Bhutan: A Luxury Tour Around the Mystical Himalayan Country

The pitch-perfect notes piercing the crisp morning air outside are so loud and crystal clear that it sounds like the flute sequence from a Puccini opera. Now joined by an equally unrestrained oboe player, my befuddled brain rewinds back to Bhutan’s Paro airport, where I stood in line behind a man whose cap read ‘Oriental Bird Club.’

With the typical duty-free shops and fast-food outlets supplanted by a Buddhist bookshop and photos of beautiful birds, tiny tranquil Paro is more redolent of a museum than an airport. I have, it seems, unwittingly flown straight into Birdwatch Central, but with wonderful wake-up calls like this, that’s not ruffling any feathers.