Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [11]
“They can be difficult here, especially with foreigners, and I didn’t want you to get stuck,” Ngawang said, smiling with the knowledge of her conspiracy. “So I used my connections.” She gestured toward someone behind the stalls where passports were being checked as a way of explaining how she’d talked her way back here. “See him? He’s my brother.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant one of several men wearing military gear, or a man who was wearing what looked to be a police uniform, or, for that matter, whether she was pointing toward an older gentleman clad in a dark-colored gho. I had arrived safely in Bhutan to a warm welcome, and that was what mattered. Soon I’d learn that Ngawang knew someone everywhere we went, or anywhere that I needed anything. This made her not only an excellent candidate for her job in radio but an indispensible guide for me.
The hours of endless travel had addled my brain. Instead of being elated about this adventure, I had succumbed to the perilous trap of feeling sorry for myself as I trekked around the globe alone. What was I doing? Where was I going? Why was I headed to this strange little country most people hadn’t heard of and couldn’t find on a map? Shouldn’t a woman in her early forties be doing something normal, like taking her kids to Disneyland? Or enlisting the grandparents to babysit, so she could steal away on romantic trips with her husband? Or, if the husband and kids had been around for a while, plotting spa getaways with her similarly beleaguered girlfriends?
This grand adventure seemed, all of a sudden, pathetic and sad and a bit rootless. To be running to the other side of the planet at age forty-three to volunteer with a bunch of people I didn’t know, in a country that had fewer people than there were students in public school in Los Angeles—all in the hope that the experience might justify my existence, fill the emptiness in my heart. A normal single woman would have met a handsome man at a party and been whisked off on an exotic whirlwind affair. Wouldn’t she?
Every step of the long journey here, I was regaled with a chorus of “if onlys” and “what ifs” I thought I’d silenced. My trusty exercise of making a list of three good things only briefly helped halt the noise: (1) Lunch at the airport with my friends Hal and Phil; (2) Seeing The Darjeeling Limited and Into the Wild on the plane; (3) The surprisingly lovely airport hotel in Bangkok.
Ngawang snapped me back to the present with an offer of a stick of chewing gum. The sweet, fruity taste felt good after days in transit, hours cooped up on a plane. Wasting time wallowing, here, was just dumb.
In addition to her work as a radio jockey at Kuzoo FM, Ngawang had also been assigned the important job of watching over me during my stay, helping with whatever I needed. After I presented my visa papers to the customs official, ponied up the $20 fee I’d been told to expect, and officially entered the country, we made our way toward the baggage claim. The airport was so tiny it needed just one carousel. Even though she was clacking along in her heels, Ngawang insisted on grabbing my bag, as well as the heavy backpack I was carrying, and wheeling the load outside.
Ringed by mountains, Bhutan’s only airport has been called the scariest in the world. Only eight pilots are certified to navigate it. The runway is narrow and visibility is often a problem, apt metaphors for the official and cultural barriers that make it difficult for a person to enter Bhutan’s borders. Once you’re on the ground, peaceful simplicity reigns. With just two planes in the Druk Air fleet, there’s little danger of collision when an aircraft, after it lands, does a one-eighty to move closer to the terminal.
My travel began with an eighteen-hour flight to Bangkok, a brief overnight layover, a five-hour delay due to fog hovering over the