Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan the Happiest Kingdom on Earth Read online

  The walk from the office on East 47th Street to the party on 66th Street filled me with wonder and made me wistful for this place I loved so dearly. In early autumn, twilight in New York is magical; the sky glimmers and there’s energy in the streets. You feel powerful, invincible, as if every gritty bit of the city is yours. I found myself doing a mental trick I hadn’t done since I’d moved away: reciting the address of my destination while I walked as if it were the lyrics to a song. Two-three-four / East Sixty-sixth Street, I sang to myself over and over again this September evening, the clunky tune mingling with the click-clack of my bright pink “comfort” high heels. Inevitably, after all that repetition, I would muck up the street number, and I did this time, too. But there was such a crowd in front of one particularly gorgeous old brownstone, I didn’t need to check the little slip of paper in my purse to know I’d arrived.

  Crazy busy. Some swanky food magazine editor was debuting a new cookbook. Harris had long been a foodie, and in the last few years had broken into writing about all things gourmet. Good for him to be mingling in such well-fed company. Now it seemed I’d have to fight a dreaded crowd to find him. How could I be a city person and hate mob scenes?

  As I made my way to the front door, I took a look up the staircase. It was packed with a crush of people. In the thick of it, facing in my direction, was the most handsome man. He had a shock of brown hair and big brown eyes to match. I know it sounds ridiculous, but in that instant, the mob seemed to disappear. Much to my surprise and delight, I saw him looking right back. Not just in my direction, but at me. Our eyes locked, and, even from a distance, I could swear a sort of chemical reaction erupted between us.

  I’d read about these celebrated coups de foudre, thunderbolts, where people met and fell in love at first sight. I knew from experience that an instant attraction could be intoxicating—and dangerous. As was the impulse to imagine that a momentary connection was something larger. But this thunderbolt felt different. This was a beautiful, instant intensity I’d never, ever experienced.

  Practical me prevailed: I had to find Harris. Time was tight. I peeled my eyes away from the handsome stranger and pushed through the thicket of people. After a series of wrong turns, I spotted him holding court in a corner of the room, smiling and gesturing as if he owned the place. Harris was so good at making people feel welcome, connected. Everyone clutched goblets of wine—no disposable plastic cups for this crowd. My friend did a round of introductions, and as he got to the end of the group, I was happily surprised to see the man from the staircase.

  “Lisa, this is my friend Sebastian I’ve been telling you about, who I’m going to Asia with next week. You know, for that story I’m writing for Gourmet magazine. And Sebastian, this is Lisa, my friend who works in public radio out in L.A.”

  He was better looking now that I could see him up close, and there was a warmth about him, an easy friendliness. I felt a bit self-conscious and suddenly a little off-kilter in my pink shoes.

  Long ago, I’d been one of those kids who hid under her mother’s armpit to avoid looking at strangers. Then I went into the news business. Earning my living posing questions to people I didn’t know had cured me of my innate shyness. Confidence was a good quality, one I was happy to have cultivated—especially now faced with this handsome man. Right at this instant, though, I found myself feeling unsure about how to proceed. I wanted to say something clever and prophetic, but I couldn’t find the words. So I stuck out my hand, and he stuck out his, and we shook. Sebastian asked if I wanted a drink, and I said yes, and he said he’d get me one from upstairs, and I said I’d go with him, and there we were, presto, in our own conversational bubble. We talked a bit about public radio—always reliable upscale cocktail-party chitchat. With everyone captive in their cars, and smart programming in short supply thanks to budget cutbacks and media consolidation, the public-radio audience tuned in with almost cultlike devotion. Personally, I was sick of the news, and tried to avoid it as much as possible. At the same time, I appreciated the attention those commuters paid our show, and was grateful to have a job at a news outlet that had such an enormous, attentive audience. Better than having no audience at all. I’d been out of work a number of times, and underemployed, so I knew well what that was like. I also was very aware that in situations like this one, my profession converted into useful social currency.

  Once we had my wine and a refill for him, I started plying Sebastian with questions about his upcoming trip to Asia. He ticked off the itinerary: a swing through Hong Kong, a few provinces in China I had never heard of, two places in India whose names I knew simply because of their tea—Assam and Darjeeling—and, for a few days, the tiny neighboring Kingdom of Bhutan.

  “Ahh. The happiest place on earth,” I said. I hoped my being dimly familiar with one relatively unknown country in all of Asia—and knowing the factoid that it was purportedly filled with blissfully happy people—might impress him. Although I’d never come anywhere close to the continent. I wasn’t even certain just where on the continent Bhutan was.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “Exactly.”

  “I’ve always been curious about this happiness thing and Bhutan. It has to have something to do with the fact that television is banned there, right?” I’d now exhausted the extent of my knowledge about the obscure little nation.

  “Right, although His Majesty did let TV in a few years back,” Sebastian said, his smile broadening and his eyes intense. “But it’s still a very happy place. Hey, get a visa and come with us. Harris and I will be your guides.”

  What I wanted to say was that I would have driven to the airport and boarded a rocket to another galaxy with this man, whether or not my dear old friend Harris came along as chaperone. We kept talking, but I really don’t remember what we said. I was lost in Sebastian.

