Years ago, I met some very nice Bhutanese people who were working in New York. We became friends, and they always urged me to visit their country.

And so in August 1994, I found myself limping along on a mountain road in Bhutan, trying not to panic. I’d left my very agreeable guide and driver at the hotel and set off on a half-day hiking adventure through Punakha, a heavenly valley filled with poinsettia trees and orange trees and temples in the clouds. There wasn’t a soul around, and I’d recklessly slipped off my boots and waded into the sparkling river that ran parallel to the road on which I’d been walking. It was fantastic until I slipped in the icy water and twisted my ankle. I climbed back up to the road and, struggling, put my boots back on.

Eventually a man on a motorcycle came along. I flagged him down, and he gave me a ride back to my hotel. After depositing me there and refusing tea or monetary reward, he took off.

I rested for a day or two, my enthusiasm for the place not the least bit dampened, then carried on with my tour of this country of impossible beauty and charm. Like everyone who visits this kingdom in the clouds, I fell in love with Bhutan. It was a love like I had never experienced before, bordering on obsession. I visited the country two more times for even lengthier stays in as many years, and in 1997, I came to teach English to students and artisans of the National Art School just outside Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital. I felt I had found the centre of the universe.

I was over 40 and had never married, eschewing that institution for a life of travel and adventure. So everyone was surprised, myself included, when, in 2000, the auspicious year of the dragon, I married one of my co-workers. He was a handsome, shy painter of Buddhist scrolled art or thangkas. He was the nicest person I’d ever met.

Namgay and I moved to a little house beside yet another gorgeous river that wound its way through the magical mountains outside Thimphu. And one day, two years into the marriage, as we sat in the garden chatting and drinking tea, he asked me if I remembered the time I hurt my ankle in Punakha. Dear reader, this was eight years after the event. “How do you know I hurt my ankle?” “Because I gave you a lift,” he said, matter-of-factly. We’d known each other for four years. He’d never mentioned it until then. I was stunned. I whooped and laughed like a crazy person. Why had he never mentioned it? I ask him this all the time. Well, sometimes he says he forgot. Then sometimes he says he thought I knew; that we were in silent collusion.

Now we’ve been married 12 years, and living in Thimphu, and another dragon year has rolled around. It hasn’t always been easy, this intercultural marriage of ours, but it has always been interesting. The truth is Bhutan is a tiny country of fewer than 750,000 people. I was probably one of a handful of visitors in August of 1994. In other words, as a lone American woman walking on a rural road, I would have stuck out. So it’s not as incredible as it might seem. For me the truly amazing thing is my husband’s quiet equanimity. It’s still the reason I adore him. And it’s still the thing that makes me swoon.

Linda Leaming
Linda’s book, Married to Bhutan (Hay House, £8.99, tinyurl.com/leamingbhutan), is out now