I ❤ Bhutan

Before we return to Bhutan together I have a confession to make: there was a moment last Spring when I almost got rid of my hiking boots.

I realize that to most of you this might not seem like it has anything to do with my return to Bhutan, and it might not seem like a significant act, but to me it meant everything. You see, when you walk, your boots become an extension of yourself. They are the last things you put on in the morning, refreshed and with twenty miles ahead of you, and the first things you take off in the evening, exhausted and achy and dying for a cold beer, and as you lace on (or off) it’s a signal that the day has begun (or ended). Your boots are with you for every step of your journey.

When I fractured my foot in Siena last May, 750 km into my pilgrimage to Rome, I debated leaving my boots behind, dropping them in a charity bin somewhere. I wouldn’t need them while traveling through Southeast Asia, especially with such limited mobility, and I knew they’d become useless weight in my pack. And it felt sort of ridiculous to spend so much money sending them back to the States when, in preparation for my pilgrimage, I’d already spent hundreds of dollars shipping things home.

In the end though, I reasoned it wasn’t my boots’ fault that this had happened. In fact, I hadn’t even been wearing them when I fractured my foot. They had carried me hundreds of kilometers on the Via Francigena without a single blister. Even when my feet wanted to stop my boots took over and kept me going at that same steady pace that always got me to the day’s destination.

So in Siena I found an empty box, wrapped my dirty boots in newspaper, wrapped the box in packing tape, and paid an extraordinary amount to ship them back home to the States.

Buying my boots was somewhat of a fluke. I was in Rome for a month, researching every possible outdoor equipment store in the city, ticking off gear for my pilgrimage from an ever-growing list. At the top of the list was a good pair of boots. Without good boots my feet would turn to sausages.

I knew exactly how I’d buy new boots were I in the States. I’d scurry over to REI where a knowledgeable sales associate would measure my feet and then spend hours helping me find the perfect pair of boots, even if I had to try on every pair in the store, even if we had to special order them online.

This wasn’t the way things worked in Italy.

In Rome, in the third store I went into I spotted a pair of Merrells. They were super lightweight, good for spring weather, and a brand I’d successfully worn before. A man working in the store came over to help me. He spoke a bit of English, and I tried to explain what I needed the boots for. He seemed to understand and set off to find a pair in my size. I tried them on and within seconds of my tying the laces (I hadn’t even stood up to do a lap around the store) he said, “Okay, good?”

I was confused. I was preparing to walk 1000 km in these boots, and I couldn’t possibly assess their “goodness” in ten seconds. But clearly the sales clerk wasn’t interested in helping me beyond this. I told him I wanted to wear them around the store a bit, and he promptly ignored me.

After five minutes of stomping up and down a few stairs I found leading to a lower level in the store, I decided I’d simply have to take a chance, and I carried the boots to the register.

I got lucky. Best boots I’ve ever worn.

In New Mexico over Thanksgiving break, my mother and I stopped by the REI in Santa Fe to find her some sturdy shoes for our January trip to Bhutan. They were having fantastic after-Thanksgiving sales, and as my hard-to-fit mother (size 11.5, 5A) worked with a helpful saleswoman I considered investing in a pair of low tops or trail runners.

But then I remembered my boots. I had tossed them in the trunk of my car at some point during the chaotic period last fall after I’d arrived back in the US and then spent two months finding a place to live.

When I returned to California after Thanksgiving I rescued my boots from the trunk, fingernails grazing crusted bits of Italian mud still clinging to the soles. I remembered descending the Italian Alps; I remembered a herd of horses in the Apennines; I remembered slogging through muddy puddles in the Tuscany.

In that moment I knew I had to bring my boots to Bhutan with me. For many reasons it felt wrong to buy a new pair of boots when I had a perfectly good pair of semi-old boots, reasons about consumerism, sure, but there was a part of me that felt that buying a new pair of boots would be an act of betrayal. After all, my boots were supposed to go to Bhutan with me in the first place. They were supposed to hit dirt in the Himalayas. They were supposed to ascend to the Tiger’s Nest.

I felt I needed to help them fulfill their shoe destiny.

Now in January, finally back in Bhutan, as I slip into the familiarity of my trusty boots, my mended foot giddy to hit once impossible-to-reach trails, I have to remind myself that this trip is not better simply because I’m able to do the things I couldn’t do before. Though if I’m honest, I will admit that these words are constantly on the tip of my tongue, the tip of everyone’s tongue, I sense, as if this trip is somehow my real trip to Bhutan, that my first trip was just the warm-up, that I’m finally meeting my true expectations.

Yes, of course there is a subtle sense of triumph at the smallest things — being able to navigate a root-lined trail; the ease with which I bound up giant stairs; my ability to race ahead of my mother and Sangay as they stop to identify birds. I am happy to be able to do these things.

But I quickly realize the awareness and appreciation I have is magnified by the fact that I couldn’t do these things before. This trip isn’t better. It’s simply this trip, this experience. It wouldn’t exist in this way without the other; hell, it probably wouldn’t exist at all. And I know I wouldn’t change one thing about my previous experiences in Bhutan.

In the past I took my able-bodiedness for granted. Now I want to savor every step. I feel more present in my body’s ability to do what it naturally does. With each stride I am full of gratitude. Step up. Step down. Pause to watch a raven on a pile of wood. Step up. Step down. Leap over a small creek. Boots land on an uneven board. Wobble. Recover. Step up. Step down. Turn a prayer wheel. Listen to the bell sing.

I realize, I can do this. I am doing this.   

