Bound for Bhutan, South Asia’s happiest little kingdom

Your guide will tell you that, if you are lucky enough to be in Bhutan, you did something good in a past life. Maybe so.

Landlocked against India, China and Tibet, and surrounded by the Himalayas, the nation has kept itself to itself. Only accessible via remote mountain passes, modern education only made it to this “Land of the Thunder Dragon” in the 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, tourists began trickling in. Television arrived in the ’90s. The internet and cell phones came just 20 years ago.

The wearing of national…