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It took two appointments before my obstetrician was ready to estimate a due date: July 2. Before I’d even left his office I was tapping backwards through my calendar, figuring out the latest date I’d be able to fly. My third trimester, which I understood to be the safety cut-off, was set to begin in mid-April. How many trips could I cram in before then?
You can totally still travel with kids! swore my mom friends who required weeks of notice to schedule a dinner. Promised the travel TikTokers who traversed trails in New Zealand with babies strapped in hiking carriers. Oh yes, totally, I’d agree. If you prioritize it. But I could still touch reality; I knew that my days of following every flight deal, every wild invitation, were over. No longer could I go to Lisbon alone on two weeks’ notice to spend entire afternoons in coffee shops reading novels with a pastel de nata, or clubbing on a Danube barge in Serbia, as I did just before the pandemic.
Travel had long set off sparklers in my stomach. Landing in a new country remains my most dependable way to feel bright and alive. Holding a baby in my arms had also, always, given me a thorough sensation of joy—and a marrow-deep yearning. I knew my whole life I wanted to be a mother. When I found a wonderful partner just as passionate about both exploring the world and building a family, I was thrilled. We relocated from New York City to Taipei in 2022 to follow our dreams of living abroad.
So when I told him, days after returning from a solo jaunt to Seoul in my fifth month of pregnancy, that I was mulling a trip in my sixth to Bhutan—a country with limited hospitals, limited highways, located in the high altitude of the Himalayas—he couldn’t help betraying some exasperation, not to mention fear for my health. When will it be enough for you? was really what I heard. Bhutan would be my 57th country. It felt greedy, obscene, embarrassing. What if something happened to me, or to the baby? How could I face my mother if I harmed her first grandchild just because I wanted one more cool view outside a plane window?
I met with my doctor, who said my fetus and I were both healthy and on track with every single marker; he suggested I come in before and after the trip to check in. I also spoke to multiple reps from Intrepid Travel, the Australian tour company I'd decided to book with. The Intrepid folks walked me through the nine-day itinerary, in which our small group would drive around the western part of the country, beginning in the capital, Thimphu (a city so small there are no traffic lights), and ending in the historic town of Paro, with two stops in the scenic valleys of Punakha and Phobjikha along the way. The company reassured me the hikes were beginner-level, more like strolls that I could opt out of on any given day. And, they emailed me a list of the medical centers along the journey, each located within four kilometers of the hotels. If I miscarried or were seriously injured, though, I’d likely need to be airlifted over the border to Delhi.
Even with that caveat, I remained fixated on Bhutan because of its famous focus on Gross National Happiness (not GDP), its remove from the modern world, its roots in Buddhism, its gorgeous scenery. Because it didn’t look like anywhere else. Because it was there.
And so, I went.
As I anticipated but couldn’t prepare for, the scenery was a feast: miles of dry orange grasses dotted with scrubby green pines, crayon-colored prayer flags strung over terrifying canyons, snaking roads cut into crags just years before. When I went for a walk my first evening in Thimphu, the air around my hotel, the stately Norkhil Boutique Hotel & Spa, smelled of toasting pepper and coriander. I was served a welcome drink of butter tea, bubbles of fat lifting out of a milky mauve surface.
The contrasts were also eye-popping and immediate. Nearly every person on the street was dressed in traditional clothes, yet I spotted a Puma store in Thimphu. Devotion to Buddha was telegraphed through humble clay stupas, intricately painted prayer wheels, and the shaved heads of monks, but portraits of the royal family were hung in every room. Over and over I noted the same photo of the toddler Crown Prince, Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck, with his swoop of black hair, sunshine-yellow robe, and plastic car grasped in one fist.
Amid the solemnity, too, emerged a proliferation of penises. Not just subtle phalluses—say, the titular structure in Thimphu’s Clock Tower Square—but graphic and cartoonish wood carvings in tourist shops; detailed paintings around doorways; a fire-engine red cement statue standing four feet tall. The images are widely believed to ward off evil spirits and boost fertility and abundance, and many Bhutanese trace their importance back to Drukpa Kunley, a legendary Tibetan Buddhist monk who, 500 years before, “enlightened” his female followers via sexual intercourse. Bhutan was an intensely beautiful but bizarre place, exactly as idiosyncratic as I might have hoped. On the ride from Paro International Airport, an Intrepid guide proudly shared that the country had never been colonized, had beaten every attempted invader—due, in his view, to its tight clutch on its identity.
I found that my sixth month belly and I could easily handle the hikes, spurred on by bewildering views and the support of my Intrepid tour group, a gang mostly comprised of retired Aussies who kept close watch on my trekking poles, insisting I keep one in each hand, lest I trip. Each daily walk was followed by a visit to a dzong, monastery-fortresses with white walls and squat roofs. We’d remove our shoes to pad quietly around Buddhas, their faces impassive and lips gently parted. Our guide, Pratap, chanted his preferred Sanskrit mantra under his breath as we’d pass these thresholds: Om mani padme hum, or “Praise to the jewel in the lotus.” A phrase meant to empty the mind, draw awareness to the present, clear the path toward enlightenment.
While the Buddhas varied in their histories and symbolism, their most common hand gesture was the bhumispara mudra, the right fingertips pointing down, brushing the earth, demanding attention to the present. The dummy’s guide to Buddhism that I’d purchased before my trip warned that an obvious source of dukha, or suffering, is the grinds of change. On the trip’s quiet moments, on long drives up mountain passes, I kept a hand on my swelling abdomen, wondering if my baby was enjoying the meals of ema datshi (strips of chili peppers in a bath of yak cheese) and the Himalayan air. I realized that—as I brewed their bones from scratch—they would partly be made of Bhutan.
Eight days in, however, I was anxious to leave. My lower back was creaky, and I missed my husband terribly. I needed to get home and buy nursery supplies. But as with every solo trip I’ve ever taken, I spent the morning before the flight trying to absorb my location, imprinting on my eyes and in my chest the snow-capped mountains and peach blossom trees, bubbling baby pink against spindly black branches. At our last hotel, the Tashi Namgay Resort, I found a riverside garden, its trees strung with yet more prayer flags flapping in the fresh air, and dreamed. My relationship to travel would be forever changed, sure. As would my body, my life. But I was present. I was here, now, in the town of Paro, with all the wonder of the universe twisting and turning over, quite literally, deep in my core.
