We had planned Bhutan for the wrong reasons. A bucket-list visa, a single hike, a photograph. Tenzin in Thimphu wrote me a five-page letter before we landed that quietly dismantled all three. We came home with no photograph that felt important, one extra day in Punakha that we asked for ourselves, and a quiet that has not yet left.

I have walked in Nepal and Ladakh and the Andes. Bhutan was the first time a guide carried no electronics for the first three days and politely refused mine. We saw a snow leopard on day six. I am not going to tell you about it; you should go for your own reason. Tibro and Tenzin made the trip possible without making it small.

We did the obvious. Taktsang at dawn, Punakha for two nights, the Dochula chortens. But the trip turned at Gangtey, where Tenzin had booked us into a farmhouse rather than a hotel and the family insisted we eat dinner with them on the floor. That is not a thing you can book on a website. Three months later we are still talking about it.