Think Buddhist Bhutan is an otherworldly aerie in the clouds? Not quite... James Truman discovers that spirituality, in this land of dzongs, divine madmen, and Gross National Happiness, comes with a healthy dollop of carnality

Arriving in Bhutan for the first time can give a person a bad case of the Shangri-las. The dirty monsoon heat of New Delhi quickly becomes a stifled memory, a brief stopover in Kathmandu the staging post for the heart-stopping flight east across the Himalayas. Everest, enveloped by clouds this afternoon, cedes to a hundred-mile chain of monumental, lethal snow cones with the legendary names of Gauri Shankar, Lhotse, Kanchenjunga, and, to the east, Jannu, known to its visitors as the Peak of Terror (and successfully climbed for the first time only this year). Then the plane begins its descent, and the darkly wooded crests and ridges of the Himalayan foothills mark our crossing into Bhutan. The approach to the Paro airport is notoriously dicey; only a handful of pilots are certified to attempt it. A series of hard banks and looping figure eights puts us alongside a cliff face, and suddenly we're a wing's length from Bhutan's most famous site, the monastery of Taktshang Goemba, held in miraculous suspension halfway up the rock wall. One final bank and we just clear the chimney of a house beneath us, then bounce to the ground, roaring to a halt a few yards shy of the runway's end.

Out in the cool afternoon air, we're still somewhere between earth and sky. Billowing mists cascade down the hillsides toward the valley floor, while funnels of smoke spiral up to meet them—the sacred offerings of alder wood and juniper that burn constantly, scenting the air. The impression is magical, the invitation compelling. Here, it seems, is a place to rest one's head in the clouds.

The drive into the town of Paro takes us along a narrow country road lined with willow trees; beyond lie meadows and rice fields and clusters of farmhouses in the traditional Bhutanese style, handsome and baronial with their white-plastered walls and timbered beams. Pedestrians thread the roadway, all of them in some manner of national dress. And in one form or another, everyone does wear a dress. We pass farmers sporting the gho—the male costume of a patterned smock worn with knee-high socks—and monks on afternoon recess in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist robes of saffron and burgundy. Packs of schoolgirls seem to be competing for who can wear the most colorful kira, the kimonolike dress that for women fulfills every duty, from farmwork to fashion statement. We see a group of girls being hauled into the back of a police truck. Have they gone too far? Not at all. With so few crimes to solve, the police fill their days with other things, such as ferrying children to and from school.

Meanwhile, through an open window I detect a pungent, dimly familiar smell and glance out at what looks like a giant marijuana bush. My hunch is correct. Marijuana grows wild, and voluminously, throughout the country. But, miraculously, there is no drug trade in Bhutan—nor, from what I can discover, even a single pothead. Only the pig farmers harvest the accidental crop, to fatten their animals. They've discovered that it gives pigs an insatiable appetite.