Bhutan – The Land of the Thunder Dragon

Bhutan has become a very special place to me.

If I'm honest, I knew very little about it until Emma Slade came into my life almost by chance.

One Sunday morning, not long before I opened Deva Yoga, I happened to hear Emma being interviewed by Clare Balding on BBC Radio about her journey from banking to Buddhism and the work of her charity, Opening Your Heart to Bhutan.

I read her book, contacted her and offered to sell copies at Deva to help raise money for the charity. A few months later, Emma arrived at the studio with a box of books and a beautiful thangka from Bhutan as a gift.

Neither of us could possibly have known where that first meeting would eventually lead.

Over the years Emma became a friend and teacher, I took my first Buddhist precepts with her, and one day, after I mentioned my long-held wish to visit Tibet, she simply said:

“But you haven't been to Bhutan yet.”

She had a point.

My First Journey

In 2024, I travelled to Bhutan for the first time, predominantly with fellow Buddhists and members of our Sangha.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I most certainly left feeling that something had been ignited in me. I literally felt a little fire in my belly!

Bhutan is extraordinarily beautiful, of course. The mountains, valleys, monasteries, temples and prayer flags are everything the photographs promise. But it wasn't simply the landscape that captured me. It was the feeling of the place.

The kindness and gentleness of the people. The spirituality woven naturally through everyday life. The sophistication alongside the simplicity. The calm.

Bhutan stirred something in me. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but I knew I would return. And I remember thinking that I wanted the people I cared about to experience this place too. I wanted to bring them here, to show them what I had seen and, perhaps, for them to feel some of the magic that I had felt.

Walking Bhutan

My second journey was very different.

Emma had decided to take on the Trans Bhutan Trail, walking across Bhutan to raise money for Opening Your Heart to Bhutan. At first I thought it might just be a passing comment, but I should have known better. When Emma has an idea, it quite quickly grows arms and legs and she jumps right in, both feet! Her extraordinary challenge would eventually help raise more than £100,000 for the charity.

She invited people to join her for different sections of the trail. Several people initially planned to go but, for various reasons, couldn't make it. I obviously, could and had already put my hand up!

Yinny, who also teaches at Deva, decided to join me. I did warn her that this was going to be a rather different Bhutan experience. We weren't simply going sightseeing. We were going to find Emma somewhere halfway across a Himalayan kingdom.

And just to make things slightly more interesting, a cyclone hit Bhutan as we arrived. Emma was out there walking and camping through it. And we had to find her.

I joined her for part of what turned out to be the final day of the relentless rain, and I don't think I have ever been so wet in my life. I was literally soaked through to the skin. Everything was wet.

At the end of that day, we took Emma back to our hotel with us so she could have something that had suddenly become the height of luxury: a hot shower, warmth and a proper night's sleep in a bed.

It gave me a tiny glimpse into the scale of what she was actually undertaking. Because these weren't gentle little rambles. We were walking for eight to ten hours a day, sometimes through barely trodden terrain, crossing mountains and moving through parts of Bhutan that very few visitors ever experience.

Strangely, some of my strongest memories are of the silence. There were moments when there seemed to be no sound at all. Sometimes I couldn't quite believe where I was. Walking through the Himalayas with Emma, Ugyen, Rinzin and our guide. Just the five of us, quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

It was breathtaking and yet, at the same time, so incredibly simple.

Then there were the moments when Emma and I would be chatting away in that particularly British way, putting the world to rights as though we were taking a Sunday afternoon stroll through the Kent countryside. Until we'd stop and realise we'd just climbed around 1,200 metres in elevation in a single day.

Not quite Knole Park!

We walked sections of an ancient trail that had connected communities across Bhutan for generations, climbing formidable mountain passes and seeing a side of the country that most visitors will never experience. We encountered snakes, leeches and monkeys, and had one particularly memorable encounter with Mummy Bear, Daddy Bear and their babies.