One glorious step at a time.

My awareness of the gift of my body is a part of this experience, but I remember that the real gifts I received on that first trip to Bhutan, gifts that I will always carry with me, came in the form of compassion, the most important thing of all: a stranger offering me a seat; my friend Michael’s arm around my waist as he helped me hop up a high curb; Sangay and Karma carrying me down a flight of stairs; a hiker giving me a thumbs up as I hobbled by on crutches along the trail; a little girl following me, concerned, at the Thimphu farmer’s market. This compassion is something I cherish, something that cannot be quantified, something I will never forget.

And most of all I cherish the gift of friendship with Sangay, my guide, my teacher, who I am convinced I wouldn’t have even met had I not broken my foot. It is a friendship I can’t remember not having, and I am so lucky. I am so lucky I broke my foot.

Another confession: a part of me didn’t believe I’d ever make it to Paro Taktsang, the Tiger’s Nest, that sacred site nestled in a Himalayan cliffside. Sangay had scheduled it for the last day in Bhutan, and a piece of me believed there were too many things that could happen that would make the journey not possible: I could get sick; the car could get a flat tire; there could be an unforeseen blizzard; a swarm of killer bees could surround the mountain.

Perhaps this belief was, in part, due to my anxious monkey mind, but in the hours leading up to the day I came to harvest a lesson as well: the reality is that life can change in an instant, and not always it the way you’d want it to — people get sick; people die; relationships end; flights get canceled; a person walks 750 km across Italy without a single blister then fractures her foot on a 6-inch curb — and it’s best to not place your focus on that abstract horizon.

But this time I did make it to the Tiger’s Nest.

Early in the morning, the last morning, I lace up my boots in my hotel room, and Sangay and I start our journey to the Tiger’s Nest. Even as we leave base camp and begin our slow ascent I remind myself to not get excited, to not focus on the destination but instead to be mindful of this moment. I’m not there, I’m here, boots brushing through soft dirt, finding balance on jutting stones. I’m not there, I’m here, taking a sip of water, pausing to hold an oblong stone between my thumb and index finger.

On occasion, after we switchback, switchback, I catch sight of the Tiger’s Nest through a mesh of trees, growing larger in my view, but I bring myself back to the present, remembering those who were here before me, those who will come after me, and, most of all, those whose feet will never be lucky enough to step on this sacred trail.

Much of the ascent Sangay and I spend in sweet silence, both of us in our own contemplations. As other pairs and groups pass us, most of them laughing and chatting about life, I realize we don’t need words to communicate, that an invisible cord ties us together.

At one point, as we pause to catch our breath in a small meadow and gaze out across the valley, it all becomes too much for me, and I turn to my friend with tears spilling from my eyes.

“It’s too beautiful,” is all I can say.

He nods. He understands.

In the afternoon, after climbing the steep steps to the Tiger’s Nest and visiting its temples, we climb still higher, to a small temple Sangay says is Paradise. He helps me across ice-rimmed stairs, and we sit on the edge of the world, overlooking a sharp drop-off to the valley, Sangay teaching me to clear my monkey mind, to focus on a single stem in front of me. We sit again in silence.

I know I could sit here forever, secure in the simplicity of this small patch of earth. But my mother and Dawa, our driver, are waiting for us in the car park. It’s time. It’s time to go.

After the descent, on the drive back to our hotel where a bottle of Bhutanese whiskey and one last supper together await us, I notice my boots. They look, different.

“I’ve left my Italian mud,” I say to Sangay.

“And picked up new dirt,” he says.

For the traveler, life’s endless journey is just that. With every step you take you leave behind a piece of yourself and pick up something new to bring along with you. Some of these pieces are tangible: ticket stubs, souvenirs, and snapshots; but most of them are intangible: memories and experiences and friendships.

I’m glad I kept my boots.

Epilogue: Back in Bangkok, in the hours leading up to my flight home, my mother well on her way back home to New Mexico, I am hyper aware of how much I miss Bhutan, of how much I miss Sangay. The heat, the traffic, and the crowds in Bangkok are overwhelming after eight days of serenity. I’m thinking about sitting crossed-legged on the edge of Paradise — fingers frolicking in the loose earth, breeze toying with my skin, a Bhutanese dog nuzzling my side — and I feel a familiar sense of sadness creeping in.

But then I remind myself what a waste of time it is to keep myself there when I am here, sitting on this bench in Lumpini Park, sweat rolling down my back, soaking my linen dress. My friend Sangay taught me that.

I remind myself to breathe, to focus.

A little girl in a flowered jumpsuit climbs up a green plastic slide. A monk holding a cell phone pushes a wheeled suitcase. Uniformed workers glide past on bicycles. A lazy cat naps on a neighboring bench. A man with mirrored sunglasses on his head catches my eye and smiles.

I remember a moment from earlier in the week. On a trail in Punakha, Sangay stopped to make me a hat out of fern leaves. As he handed it to me he said, “What if we don’t see again?”

“We will,” I said, fern wreath secure on my head. “I’m certain of it.”

Content on my bench another memory comes to me, this one a night in Paris almost a year ago, a night when my Parisian friends walked me home for the last time. I was leaving Paris in a few hours, but they refused to say goodbye. “It’s always à bientôt,” they said to me.

À bientôt. See you soon.

So à bientôt dear Bhutan. À bientôt dear Sangay. I know, I know, we will see each other again soon.

Until then, this is now. I am here on this bench in Bangkok. I am here. I am present. I am strong. I am happy.

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