Adventures in rural Bhutan
Last spring, I had two GMIX offers: either work for a family investment office in Madrid or as an IT consultant in Bhutan for Mountain Hazelnuts. It was a battle between logical career progression and potentially useful future connections on the one hand and a once-in-a-lifetime adventure on the other, a battle between my brain and my heart. Unusually, I followed my heart. Working as an IT consultant for a hazelnut farm probably wouldn’t help me in my future career, but I had wanted to go to Bhutan ever since high school, after I was astounded visiting the nearby majestic mountains and valleys of Tibet.
Traveling to Bhutan is not convenient. After a sixteen-hour flight to Delhi and an overnight layover, I took Druk Air (Thunder Dragon!) to Paro Airport, the only international airport in the country. Last year, the king increased the sustainable development fee for visitors to $200/day (tax, not inclusive of spending), which has decimated the tourism sector. August is also in the midst of Bhutan’s rainy season, so there were hardly any tourists, even in the capital of Thimphu.
I met the CEO, Sean, a British biologist, and he offered to take me to visit the Tiger’s Nest the next day, along with his wife and young son. Also known as Taktsang, the monastery is perched upon a massive cliff, a three-hour fairly strenuous hike from the entrance. Built over four hundred years ago, it is the most famous of the monasteries in Bhutan, and the most popular tourist destination. Yet when we visited on a Sunday, we were nearly the only ones there. I’ve visited monasteries in China and India before, and truthfully, I’ve never felt much serenity amidst the sea of people. But here, I felt a sense of energy and peace as we entered each site.
After a week getting acclimated in Thimphu, we headed to the rural east, where the company was headquartered. The CEO, COO and I departed in a car together to embark on a bumpy, sixteen-hour drive. I normally love driving on sketchy, windy mountain roads, but this was the first time I felt grateful to be sitting in the passenger seat.
The drive was too long to complete in a day. We had just spent fourteen hours stuffed in a compact car to get two-thirds of the way there, driving a couple of hours out of the way on a dirt path to stay overnight in a traditional house in order to visit a company elder. I wondered aloud if there would be a shower available at the homestay. Sean gave me a funny look, and I realized why shortly after.
At 6am the next morning, before breakfast, the four of us left to start hiking towards the monastery, where Sean wanted to pray for the success of the company’s upcoming fundraising. Rain had been pouring nonstop over the last few days (and had yet to stop), turning the dirt paths into muddy sinkholes. The locals with us all seemed to know exactly where to step, nimbly hopping from rock to rock. But with each of my clumsy strides in the mud, I was precariously close to having sludge flow over the top of my hiking boots, which I suspect would have ruined my day.
We were also at 3800 meters elevation, so I was gasping for air on all the uphill portions while trying to keep my balance and ignore my growling stomach. Why did we leave before breakfast?? I had ambitiously volunteered to carry the offering of heavy fruit, but after about fifteen minutes, a colleague took pity on me and relieved me of my duty. Just as well, since it’s probably not respectful to bring an offering covered in mud.
At one point, we had to trudge uphill through a deep field of shoulder high ferns. Not knowing exactly how far the monastery was or where the ferns even ended, and too far behind him and out of breath to ask, I silently thought to myself, “The CEO is fucking crazy!”
The day before, Sean had half-jokingly, half seriously, mentioned that part of the idea of a pilgrimage is to get one in a weakened state, so that person will be more receptive to new ideas. I hadn’t realized that was foreshadowing. By the time we reached the top several hours later, I was very much in a weakened state. The monk there welcomed us inside. We sat cross-legged on the wooden floor and accepted some crackers and a generous pour of ara, a hot homemade moonshine.
The monk started chanting and beating his damaru drum. I didn’t understand the words, but I felt such a surge of energy resonate through my body, which I had never experienced before. The hike had greatly reduced my usual mental defenses and skepticism around spirituality. In that moment, I felt like my entire body was vibrating, pulsating with energy. Maybe it was due to the thin air, or the ara. But maybe this rush was actually caused by the natural energy flowing from the power spot upon which the monastery had been painstakingly built.