  Then, a sort of internal alarm rang and jolted him into remembering he was looking for quarters for the parking meter. After I dug a bunch out of my purse and handed them over, I asked the time and discovered that the clock was ticking for me, too. I needed to head to the other side of town for dinner.

  A quick good-bye, and off I ran. The friend I was meeting turned out to be running very late; I sat at the restaurant with his family as he called every five minutes with updates from the traffic jam. Ordinarily this would have annoyed me, but not tonight. Just knowing Sebastian was out there in the world improved my disposition immeasurably.

  THE NEXT DAY, I sat in our midtown offices trying to motivate myself to research a story about rich young couples who were trading the plush suburbs surrounding New York City for a new crop of multimillion-dollar kid-friendly condo complexes being built right in the heart of Manhattan. With enough money, you could now have a family without disrupting your metropolitan lifestyle. Among other luxuries, like on-staff dog walkers and a wine cellar, these buildings offered concierges to assist the nannies. An email popped into my inbox and saved me from my internal rant about conspicuous consumption and the decline of civilization. The very sight of the man’s name made my heart beat faster.

  Dear Lisa:

  It was great to meet you last night. I owe you a drink for all that change you dug up for me. When can you get together?

  —Sebastian

  Sebastian and Harris were leaving on their journey in just a few days, and by the time they returned, I’d be back home in Los Angeles. I could find a way to see him tonight. My calendar was totally open after work. I liked it that way, and this invitation reinforced why: The most interesting experiences seemed to happen spontaneously—just the opposite of how most everything worked in New York City, where every moment had to be planned by the quarter hour, lest you felt as if you might be “wasting” a bit of your precious time.

  And yet I found myself hesitating to accept this invitation. I’d witnessed many a friend as they sabotaged or just plain avoided opportunities out of some sort of unexpressed fear that success or happiness might result. They became riddled with anxiety and self-loathing before they’d even sent in that cover letter or gone on that date. Now here I was, similarly paralyzed.

  The voice of this other me politely declined. It was easy to justify not seeing him. We lived on opposite sides of the country; launching into a relationship that was destined to be long-distance was preposterous, a mistake I’d made in the past that I’d vowed not to repeat. My, I was getting way, way ahead of myself.

  Of course, none of this meant I just forgot him. Clicking out of the Web sites about yuppie family-friendly condos, I did what any smart, savvy person in the age of the Internet would do. I Googled him.

  He appeared, from what I could deduce, to be about my age. He had been in the tea business for a decade. He had been going to Bhutan, it seemed, for twenty years. It looked like he’d started as a guide, leading people there on exotic treks.

  Exhausting what I could dig up about him, I then searched for “Bhutan,” and realized his offhand comment about my tagging along was a joke. There was no just “getting a visa” to this remote Himalayan nation. Tourism to Bhutan had been permitted only since the 1970s, a time when the nation began to step out of its long-imposed isolation. An airport hadn’t been built until 1984, and even now there were many restrictions; the government-run airline owned only two planes. You couldn’t just tool around the country unescorted; you had to hire a guide to travel with you, and some areas still remained off-limits. To keep out all but the wealthiest visitors, a $200 per person, per day tourist tax was imposed.

  Other colorful, curious facts unfolded: Bhutan was considered the last Buddhist kingdom, as others around it like Tibet and Sikkim had been swallowed up in political battles waged by giant neighbors China and India. Little, independent Bhutan had been known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon since the twelfth century, when an important religious man heard a clap of thunder—believed to be the voice of a dragon—as he consecrated a new monastery. The nation had long deflected colonization and outside influence. Christian missionaries had come calling in 1627, but the only lasting legacy of these Jesuit priests from Portugal is a detailed written description of their travels there and the hospitality they enjoyed from the locals, who politely resisted conversion.

  Today, the majority of the people subsist by farming. There isn’t a single traffic light anywhere in the country, not even in the capital city, the only capital in the world without them; instead, a uniformed police officer directs cars at a handful of particularly tricky intersections. As part of a campaign to preserve the culture, citizens are obliged to wear the traditional dress—intricate, colorful hand-woven pieces of cloth called kira and gho.

  The reigning king had married four sisters simultaneously—the queens, they were called. Among them they had had ten children—eight of them born before an official marriage ceremony had taken place in 1988. There was a surreal portrait of the women standing shoulder to shoulder, wrapped meticulously in brightly colored kira, perfect as dolls, each one gorgeous and just slightly different from the next. What was that family dynamic like? Multiple simultaneous marriages weren’t reserved for royalty, it seemed; this practice was allowed for all the citizens of Bhutan. Men and women, both. An Internet search didn’t reveal how common this was.

  King Jigme Singye Wangchuck and his father before him had been progressive in a variety of ways: They’d been responsible for nudging, then catapulting Bhutan into the modern world after years of seclusion. Hard currency, roads, schools other than that of the monastic variety—all had been introduced in only the past forty years. Since Bhutanese would now need to study abroad to become doctors and lawyers and scientists necessary for the health and measured growth of the nation, the native tongue, Dzongkha, was replaced by English as the language of instruction. The ability to speak English was perceived as a passport to almost anywhere, a vital connection to the outside world as Bhutan moved into an era of progress and relative openness it had previously worked to avoid.

