Alone in Bhutan

Choki is blowing smoke through the window. Outside, it's raining as it has been for days. The Wang Chhu River rises every day and it's only time until the floods reach Bangladesh. Except it's hard to remember Bangladesh while in Bhutan. It's hard to imagine that anywhere else exists when you're in this magic forgotten place. The disconnect starts as soon as the descent. The plane crisscrosses verdant mountains before finding the runway, the only runway in the Land of the Thunder Dragon.

Enter Paro and the period-piece feeling intensifies. The men wear ghos, a knee length pleated tunic, the women kiras and short jackets. The main road is flanked by painted houses and mountains loom all around. It’s impossible to forget where you are.

And as the young will tell you, where you aren't. In 1999, satellite TV was allowed into Bhutan and everything went to hell. At least that's how Rinchen sees it. He manages a hotel in the capital city of Thimpu. Rinchen thinks that Bhutanese kids are more susceptible to Western media. I cannot convince him that kids everywhere are bowing to that cultural overlord, the West.

Choki wants to go to America. She wants to improve her English, add it to the Dzongkha, Nepali, and Hindi she knows fluently. After work, she takes off her kira and slides into skinny jeans. She calls her boyfriend. She eats red rice with chilies and cheese. She takes a nap.

It's a different kind of alone here: no phone, no regular access to email. I find my $10/night hotels by word of mouth. I walk in, sign nothing, pay cash, walk out. No trace. Sometimes, I go days without conversation. Then I spend days listening to people’s stories. It makes me think about art, about life. It makes me go to bed early.

I walk eight hours a day. Sometimes I don't eat. I almost never sit. There’s too much to absorb. I have to do it standing, camera in one hand, heart in the other. Bhutan is simple and gorgeous. Almost no one uses email. They speak of their villages. They love their king. They believe in their religion. They know their history. Rinchen has photos of the kings on his phone. Choki knows how many ngultrum a taxi charges from Paro to her birthplace. Tshering adapts Buddhist philosophy into his art.

In my wanderings, the Bhutanese don’t look twice, but the Bangali labourers, who are carving roads into the mountains, stop and stare. On Sundays, Thimpu looks like brown town. I want to speak to them, but I'm afraid we won’t know where to start. I want to know how they got here, what it looks like to them, where looms the future. I'm also afraid they will write me off before we begin. Some Westerner posing as a Bangladeshi in Bhutan. Or worse, a Bangladeshi posing as a Westerner. Or worst of all, the luckiest alone girl in the world. Because I am.