After hiking back down in a daze, we drove another six hours or so to reach Lingmethang. We had spent most of the last day being jostled in our seats while we navigated these so-called roads, and I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself. As we rounded a curve, I noticed several kids with bright smiles walking uphill towards us. They must have all been six or seven years old. When I asked where they were going, the COO, Jeff, also riding with us, said they were walking back from school. Each day, these kids walked about six miles to and from school. Uphill, in the mud and the rain.
At the homestay where we had stayed the night prior, the closest elementary school was over 20 miles away, which was too far to walk. So instead, the parents send their kids to boarding school starting at age five, visiting them only on weekends. Suddenly, my challenges seemed so insignificant.
Lingmethang, where Mountain Hazelnuts is headquartered, is a village of about a thousand people, located in a lush valley, with hundreds of rice paddies connected by a single winding mountain road. Every shade of green was visible. During my stay in Lingmethang, I was consistently impressed by the sense of community and camaraderie the company had built in the village. Everyone seemed to know everyone else there.
Morale amongst the employees remained high, even though the company had recently laid off most of their employees due to the pandemic and had been operating in survival mode. Several key employees left for Australia and the UK. This recent brain drain has developed into an existential problem for Bhutan, as most of the college educated Bhutanese leave for the West to get a master’s degree and embark on the path to permanent residency.
Still, I felt in them a strong sense of shared purpose, and everyone was doing their best to help the company succeed. There was no ego. In my entire month there, I don’t think I ever heard someone complain. These attitudes made me really reflect on bonus meetings at my previous jobs, where people in their 20s often furiously complained about making huge sums of money because they felt that they deserved more.
Near the end of my trip, we celebrated the last day of work for the company’s HR manager. Tshering was thirty-eight, with a wife and two young kids, and had been with the company for nearly a decade. Earlier this year, he had accepted an offer to get a master’s degree in the UK, and he would leave on a flight the next week. However, his kids would not join him, because he couldn’t yet afford their plane tickets. They would stay home with his sister until he could.
In order to save money immediately, his wife would work multiple jobs while he attended class. After he graduates next year, his wife will apply for school, and they will reverse roles. Then, they would be able to start the path towards permanent residency in the UK, where they hope to build their lives. This was the same path that tens of thousands of other Bhutanese followed in their journey to the West. I asked him when he thought he’d be back in Lingmethang. “I don’t know,” he said, with a sad flicker in his eye.
My dad was also thirty-eight years old when he left my sister with relatives in China to get a master’s degree in New York. I hadn’t been born yet. It was his first time on a plane as well. I realized that while I had met many adult immigrants after they had completed their journey to America, I hadn’t really met anyone before they were to leave their entire lives behind for a brand-new world. I shared with Tshering how grateful I feel to my parents for making the sacrifice of leaving their perfectly adequate lives in order to come to America. Now, just one generation later, as the lucky benefactor, I feel like I have the world at my fingertips. I told him that because of his sacrifice, his kids will feel like they too can do anything.
There were definitely many uncomfortable moments during the trip. Lingmethang was 90 degrees every day, with stifling humidity and no AC. I averaged a strangely consistent ten to fifteen new bug bites each day, and I soon learned that Bhutanese do not swat flies, only gently shoo them away. Not nearly as effective. On the road trip, I went the longest without showering since I was a kid. I had my first ever cold bucket shower. The mountain passes had areas where the road turned to rubble, with certain death, thousand-meter cliff falls on one side and even higher overhangs filled with loose washed-away rock on the other. The haphazardly spaced guard stones on the side of the road felt like grave markers of unlucky prior travelers.
These discomforts strangely made the trip more enjoyable, and certainly made it more memorable. This adventure made me so much more appreciative of what I have in my life, and I think it has made me a more resilient person overall. I realized that being exhausted, hungry, sweltering, nauseous, itchy, are simply temporary states of mind. The transition from comfort into those states is difficult, but once you’re in it, adapting to the new environment is surprisingly easy. I know that when life becomes difficult in the future (or any time I eat a hazelnut), I will think back on this month, and think about the kids walking up a mountain to get to school, faces full of smiles.
PS: I put some of my favorite pictures here!
Editor: Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk
