The kitchen of the Medicine Buddha Monastery was like everything else in Bhutan: simple, traditional, immaculate, but with occasional and startling touches of the contemporary. The wood stove in the middle of the tiny room was surrounded by sleeping mats on the floor. The only other thing in the room was a set of shelves. I stared at a chrome and plastic radio and cassette player peeking out from behind cast iron pots, and wondered how the child-monks had obtained it and whether it was against monastery rules. It was a singular incongruity, like the satellite phone I’d seen a monk pull out of his robe pocket in the dark, silent interior of another monastery’s chapel earlier that day. There were only four monks living here. They were so young; the oldest was 20, the youngest was 12. I knew I would not normally be allowed inside, but the head…
