The
valley was unspeakably beautiful: honey-colored hills flanked by
mountains covered in pine trees. Dark shrubs dotted the expanse, as did
wandering cows, temples and clusters of 108 white Buddhist prayer flags.
Relatives of the dead plant the flags — thin strips of fabric that run
the length of tall poles — during the 49 days it takes to guide and
protect the soul as it moves toward the next life.

Every time I’d
see those flutterings of white, I thought of the effort and devotion
that had gone into covering this landscape in so many acts of love.

My
energy levels were close to empty when I arrived in Bhutan’s Phobjikha
Valley, far enough east from the only international airport in this
lush, underdeveloped Himalayan kingdom that it had taken many, many
hours of driving to get to.

I had thrown Phobjikha onto my
itinerary after meeting a woman on my plane who was going there to see
the black-necked cranes who make the valley their winter home.
Classified as vulnerable, there are only some 6,600 left in the wilds of
South Asia. Around 500 of those make the long journey south from Tibet
to Phobjikha’s high-altitude wetlands each November.

Protecting
these cranes isn’t simply an environmental issue. In Bhutanese culture,
Phobjikha is a sacred valley and the cranes are birds from heaven.
“Local people believe their arrival will bring them good harvest for the
coming year,” said Phuntso Dorji, one of my two guides from the local
tourism company Bridge to Bhutan. They’ll even wait to plant their
winter wheat until the first crane has touched down.

The cranes
seem to time their arrival and departure to auspicious dates on the
Buddhist calendar, according to Phuntso, circling the sky three times
above the valley’s 17th-century Gangteng Monastery. There’s video
evidence of it at the Crane Information Center run by the Royal Society
for Protection of Nature (R.S.P.N.) overlooking the protected wetlands.
Every November, the monastery hosts a crane festival featuring dancers
dressed as deities of the forest, or imitating the cranes’ bowing,
jumping, wing-flapping mating dance known as the thrung thrung karm.
Karma, the injured black-necked crane in Phobjikha. CreditJada Yuan/The New York Times
Image may contain: bird and outdoor

And this was the good road, the national highway.

We
made a sharp right turn and drove an hour more on a dirt road lined
with yaks. You can’t understand what cranes mean to this valley without
going to Gangteng Monastery on a hill overlooking the valley floor. Its
whitewashed stucco was crumbling, and the lack of other outsiders seemed
to allow room for more sacred energy. Monks were in the courtyard
practicing choreography for an upcoming festival in which they would
dance with masks depicting the wrathful form of Padmasambhava, or the
Lotus Born, who is credited with bringing Buddhism to Bhutan in the
eighth century.   “Watch out for the land mine!” Phuntso joked, as we
dodged cow manure on our hike through the forests above the wetlands.
The cranes were white dots on the valley floor, black necks bent down as
they feasted on dwarf bamboo, their main sustenance. We couldn’t get
much closer because of park regulations; the cranes don’t interact well
with humans. But all day and all night, their unsteady, high-pitched
calls echoed across the valley as if on a loudspeaker.

It wasn’t
until I’d been there for hours that I realized what was really different
about this place: the total lack of above-ground wires. Back in 2008
when the government proposed a plan to bring electricity to the valley,
the R.S.P.N. stepped in to pay for solar paneling and convinced the
government to do all of the wiring underground, to guard against the
cranes running into electric poles.

Threats still abound, though,
from predators like foxes, leopards and feral dogs. One of them
attacked a juvenile crane, rendering his left wing unmovable and keeping
him grounded, unable to fly back to Tibet in summer. The R.S.P.N. named
him Karma. He has spent the last four years in a protected enclosure at
the crane center, and is the only crane you can see up close.

More
pernicious, of course, are the human threats, particularly from farmers
illegally encroaching on the cranes’ habitat to grow more potatoes, the
area’s cash crop. The worry is that someday the people are going to
want more than sporadic underground electricity. For now the R.S.P.N. is
working hard to convince residents that it’s in their interest to keep
Phobjikha a place where cranes will come. Schoolchildren help with
scientific fieldwork. The government also encourages certain locals to
earn income by offering home stays to tourists. I went to one called Aum
Passang Zam Farm House for a delicious dinner and a bath in a wooden
shed, heated with stones straight from a campfire.
Previous Lives

One
valley west of Phobjikha is the city of Punakha, famous for a temple
dedicated to the worship of a Buddhist leader known as the Divine
Madman, or Lama Drupka Kunley, who had a magic phallus he used to fight
off evil spirits. Penis imagery is everywhere: Painted on walls in great
detail, sometimes wearing a sash. More subtle versions include the
giant wooden penis that graced my hotel room mantle, and the red-painted
wooden penises with airplane wings that hung off each corner of the
hotel roof as a form of spiritual protection.

