Paro & the Tiger's Nest

Paro is the valley where Bhutan begins: the only airport in the kingdom sits at the bottom of it, between mountains so close that two dozen pilots on Earth are certified to land there by hand, and above the town — a street of painted wooden shopfronts, a fortress-monastery of 1646 with a covered bridge and a round watchtower turned museum, the oldest temple in the country with orange trees in its courtyard — a monastery hangs on a cliff nine hundred metres up, pinned there, the story says, since Guru Rinpoche flew in on a tigress in the eighth century and meditated in the cave for three months. Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest, was built around the cave in 1692, burned in 1998, and was rebuilt exactly, and it is the photograph that Bhutan is.

The traveller lands and does nothing strenuous for a day, because Paro is at two thousand two hundred metres and the cliff is at three thousand one hundred; walks the town's one street and the dzong's courtyards, and climbs to the round Ta Dzong for the masks and the view; sees Kyichu Lhakhang and its orange trees; then, on the second morning, walks up to Taktsang — three hours, through pines and prayer flags, past the teahouse at halfway where the whole monastery appears across the gorge, down and up seven hundred steps to the door, shoes off, into the cave; and, with a day more, drives up to Chele La, the highest road pass, for the prayer flags in the wind and the Himalaya both ways.

The Guide's honesty: Bhutan asks visitors to pay a daily development fee — a hundred dollars a day for most, at last reading — on top of the hotels and the guide that are, in practice, the way to travel here; the country is deliberate about it, and the emptiness of the trails is what the fee buys; the flight into Paro is a spectacle and cancels in cloud — do not book a tight connection out; the climb to Taktsang is steep and high and a horse can take you halfway — nobody will judge; the dzongs ask for long sleeves and no hats; and Bhutan measures its happiness officially, drives with courtesy and paints phalluses on its houses for luck — take all three as the country presenting itself. Say kuzuzangpo la, and mean it.