The Geography of Bliss

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has gotten to me. What the heck, I give the bug one more kick, this time more gently, and in an instant it is right-side up, scampering away. Not thanking me, but that’s okay. It feels good. I saved a life. I got involved. A postscript. When I stepped out on the patio later that evening I found a bug, the very same bug I’m sure, on its back again. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This time, I did nothing. I slept easily that night, though. Nobody, not even Karma Ura, I bet, can save a dumb bug from itself. Bhutan is an upside-down place. Here the number thirteen is considered lucky. Children greet you with “bye-bye.” The king wants to abolish himself. Or take marijuana. In Bhutan, they have a novel use for it. They feed it to pigs. This makes the pigs hungry and therefore fat. The first time I heard this, I couldn’t help but imagine an entire barnyard of pigs with the munchies. They’re marching to a 7-Eleven, a pig 7-Eleven, and buying goopy chicken burritos and now—I can see it so clearly— they’re trying to heat them in the microwave, but their pudgy pig paws get stuck in the microwave door so they start squealing wildly, as pigs are wont to do, until the clerk, a pig himself, waddles over and asks them, in pigspeak, to please keep the racket down because this is, after all, a 7- Eleven and not a barnyard or something. These are the kind of thoughts I find myself having in Bhutan. It might be the altitude, but I think it’s something
more than that. This place gives license to my imagination. Most of the time I keep my imagination on a leash. In Bhutan, it runs wild, messing up the freshly mowed lawn and sometimes pooping where it shouldn’t but also rewarding me in unexpected ways. For all of these reasons, traveling in Bhutan requires a serious suspension of disbelief. Reality and fantasy live side by side. Sometimes they are indistinguishable. I’m sitting at the hotel drinking tea, when Sangay, the hotel owner, says out of the blue, “My husband is the brother of the Dalai Lama.” “Really,” I say, “he’s the Dalai Lama’s brother I didn’t know the Dalai Lama had a brother.” “No, not brothers now but in a previous life. My husband is the twelfth incarnation of a Tibetan lama.” This sort of confusion happens all the time in Bhutan. This life, a previous life, a next life. They all blur together, happily. Or take this exchange I had with one of the sweet young girls who works at my hotel. “There has been so much rain lately,” I say, making conversation. “Yes, sir, that is because of Blessed Rainy Day. It’s a festival we have every year to mark the end of the rainy season. After Blessed Rainy Day, there will be no more rain.” She says this with utter certainty, as if she were explaining to a dullard that the sun always rises in the east. The next day, the rain stopped.
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Copyright © 2008 by Eric Weiner Al
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Acknowledgments About the Author
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In these days of wars and rumors of
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wanted to see the world, preferably
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deeply ingrained as to be self-evid
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It is a fact of human nature that w
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exactly. I am engaged in what the F
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not on parchment but on hard drives
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esults Were its citizens happy Veen
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instinctively that the best way to
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answers are remarkably accurate.
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happy’ one has no right to ignore
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egins All cultures have a word for
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“My colleagues are not amused,”
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latitudes of happiness. Happy count
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that one country scores consistentl
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Inside, there’s a foosball table
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settles into my cerebral cortex, I
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area. How about that, I think, swiv
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Freedom even. Freedom from what I c
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the next two days stopping in every
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endear her to Geneva’s diplomatic
Page 46 and 47: too. I take an informal poll around
Page 48 and 49: have a four-thousand-dollar espress
Page 50 and 51: you can’t mow you lawn or shake y
Page 52 and 53: energy, while flatlanders know only
Page 54 and 55: the valley below. I read another si
Page 56 and 57: ties—these are all major contribu
Page 58 and 59: ather, how many people you know wit
Page 60 and 61: A graphic designer. Living in the s
Page 62 and 63: the kind of thought I’m constantl
Page 64 and 65: Then there is something called anan
Page 66 and 67: fifty flavors. The Swiss were on th
Page 68 and 69: advances have come through war.”
