained scheme, the more we started to see that this idea might actually be feasible. With Italy out of the picture, a very expensive country, we’ve freed up some funds. It’s low season, so a trip can be booked on the fly. We are already going to Delhi. The weather is perfect in September. Rates are rising next year. Every other tour guide is named Karma. Bhutan is calling me.

We’ve decided to take the plunge, which is the scariest and most spontaneous thing that I’ve ever done in my entire life. We leave September 12, where a guide from Blue Poppy Tours will meet us at the airport for what promises to be the adventure of a lifetime. If you want to help us make this dream a reality, you can make a donation – no matter how small – to the Bhutan Trip “Donate” PayPal link (safe and secure, although you must have a PayPal account set-up) on our website. In return, we promise to share with you as much as we can about what can only be one of the most special and unique places in the world. If you can’t, then take a seat as a virtual stowaway as we take an upclose and personal look at Bhutan in just a few short weeks!