But I had come to
Punakha not just for penis imagery, but also to visit what Phuntso and
my other guide and driver, Kinga Tenzin, said was the best dzong, or
fortress in all of Bhutan. It’s a vast complex with both administrative
offices and monastic spaces, including temples that tell the story of
Buddha’s life. The week I was there, it was hosting the Moenlam Chhenmo
(The King of Aspirational Prayers), an annual festival for the faithful
in which the Chief Abbott, the top religious officer in Bhutan, recited
blessings and prayers for world peace over a loudspeaker.

For
miles heading to the dzong, the road was lined with pilgrims: men in
traditional gho outfits (a knee-length robe tied at the waist, with a
colored sash across the chest to show societal rank) and women in their
brightest silk jackets and ankle-length wrap skirts called kiras. When
we arrived, a field was filled with thousands of devotees, along with
tents where they’d sleep for up to two weeks. Some were taking a break
to see the country’s longest suspension bridge nearby. They’d traveled
days from other parts of Bhutan, and had never seen this part of the
country.
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That
night, I stayed in the Pamtsho Lodge guesthouse in Thimphu, the
capital, and ate dinner with the owner, Tsewang Nidup, whom everyone
calls Uncle. Both of my guides agreed that he had so much wisdom that it
seemed to emanate from his pores. I told him about my day at the
Punakha Dzong, and how I had looked around and hadn’t seen another
Westerner in that sea of Buddhists.

“You must have accumulated
enough merit in a previous life to be part of the event,” he said. “Or
maybe you are already associated with it in your previous life, so now
it’s a continuity.” People who’d seen me there, he said, likely thought
the same thing, which is why no one seemed to give me a second glance.

“We are Bhutanese-born here and still we did not get the opportunity to see the blessings,” he went on, “and you did.”

Had
I arrived at Bhutan any earlier in my 52 Places trip, I’m not sure I
would have been as grateful as I am now, so close to the end of my
journey. I spent so many months stressed out about logistics or finances
or work. I don’t know if it’s because of the exhaustion that set in
when I was in China and hasn’t lifted, or the asceticism of living out
of a suitcase for a year, but the Buddhists stories my guides told me
all seemed to make sense.

My trip had begun with a visit to the
recently completed giant golden Buddha statue, known as Great Buddha
Dordenma, who overlooks Thimphu and is filled with 125,000 smaller
Buddhas. There I learned to point with an open hand, and to prostrate
myself as I thought of the teachers who have helped to get me to this
moment. My last morning, we went to the ancient Jowo Temple of Kyichu in
the western city of Paro. Oranges grow in the courtyard, even though
the climate prevents them from growing anywhere else in the valley.
Circling the grounds clockwise were half a dozen frail and elderly
Bhutanese, some with hunched backs and canes, chanting the six
perfections that lead to enlightenment: generosity, morality, patience,
energy, meditation and wisdom.

Phuntso said the elderly come here and do this all day, every day. “They are preparing for the afterlife.”

I
even began to believe the story about Padmasambhava riding on the back
of a tigress to fight a demon on the high cliff where one of Bhutan’s
most popular tourist attractions, the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, is. It
takes over four punishing hours to hike there, round trip, and was, by
far, the most crowded tourism spot I visited. Yet mysticism still
drenched the air.

On the way back, Phuntso and I saw a figure
drop from a tree that turned out to be a gray langur monkey. We had seen
gray langurs once before on our trip, and Kinga had stressed what good
luck they are. Phuntso said that on all his many trips to Tiger’s Nest,
he had never seen one on this trail.

As we left, we pointed the
monkey out to a Bhutanese family. The father agreed with Phuntso that
spotting one here was of great portent.

“He must be a disciple of Buddha,” he said, matter-of-factly, and walked off, down the trail.