Taking the highest roads

On the rain-shrouded mountain, misty pockets of cloud float discombobulated. At times, we find ourselves inside them. At close to 4,000 feet, the lungs tighten and the head feels compressed. We trudge, past sodden prayer flags, up a cold and lonely pine-scented trail that winds nauseatingly into oblivion. Orchids bloom on the lonely path; tiny strawberries grow abundant, and tasting them bursts sticky sourness into the mouth. Monstrously large rhododendrons impede our progress. Shiny fungi and pale green lace-like strands of lichen hang like discarded stockings from every tree branch. Each piece of vegetation is spiked with dewy moisture and yet the rain does not relent.

After three hours, we are wet to the bone, struggling with altitude and a sense of humour. Now and then, one of us will slip on the muddy rocks. Just when I think I can’t stand it a moment longer, we see it: a tiny splash of white poised delicately on the side of the dark green mountain like a sticking plaster, so high up it’s almost in heaven. “Half an hour away still,” says Kuenzang, our guide, a grim look on his face. Finally we arrive at the nunnery, hauling our bodies up the last steps as dogs mark our arrival with ferocious barking. The sight of the saffron-robed nuns making their way across the path is for some reason overwhelming: to my embarrassment I realise I’m tearing up with relief. I slump in a grimy covered walkway and try and hide my face. But a young nun appears before me and raises her hand to bless me, then gestures as if to say, “Don’t cry!” and “Shh!”

In a small room with a wood-burning stove, streaked with yellowing light from the rain-soaked afternoon valley, the nuns proffer constant milky tea and sweet biscuits. They are compassionate and amused.

The absence of tourists and the perpetual rain lend an even more abandoned quality

Tiny Bhutan is a mysterious country of subtropical valleys and alpine peaks, about the size of Switzerland, wedged between the vastness of India and China. It has historically basked in isolation. It’s July, out-of-season monsoon time, and so the mountains are bathed in a milky mist and the light is mustardy, the forests dark and forbidding and the rice paddies glow startling green, contrasting with the whiteness of the dzongs – the administrative and religious centres built centuries ago to unite the country. The absence of tourists and the perpetual rain lend an even more abandoned quality. I feel blessed to be here, and indeed I am. This sparsely populated kingdom (the population hovers around the 700,000 mark) only admits the tourist prepared to spend a minimum of $200 a day on a pre-paid and pre-planned itinerary. The backpacker and the package tourist are banished.

After our tea and biscuits we migrate to a temple where the nuns are chanting softly and repetitively, spinning prayer wheels and ringing bells, singing blessings on every man, woman and child, and every animate thing. We are here to prostrate ourselves before the altar and llama. Kuenzang encouraged us to bring inanimate objects to be blessed, so I produce a pair of bejeweled earrings I bought in Delhi on the way here. They are for my wedding, which I am not sure is going to happen. It’s fixed for next month, but what the guests, priest and even my family don’t know is that I’m not sure the immigration papers we need to make it legally viable will arrive on time. It’s a long story, and a too-real possibility. At this stage, it’s more than likely. I’ve screwed up, but I’ve decided not to think about it. Our little crew of travellers sits cross-legged, trance-struck. after a time, Kuenzang nudges us into reality: the light is now fading and we need to get back down the mountain before night falls.

We plod back down, to civilization, and the rest of our lives. These women will stay in this place, praying for all living things, probably for the rest of theirs. It’s a thought.

Kuenzang encouraged us to bring inanimate objects to be blessed, so I produce a pair of bejeweled earrings I bought in Delhi on the way here

The spiritual intensity of this place is such that the exquisite luxury of its best hotels feels somewhat superfluous. And yet, they too have been infected by Bhutan’s atmosphere of wellbeing. Como’s Uma Paro, a rambling domain shaded by vast pines, peaceful and homely, was once a rich farmer’s house, and it still feels domestic, despite its large villas with their own private butlers. There is even a labrador in residence, constant companion to the programmes coordinator, a beautiful German woman called Isabel, also a practising Buddhist, who treats her guests with something approaching love. After your hikes, you return for a Bhutanese hot stone bath in its stone-built bathhouse. At the tap of a Tibetan singing bowl, a pair of large pincers appears through a hole in the wall to deposit a large glowing stone into one side of your bath, where it sizzles away, releasing minerals to ease tired muscles.

