The Purple Culture Guide to Bhutan

Chapter 1: First Impressions

You step off the plane at Paro International Airport and immediately feel a combination of awe and mild confusion. The awe is because the runway is carved into a valley so tight that the pilot has to maneuver a descent that makes you feel like you're on a flight simulator. The confusion is because the first thing you notice after you're through the terminal is the humidity and the dust, not the distant snow-capped peaks you saw in the brochure. You're immediately hit by the reality that, despite its reputation as a mystical alpine kingdom, Bhutan's doorstep is subtropical. It is a country that doesn't match its own publicity photos unless you drive for several hours and gain an awful lot of elevation.

The first impression is almost always about the sheer, relentless green. It's not the polite, manicured green of a golf course, but a wild, tangled emerald that creeps up the sides of the hills and seems to swallow anything man-made that stops being maintained. The rice terraces are sculpted and perfect, but the surrounding forests are chaotic, thick, and humid. You hear insects buzzing that you don't recognize. It smells like wet earth and vegetation, and you realize that you are not in a temperate mountain retreat. You are in the eastern Himalayas, a biological crossroads that feels closer to Nepal or even Southeast Asia than to the images of a cold, high-altitude Shangri-La.

As you drive toward Thimphu, the capital, the first