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“Money is important, especially now, so I can buy things for Kinga Norbu,” Ngawang says, “because if he’s happy, I’m happy.”

I tsk-tsk as Mr. Japan looks at her sideways. He smiles his thoughtful smile, amused by his wife but not annoyed by her.

“I used to think money mattered more than GNH,” he says. “But now I’m not so sure. I see those poor African people on television, and they seem very happy, even if they don’t have much.”

He looks weary; I know it’s far colder in their house than it is here in my hotel room. No wonder they’ve all been sick. I ask him if he’d like my Yankees cap, and as he takes it, he gives me a warm hug. So does Ngawang, apologizing that we’ve not been able to spend more time together on this trip. They both remind me of their standing offer to visit their family in the countryside. After they head out into the darkness, I turn on the BBS and slip under the covers. I want to fall asleep to the sound of my friend Namgay reading the newscast, and wake up in the morning with the chanting monk who begins each broadcasting day.

THREE WEEKS LATER, I’m back in Los Angeles, recovered from the jet lag and the bone-chilling cold, and I happen to check Facebook in the middle of the day. There’s a recent posting by Aby, one of the editors at Business Bhutan: Tourist tariff to be $250 a day 365/7 as of 2011.

The simplicity of the sentence urgently conveys “breaking news.” I start searching the Net for more information but can’t find any. Then I call up the opposition leader’s blog. At about the same time as Aby’s post, Tshering Tobgay has tweeted this: Travelling back to Thimphu. Heard the good news that govt has decided to scrap its plans to liberalize tourist tariff.

It isn’t until the next day that I get more information from another Bhutanese friend, in the form of an email. He tells me that the buzz of dissatisfaction on the streets led the prime minister to sit down with members of the tourism industry; as a result of the talks, the tourism tariff liberalization has been declared dead. Indeed, the government decided it shall be raised. That doesn’t mean the hope of attracting more tourists is diminished; that goal remains the same, but a commitment to tourism that also preserves Bhutan has been made. A victory for free speech and public outcry.

In the same batch of email, I receive two other Bhutan-related messages. One is from the friend of a friend of a friend, a retired high school principal in Canada who wants to “step out of her comfort zone” and volunteer in the kingdom, a dream she’s long had. Can I help her find a way? The other is from a Bhutanese friend’s eighteen-year-old daughter, who has been granted a scholarship to a college I’ve never heard of in remote Minnesota and needs to come up with $12,000 in boarding fees. Can I help her get a job? “An old-age home, a nanny, anywhere,” she implores, and I know she really doesn’t understand what Anywhere, USA, means or how hard it is to make and save that kind of money.

I find myself inclined to help the first lady and to question and lecture the girl. But first I decide to go for a walk outside in the California sunshine.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LIFE IS A SERIES of random events that thread together in ways that lead to sometimes sweet, often spectacular, perhaps transformative, experiences. This book could not have come to be were it not for myriad fortuitous meetings over the course of my decades, several of which collided over the last several years to lead me to Bhutan.

To that end, I must first thank my old dear friend Harris Salat, who introduced me to my new dear friend Sebastian Beckwith, who introduced me to the country that captured my heart. (That chain of connections traces back to when I was a teenager, when our family friend Adam Cohen introduced me to Hampshire College, where I met Mary Batts, who later insisted I meet Harris.)

Jeffrey Tuchman introduced me to Barbara Osborn, who told me about her husband, John Drimmer, who led