For a brief moment, I became a real-life Goldilocks. 😊

It was exhausting, exhilarating, occasionally ridiculous and utterly unforgettable.

When you drive through a country, you see it. When you walk through it, you feel it.

You notice the tiny settlements. You meet people along the way. You feel the weather change and the landscape shift beneath your feet. You experience the distance between one place and another in your body rather than on a map.

You don't simply arrive somewhere. You earn your arrival.

I feel incredibly grateful to have been a small part of that journey. The memories are etched very clearly in my mind and I know I will always look back on that time with enormous fondness and a smile.

From Traveller to Retreat Host

By this point, Bhutan had become much more than somewhere I loved visiting.

I had formed genuine friendships there, and one of the most important is with Rinzin, owner of Accomplish Bhutan. Rinzin asked me to collaborate with him to create a Deva Yoga retreat in Bhutan. That felt like an incredible honour.

Bhutan isn't somewhere you simply rock up with a group and decide to run a retreat. The country has deliberately taken a different approach to tourism, protecting its culture, environment and identity rather than pursuing mass tourism. And I certainly couldn't create the kind of experience I wanted to offer without someone I knew and trusted deeply on the ground.

With Rinzin, I knew we could create something different. Not simply a tour of Bhutan with a bit of yoga added to it, but an experience that allowed people to connect with the country I had fallen in love with.

And so, in September 2026, I returned for the third time. This time, with my own group of 12 willing souls who were game for an adventure and ready to embrace whatever Bhutan had in store for us.

Our Journey to the Heart of Compassion had begun. For thirteen days we travelled through Thimphu, Punakha, Phobjikha and Paro.

We practised yoga outside in the most incredible locations, with mountains and scenery like nowhere else as our backdrop. We experienced the colour and celebration of the Thimphu Tshechu, visited monasteries and dzongs and received profound teachings from some of the most respected senior Buddhist teachers in Bhutan.

Some of those experiences simply wouldn't have happened without the relationships I have been fortunate enough to form through being Emma's student and Rinzin's friend. That made them even more special.

We also visited the wonderful young people at Draktsho, one of the projects supported by Opening Your Heart to Bhutan. Having watched and supported the charity's work from Deva for so many years, being able to take my own group there felt rather full circle.

And then, of course, there was Tiger's Nest. What an amazing day. Watching this group of people climb something that some of them had genuinely doubted they could do, and then seeing the effect this extraordinary place had on them when they got there, was incredibly moving. I felt like a proud mum.

But once again, some of my favourite memories weren't necessarily the famous sights.

They were the conversations. The laughter. The people we met. The unexpected moments that could never have been written into an itinerary. And perhaps most special of all was watching other people experience Bhutan for the first time.

I recognised that look. I'd had it myself two years earlier.

Why Bhutan?

I've been asked several times what it is about Bhutan that keeps pulling me back.

And I'm still not sure I can completely explain it. There are plenty of beautiful places in the world. Bhutan is something more than beautiful to me. It is something I feel. There is a stillness there that seems to quieten something inside me. Life becomes simpler. You notice more.

A conversation matters. A shared meal matters. A cup of tea matters. Sitting quietly with someone matters. Bhutan has reminded me again and again that we don't necessarily need more in order to feel more.

There is wisdom in simplicity. In kindness. In community. In being present.

Of course, Bhutan isn't some mythical perfect kingdom. It is a real country with its own challenges and a rapidly changing world around it. But there is something about the way it holds onto its identity that I find incredibly moving. Bhutan doesn't seem desperate to become somewhere else.

It knows what it is. And somehow, whenever I am there, I remember a little more of who I am too.

It is extraordinary to think that all of this began with a Sunday morning radio interview, a book and a woman arriving at Deva Yoga carrying a box of books and a thangka.

Three journeys. Three completely different experiences.

And the Land of the Thunder Dragon is already calling me back.

Bhutan 2027 is already beginning to take shape... Anyone want to join me? 🐉🇧🇹♥️