In 747 the second Buddha arrived in Bhutan on the back of a tigress which flew over the mountains and alighted on a cliff high above a gorge of thundering water. The medieval monastery on that vertiginous site can be viewed today from the other side of the river – if you’re a Westerner. Tourists are welcome, and treated with kindness, as long as they keep a respectful distance.

Jim Akers’ visit to the monastery would have to wait until the end of his trip. He and his wife Adrienne had work to do first, a survey to design and test for the Council of Ministers. The UN-supported survey, part of a five-year sustainable development plan, would determine how villagers outside the capital feel about the services they have received in recent years.

Since the gradual modernization that began during the reign of a previous king, tracks rutted from centuries of yak-herd- and pedestrian-born commerce are being scraped and smoothed into roads; electricity, free education and health care have reached mountain villages as much as a week’s hike from the capital of a Himalayan kingdom that is a third the size of Utah.

“Do they need electricity and schools in an agrarian society?” Jim Akers ’93MS ’96PhD asks several months after his return to Logan, Utah. “My role is to help the government evaluate its services, not to make those judgments.” His observations to date: Wild boars and monkeys prey on meager rice crops, but no one goes hungry. When a family falls short, the rest of the village donates food. A dollar a day in wages may not be enough to furnish one-room living quarters, or to ease the burden of never-ending manual labor, but the villagers Jim interviewed with wife Adrienne (’85MS) managed just fine with their floor mats and outdoor kitchens. Jim couldn’t help but wonder, “Who am I to impose a Western version of progress? What impact might that have on their lives?”

A study by the University of Leicester in Great Britain ranks Bhutan the 8th happiest country on the planet.

Twelve hundred years after Guru Rinpoche’s miraculous flight, a monarchy that kept out tourism until 1976, and television and the Internet until 1999, is trying to retain ancient beliefs while raising the standard of living. King Wangchuck uses Gross National Happiness as the measuring stick for development. In Mahayana Buddhism, the religion of the Drukpa majority, happiness includes the well-being of plants and animals. The spiritual enlightenment of the people supersedes creature comforts. Compassion and generosity constitute a greater good than maximum profit.

The closest village to be contacted during the survey’s trial run was an hour’s hike from the nearest road. The Akers’ escort and UN liaison was Tashi Wangchuk, the first Bhutanese to earn a doctorate in the United States.

Recently retired from his research position at USU’s Center for Persons with Disabilities, Jim Akers was grateful for this opportunity to embark on a new career. This was his first overseas consulting contract – a contract in a country few Westerners will ever see. Tourist permits are as tightly regulated as firewood and cattle-grazing permits in the most biodiverse and protected forests in the world. Adrienne, a senior research scientist with the CPD’s Early Intervention Research Institute, volunteered her services, and came along for the first of two trips. The Akers met when Jim was a graduate student “grunt” at the CPD. “He tagged along on my consulting trips,” says Adrienne. “I’m happy to be the unpaid assistant this time. I’d rather engage in the life and culture of the country I’m visiting than sit in a lounge chair on the hotel veranda sipping a molita.” more