The Spirit of Bhutan

Join Wheel & Anchor for thirteen days in Bhutan — a country roughly the size of Switzerland with a population just over 800,000, the only nation in the world that measures progress by Gross National Happiness, and the only one that is, on balance, carbon negative. We'll fly into Paro and onward to the temple valleys of Bumthang, then work our way slowly westward by road through Trongsa's hilltop fortress, the glacial Phobjikha Valley where black-necked cranes return each November from the Tibetan Plateau, the rice country around Punakha, and over the prayer-flagged Dochula Pass into Thimphu. We'll close with a morning's hike up to Tiger's Nest, the cliff-clinging monastery 900 metres above the Paro Valley floor. Along the way: yathra weavers, monastic kitchens, a candlelight dinner by the river, and an unhurried pace the country itself seems to insist on.