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“Oh,” I answered, “I hope so. I hope so.” Her mother returned to the counter and handed me a cup of tea. As I often did in Thimphu, I felt like an honored guest, and not in this case simply because I held the promise of a sale. A visitor from so far away was still a special occasion.

“May I see that ring, please?” I pointed to one of three similar rings in the jewelry case, the smallest among them. The lady complied, and slipped it onto my hand without effort. It fit perfectly. I held out my arm, wrist pointed up, and admired the adornment. It looked as pretty as I’d hoped.

“So sixty-five hundred ngultrum today is about …” I tried to calculate out loud, looking at the tiny white label of a price tag. The exchange rate changed daily and the ngultrum, pegged to the Indian rupee, had been rising in value lately.

There was no need to be approximate. The lady whipped out a calculator from under the counter and started pressing the keys.

“A hundred forty dollars.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to go get some money across the street …”

I didn’t even bother to ask about credit cards; only one shop accepted them, and with a steep surcharge, to boot. Plastic was still the domain of visitors. Most Bhutanese used only cash, though printed currency had been introduced only forty-odd years ago. The couple of automatic teller machines at the bank weren’t designed to work with anything but a local account.

“Traveler’s check? We can take a traveler’s check.” First I’d heard of that here. As I pulled out some checks and endorsed them, I joked that I was “getting married to myself.” The old lady smiled broadly, wanting to be agreeable, but not understanding. Her daughter took my words literally.

“Yes.” She smiled, and then she told me what I already knew. “That is a wedding ring here in Bhutan.”

THE NEXT DAY, I admire my Bhutanese jewel while I wait to check in at the Paro Airport ticket counter. I love this portable souvenir, and I love the significance I’ve ascribed to it, too. I am married to myself. Who else do I really need? It has taken me forty-three years to feel whole, to believe that nothing, really, is missing. Now is what matters; I have all I need. What’s important isn’t some promised future event, relationship, or achievement. The world is smaller now, and larger, filled with possibilities. Every time I catch a glimpse of my hand, I have a tangible reminder to celebrate. And to thank Bhutan for having cinched my feelings tight.

Right this moment, I am exhausted with the emotion of leaving and the prospect of going back to my job and to Los Angeles. Sir Phub Dorji stopped by in the afternoon to bid me farewell; it was the first time I’d seen him since the day I arrived in the kingdom. After our tea together, I stayed up all night dancing at Club Destiny with the Kuzoo gang, and then at Benez, a bar near the traffic circle. There, a Bhutanese patron told me in his drunken haze how, after finishing graduate school in journalism in the United States ten years ago, he came back to Bhutan and quit his job at the newspaper not long after. “Everything about the job—and me—was different,” he said. I already suspected that my reaction to home would be the same. The question was whether I’d allow myself to do something rash.

Once we closed down the bar, Andy, one of my younger expat friends, walked me through the empty town and up the hill to Rabten. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, desolate streets as much as I was worried about going back into the apartment. Earlier in the week, I’d spotted a rat while I was getting dressed in the morning and couldn’t handle the idea of coming face-to-face with this new roommate. “So, you have a Bhutanese boyfriend,” Sir Tenzin had joked after I’d rushed into Kuzoo in a panic. Rats, indoors and out, are a part of life there and no one fears them.

It was around two in the morning. Since I didn’t have an actual alarm clock, Andy said he’d be my human one—the idea being we’d stay up until dawn, when I had to leave for the airport.

For the next four hours