Page 70 and 71: Something more than mere contentmen
Page 72 and 73: this flight. For a long while I see
Page 74 and 75: to reach us and clamber aboard we s
Page 76 and 77: efore. Amazing things.” The Airbu
Page 78 and 79: Bhutanese handshake and, come to th
Page 80 and 81: In this part of the world, For Some
Page 82 and 83: sign, propped up by two pieces of w
Page 84 and 85: Sangay Ngedup, a former prime minis
Page 86 and 87: cop with an actual traffic light, b
Page 88 and 89: the police are worried. They know t
Page 90 and 91: he speaks. He thinks as he speaks a
Page 92 and 93: Then I decide to do something out o
Page 94 and 95: “Rich people in the west, they ha
Page 98 and 99: Tashi and I decide to visit the wee
Page 100 and 101: Tibetan government in exile. “It
Page 102 and 103: to be purified.” In other words,
Page 104 and 105: this is not necessarily a bad thing
Page 106 and 107: about happiness constantly. In Bhut
Page 108 and 109: eveals that money does indeed buy h
Page 110 and 111: society, one where we are supposedl
Page 112 and 113: cause, perhaps, but still a cause.
Page 114 and 115: yucking it up for the cameras at a
Page 116 and 117: Rinpoche, eyes closed tightly, chan
Page 118 and 119: endless switchbacks. I find this me
Page 120 and 121: high. I meet the abbot, a rotund ma
Page 122 and 123: A dozen or so creatures with white
Page 124 and 125: out of the Toyota. “Sir,” asks
Page 126 and 127: “No,” she says, as if I were a
Page 128 and 129: missing.” I tell her that of the
Page 130 and 131: elationships, and people in the wes
Page 132 and 133: confesses that not all of his guest
Page 134 and 135: Oprah. But okay is a start, and for
Page 136 and 137: profligate ways with interest. Mayb
Page 138 and 139: wood trim when it’s time to get o
Page 140 and 141: happiness. We equate happiness with
Page 142 and 143: I’m sitting in the lobby, staring
Page 144 and 145: ehind the wheel of a car and they b
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skinned, they drive taxis and don
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doesn’t work. We take our baggage
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of suspended aviation. Always comin
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enough, the temple was built in the
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journalistic instincts, honed over
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desert. It’s not such a far-fetch
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across from the emir, looking uncom
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museum. I’ve seen it on the map.
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Street Urchin Era. She acts crazy.
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Qatar is free. So is electricity an
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pockets. Since the dishdashas are g
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delusional, dogmatic religion makes
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prostitution and now this. The Dutc
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luck (and likewise of the opposite
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says it like it is fact. The earth
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and that is much harder to rectify.
