Call it premonition but somehow I knew that my baggage would not arrive with me on the flight from Punta Cana via Paris. And so I wasn’t too flustered when I was proven right.
Siew Hoon getting splashed by Himalayan spring water
In fact, in some ways it felt good to leave the airport so light – and it made me aware that too often we carry way more than we need to in life in general.
And if I were a believer in “there is no such thing as a coincidence”, I’d probably put it down to the fact that someone was preparing me for my trip to Bhutan, the land which measures not its GNP but its GNH (Gross National Happiness).
Bhutan is a place I believe all travellers aspire to go to. You tell anyone you’re going to Bhutan and their eyes either light up with envy (lucky you, I’ve always wanted to go there) or enlightenment (I’ve been and you will love it and I know why you want to go).
I am a last-minute traveler but this trip had been six months in the planning. Bhutan is not at the moment a pick-up-and-go destination and long may it remain that way.
Flights are few and far between – its location in a landlocked mountainous valley between India and China means there’s only a short window for flights to land, depending on weather conditions – and I am told that the Bhutanese government has requested SilkAir to fly but there is not enough demand to warrant a direct flight from Singapore.
I couldn’t help but be happy this is the case. I fear though it may not remain so for long.
Landing in Paro
The Druk Air flight we are on goes to Paro via Calcutta twice a week, where most of the passengers disembark. Landing in Paro reminds me of landing in Kathmandu, Nepal, and in a strange way, the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong.
You are flanked by high mountains on both sides and then you squeeze into this tiny corridor where you feel you can almost touch the mountains on either side.
First tip: Breathe in deeply when you step out of the aircraft. That’s the essence of happiness. The air is so fresh and despite this being the summer and monsoon season, is cool (for us equatorial creatures anyway).
Second tip: If you have to spend time at the airport (as we had to for our friend to arrive on another flight from Bangkok), wait at the airport restaurant across the car park. It serves very good momos, the Bhutanese dumpling, which you can eat with amerdachi, a chilly cheese dish as a side order.
Third tip: In South-east Asia, we eat everything with chillies. In Bhutan, they eat chillies with everything.
Momos and chillies
While we munch on momos and chillies, our conversation turns to happiness and what constitutes happiness.
To me, Bhutan’s tourism tagline of “Happiness is a place” is genius. Not only does it capture everything Bhutan stands for, it elevates the destination to beyond the physical. It makes you think, feel and experience, rather than to just do, see and eat.
It elevates the intangibles over the tangibles so that perhaps even the most demanding customers will go easy on their complaints – although with this motley crew of Singapore and Malaysia (we are known to be demanding especially on food and creature comforts), I am not so sure. But there’s always hope.
It also focuses all thought into one simple idea – our universal search of happiness – and so our conversation at the airport was about happiness and what we felt made us happy personally.
We then decided to record our happiness scores at that moment and said we would revisit our score card at the end of the trip. Travellers and their games …
Meanwhile, according to Druk Air’s inflight magazine, Bhutan measures its Gross National Happiness Index on four criteria – governance, socio-economic environment, culture and environment. From my first impressions, it scores high on environment.
To read how it scores on the other criteria, you will have to rest the rest of my posts.
As for my happiness index at the moment of arrival, I have to admit it was a low 3 while my friends said they were all at around 6 or 7.
Happiness is everywhere in Bhutan
The long long journey from Punta Cana with only 24 hours in between to get to Paro meant I was not in the best shape physically and mentally.
Guess what though, the moment I landed in Paro, I felt lighter – and this is not merely due to the fact that almost 48 hours after, my bag had not yet arrived in Singapore.