  Despite its isolationism, Bhutan had been at the vanguard in other ways. Long before the rest of the world started flaunting environmental concerns as a trendy marketing strategy, Bhutan’s king had been winning awards for his genuine commitment to conservation. Clear-cutting was not allowed, and if a single tree was chopped, three had to be planted in exchange. By royal covenant, he had committed that 60 percent of Bhutan’s forests would always be preserved. Unlike many Asian countries, Bhutan had not been transformed into a giant pollution-generating smokestack, nor was it overpopulated, with only 650,000 citizens. It was poor, but it prided itself on the fact that no beggars were on its streets. Babies weren’t left on the doorsteps of orphanages; such institutions didn’t exist. Everyone had roofs over their heads and something to eat. The people took care of one other. A royal form of welfare called kidu allowed citizens in the most dire circumstances to petition the king for help.

  Perhaps the most unusual and intriguing aspect of this Land of the Thunder Dragon was its attitude toward development and consumerism—the policy that catapulted Bhutan to the formidable (if unqualifiable) distinction as a place populated with supremely happy people. Instead of measuring its economic progress by calculating the gross national product—a complex matrix detailing the monetary value of what a country churns out—His Majesty created a different scale. He proclaimed this philosophy, ironically, poetically, “Gross National Happiness.” Economic progress at any cost, went the thinking, was not progress at all. Any force that threatened Bhutan’s traditions or environment was cause for concern—and not worth inviting into the country. The well-being of the people was to be considered before the sheer generation of goods and cash, before rampant growth just for the sake of an upward slope on a graph. Quality of life was to take precedence over financial and material success. Compassion toward and cooperation with your fellow citizens was fundamental, essential, rather than mowing down the other guy with abandon so you could succeed.

  Social scientists and economists around the globe curiously studied GNH and this place that because of it had been dubbed “the happiest place on earth.” What would the New York City couples buying $2.7 million apartments with nannies to assist their nannies think about these ideals? How about the audience and staff of the radio show where I worked, where the theme was money and business? Being, not having. Happiness above wealth. It sounded great to me; Bhutan certainly appeared to have its priorities straight. At least, it seemed to have the same priorities I was craving more of in my world.

  Could it be real? Or was it brilliant sloganeering, a marketing mirage? Maybe I’d figure out a way to get to Bhutan one day, to find out for myself.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, I’d returned to Los Angeles. One particularly frustrating day at work, I was sitting around, trying to invent some idea for a fifty-second story that would please the editors and fill the news hole in the next morning’s show. Once the idea was approved, I’d begin chasing down sources by phone and begging for just five minutes for an interview. At least this wasn’t one of the weeks where I had to go to work at 1:00 a.m. That shift required a different sort of madness than wrangling sound bites into radio news blurbs.

  Sebastian’s name in my inbox provided relief once again. It was ridiculous how excited I got just seeing an email from him. I didn’t think I was capable of being so smitten.

  Hi Lisa. How are you? Hope all’s well in L.A. Harris is being an excellent sherpa on this trip.

  How would you like to go work for a start-up radio station in Bhutan? If so, let me know and I’ll make an introduction to a friend of mine here who knows someone who needs help. Seems like a good way to get to Bhutan and up your alley, too?

  —Sebastian

  Was this for real? He couldn’t be making up this kind of offer just to impress me. Could he? Suddenly, an exotic foreign experience seemed the antidote to my malaise; without thinking it through I wrote back and said yes.

  As soon as I hit Send, the questions surfaced: How would I take more than a week off? I was constantly reminded at work that younger and therefore less expensive talent lurked in the wings; I’d been unemployed for so long before taking this job, I couldn’t just frivolously run away. Besides, impetuous work-related decisions weren’t my style. And yet, even though I had no idea how it would sort out, I didn’t worry for long. The possibility that my few skills might be useful to people in this faraway “happiest place on earth” warmed me.

  Sebastian virtually introduced me to a Mr. Phub Dorji and we began an email correspondence. He asked for my résumé, inquired how soon I could get to Bhutan, and told me that if I paid my own way, the station would cover the cost of my room and board. A plane ticket seemed a small price for this kind of experience; who knew what it might lead to? Mr. Dorji sent along a list of goals he hoped I could achieve: taking the station national, improving the professionalism of the on-air talent, figuring out how to better report on and deliver news, creating and selling radio advertisements.

  The station was called Kuzoo FM. Kuzu zampo was Dzongkha for hello, which is how in truncated form it became the name of the radio station. The accompanying Web site, Kuzoo.net, looked to be a kind of social-networking hub for Bhutanese kids—as if that would cordon them off from everyplace else on the Net, keep them from interacting beyond Bhutan’s borders, I thought cynically.

  “Kuzoo was started by the crown prince for the young people of Bhutan,” Mr. Dorji wrote.

  Naturally, I thought, in this happy kingdom, the royalty would be in touch with the youth. When I asked him his exact role at Kuzoo, he was elusive: “I will keep that a mystery until you get here.”