Bhutan

Bhutan is the country that decided GDP was the wrong way to measure progress and invented Gross National Happiness instead. This tiny Himalayan kingdom wedged between India and China has taken a path so different from the rest of the world that it sometimes feels like a place from another century. Television and the internet arrived only in 1999. Tourism is limited by a daily fee. Every building, by law, must be constructed in traditional Bhutanese style. The result is a country where fortress-monasteries called dzongs dominate every valley, forests cover over 70% of the land, and the national sport is archery.

The landscape is staggering. Bhutan rises from subtropical plains at 200 meters to Himalayan peaks above 7,000 meters in a distance of barely 170 kilometers. The Tiger's Nest monastery, clinging to a cliff face 3,000 meters above the Paro Valley, is one of the most photographed and awe-inspiring buildings on Earth. Bhutan is the world's only carbon-negative country - its forests absorb more CO2 than the nation produces. It is a place where red-robed monks share the streets with stray dogs considered sacred, where phallus symbols painted on houses ward off evil spirits, and where the king himself cycles to work. Bhutan is not stuck in the past - it has simply decided which parts of the modern world it wants to let in.