The trail to Paro town smells of pine needles and rain on earth, and there are constant views of budgerigar yellow and emerald roofs of dzongs and homes and the sand coloured river. A distant cheer goes up from a darts competition in the valley. Close to Uma Paro, in a walled garden accessed by a tiny stone bridge, there is a small dzong encircled with cypresses: ‘The trees grew from where the llamas planted their walking sticks,’ says Kuenzang. In this willow pattern come to life, an ancient nun circles the garden, over and over. ‘She does that all day,’ says Kuenzang. ‘She spends her life doing this in prayer.’

At the Paro dzong, built in 1646 by Shabdrun, the Tibetan llama who emigrated here and is considered the father of modern Bhutanese culture, a fuzzy dog suns itself on the steps, and a microscopic puppy dances circles around a child monk under a weeping willow. A gaggle of boys in robes fly down the steps. Two or three hundred novices join the monks’ ranks every year – 30 per cent of Bhutan’s boys follow this path. They rise early and study in dingy schoolrooms, huddled on the floor, till late. Inside, the dzong is ornately carved and decorated, and brightly painted prayer wheels bank the walls. A fat cockerel owns the courtyard. Inside, the temple floors are dimpled and worn from the impact of so many little feet. Around the temple’s edges, small monks are sleeping. It’s a medieval scene, though some boys are texting sleepily. For a hub of civic power, it’s unbelievably quiet.

Environmental sustainability and cultural preservation, and the tenets of Buddhism, inform each policy decision, and Gross National Happiness (GNH) is the index favoured over GNP

During our trip, we visit the metropolis of Thimphu, the capital, which feels like a large village in Switzerland, though with more ornate petrol stations. At the school of arts and crafts, where 4,000 study, we get an idea of the depth and strength of the country’s artisanship; to keep this highly decorated country in the manner in which it has become accustomed, students learn sculpting, carving, painting, weaving. At Taktshang Goemba – the monastery known as Tiger’s Nest, built within a cleft in a cliff that plunges death-like into a sheer valley, a waterfall billowing from its apex – a muscular masculinity, in marked contrast to the gentility of our nuns. A young monk blesses us in one chapel then resumes texting. Upstairs, they are performing pooja in front of an altar decked with lurid paper sculptures: teenage monks blow into thighbones and oversized trumpets, making hard, sharp sounds.

Bhutan is not as isolated these days as it might appear. It survives by looking south; a large proportion of its GDP comes from hydroelectricity output sold to India. Political change has been at the forefront. Over the past decade, Bhutan’s political system has developed from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. In 2005, the crown king Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated in favour of his son, preparing for democratic parliamentary elections. Young Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck was endowed with Bhutan’s Raven Crown in 2008.

Famously, Bhutan’s embracing of the modern world has been cautious.  Environmental sustainability and cultural preservation, and the tenets of Buddhism, inform each policy decision, and Gross National Happiness (GNH) is the index favoured over GNP. But change has been immense. The decades since the 1960s have seen the arrival of roads, education, and postal and hospital systems. Television arrived in 1999, closely followed by mobiles, cars and the internet. Bhutan is not paradise: there are growing problems with domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, as rural migrations increase. Ethnic tension in the south has caused some Nepalese to flee to refugee camps in Nepal.

Nevertheless, there is a slowness and quietness, a simplicity to life here that lends Bhutan an air of unreality, being so far from the ruined world. From the wood-timbered hours painted with giant phalluses for protection to the sweet marijuana reek that hangs over the fields, it is all entrancing. Symbols of beliefs clutter the land: tiny clay offerings in the crevices; ever-present whitewashed stupa; prayer flags fluttering, their incantations carried heavenward by the wind; stately poles carrying long rectangles of white that memorialize the dead. Any traveller who makes the effort to visit this lofty country will be rewarded with balm for the soul. Back home, sitting under my office’s strip lights, I sometimes picture those nuns, still up there, still praying. The immigration papers came through in the end, and on my wedding day I remembered those radiant nuns, and my Bhutanese pilgrimage, with a Buddhist prayer. C

Lydia Bell is a freelance writer and editor and a Harper’s Bazaar contributing editor. Read more at lydiabell.co.uk and follow her @lydialondon