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like a well-designed appendage, and
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eliminated a negative externality,
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woman. I had met her once before. I
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happiness. My great-grandmother was
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He arrives a few minutes later. His
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you depend on them. This multicultu
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paucity of selection here. A few Am
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trace of envy, that I hoped life wa
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my palm perfectly, the way it glide
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“The sun Oh, I don’t think you
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sunny and eighty degrees. Always. O
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instantly reminded of a sunburned p
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she is speaking to me. “Can you t
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“So, why do Icelanders drink so m
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I’ve finished my third cup of cof
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In Iceland, the reverse is true. If
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food. Traditionally, Icelanders won
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inflicts an especially nasty hangov
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that you might become.” We tend t
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think—about the connection betwee
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can possess a momentum of their own
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The ground is, quite literally, shi
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underwear. I am shocked. Not by the
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This relative lack of envy is one s
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of self-delusion, it turns out, is
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wasn’t my imagination. That was J
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work. A solid B, perhaps even a B-p
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around the boulder and, sure enough
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headed god, pouring spoonfuls of mi
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alone pronounce—is the head of th
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in the creative process, the musica
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not what we believe that makes us h
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teach me this life lesson. I’m si
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he tells me, dipping a pita wedge i
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it. He learned to speak Icelandic,
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Social scientists have been investi
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cool is that You get that ahead-of-
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all its drunken splendor. I head to
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cigar in hand and looking vaguely l
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Yes, I need to travel to the dark s
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us terminal than an international g
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out rooms or something else We clim
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educed to scrimping for food and re
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the Russian empire collapsed, the M
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Russian writer, who lived here for
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how she is. “Feevty-feevty,” sh
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Until the next bomb. Vitalie declar
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either. Qatar, however, is a fabulo
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can jump the queue. “It’s very
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That might explain the guy in Cleve
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The Moldovans have amassed a repert
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gets out of the cauldron the others
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screen TV—except for me, and I pr
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The official mission of the U.S. Pe
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It’s warm, and the countryside is
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Corps. Joanna had asked to be sent
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The happiness research backs her up
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jars. Sometimes we bicker, which is
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speaks to her in Moldovan. The wait
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ut only 10 percent of the people ca
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Yes, it’s time to leave this none
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kindness, no space for what St. Aug
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and has a wild, unruly beard. Nick
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In Bangkok, apocryphal stories abou
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continuously. It’s really quite a
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unning tally in her head. She knows
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desirable. The geographer Yi-Fu Tua
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stretches as far as the eye can see
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fulsomely that it extended onto Kun
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inventive buildings, such as the Ro
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pleased to see is labeled “Made i
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don’t smile. Here, they smile, an
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Thailand stretches back many centur
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She makes it sound so easy, like ex
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street vendors to stockbrokers. Wha
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convulse wildly. She is channeling
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“How could she possibly know thos
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The airport terminal is deserted. I
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A couple of years ago, an unusual e
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“In the UK” “Um, yes.” Clea
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UK, we don’t want to bother anyon
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grad student intervenes on my behal
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These days, talk of happiness is po
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Come friendly bombs and fall on Slo
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him back. Click. Another episode. O
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They’d been kicked in the backsid
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downright alarmed. They recoil in h
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divorce can attest. I stroll down H
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I wasn’t quite sure how to handle
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Dump.’ ” You have to say one th
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nervous at the same time. Kate Fox
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Even in the inebriated atmosphere o
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told me this on the phone, I smiled
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forward to Monday morning. Heather
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nothing else, their sheer staying p
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and being grateful for five things
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Chat with someone who is down. Appr
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night. So what was it: toothpaste o
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California brush fire. So what to d
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different spiritual latitude.” Ye
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Every time I return to India—abou
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exceptionally peaceful places but o
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the research backs them up. People
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ashram officials, an edge of panic
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enough that Guru-ji is on to someth
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your spiritual development and not
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deep sleep and won’t wake. The se
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I have to be honest: All this guru
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“Did you really greet them, or wa
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This is a big one, the big one, and
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That was not the case, though, with
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much that his friends joke that he
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“It’s too boring,” says Viki.
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The flight from London was a nightm
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I’m introduced to Chandra, a roly
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“I’m a five, not a four. I thin
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meeting friends, sipping the ginger
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where, as Mark Twain observed, ever
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Family. Friends. I would go a step
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My flight leaves soon. I have time
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“One Shanti Road is the happiest
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ather, that Craig, not a convention
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Miami is associated with happiness,
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Clearly, one dynamic at work is ris
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oth our discontent and our belief i
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wildfires, to name a few. “Nothin
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is so down on Miami. It’s been fi
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eating sushi. “I can eat a lot of
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mountains, so close and embracing.
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five-minute drive from her house an
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My search is over. I’ve logged te
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his head. All miserable countries a
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environment. Out there. In here. No
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all. Waterford, Virginia, July 2007
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foreign desk for their support and
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About the Author Eric Weiner spent
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The Geography of Bliss

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