The travels of Santiago

The black suited consultant in me asked, “But sir, if you do not check the credit worthiness of your customers, won’t giving them loans be risky?” My respondent gave a toothy smile and replied, “In this small country, there’s no risk, only happiness.” I threw the rest of my questions in the waste paper basket and reminded myself once again that I had come to the verdant foothills of the Himalaya. I was in the land of the thunder dragon, the royal kingdom of Bhutan, where, as my client reminded me, happiness was over and above any trillion dollar GDP.

I was in Phuntsholling, a border town in Bhutan, for a small consulting assignment to a Bhutanese bank. Having travelled for over 4 hours the earlier day from Bagdogra, India, I uneventfully crossed an international boundary into Bhutan, with only a languorous guard, not even bothering to note the vehicle passing by him, yet silently remarking, ”Guys, welcome to Bhutan!”

This is Bhutan – sleepy in its peacefulness and abound in natural resources, although dependent largely on foreign governments for aid with quite a challenging life for its citizens. And yet, there is a serene sense of satisfaction with its people ‘happy’ more than anything else. So much so that the country uses Gross National Happiness to measure its prosperity!

The meetings with my client, went pretty smoothly and I must admit that the people here though very simple, are thoroughly sincere with a heavy sense of nationalism. When I told my clients that I had already been to Bhutan the year before, had trekked up to the famous Taktsang monastery, attended a tsechu spring, had drunk the local rice brew ara, they were already viewing me in Ngultrums instead of Dollars. And when I identified the typical local dish of cheese and chillies as the ‘wonderful Datsi’, they remarked, “There, you have already become half Bhutanese!” If not anything else, Happiness, here I come.

Bhutan is a very small country, but with a wide diversity in its features that never ceases to amaze travelers – be it the smallest yet most picturesque airport that one will ever see at Paro, the ethereal black necked cranes in Fopjika valley, the wonderful wildlife of takins and tigers, the countless monasteries with striking murals or the surprisingly zesty and modern lifestyle at Thimpu. And if one is still not satiated, there are always the endless snow clad Himalayan mountains to lose onself and seek a drop of nirvana – This is Bhutan, perhaps the last Shangri-La