All listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you book something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
It took two appointments before my obstetrician was ready to estimate a due date: July 2. Before I’d even left his office I was tapping backwards through my calendar, figuring out the latest date I’d be able to fly. My third trimester, which I understood to be the safety cut-off, was set to begin in mid-April. How many trips could I cram in before then?
You can totally still travel with kids! swore my mom friends who required weeks of notice to schedule a dinner. Promised the travel TikTokers who traversed trails in New Zealand with babies strapped in hiking carriers. Oh yes, totally, I’d agree. If you prioritize it. But I could still touch reality; I knew that my days of following every flight deal, every wild invitation, were over. No longer could I go to Lisbon alone on two weeks’ notice to spend entire afternoons in coffee shops reading novels with a pastel de nata, or clubbing on a Danube barge in Serbia, as I did just before the pandemic.
Travel had long set off sparklers in my stomach. Landing in a new country remains my most dependable way to feel bright and alive. Holding a baby in my arms had also, always, given me a thorough sensation of joy—and a marrow-deep yearning. I knew my whole life I wanted to be a mother. When I found a wonderful partner just as passionate about both exploring the world and building a family, I was thrilled. We relocated from New York City to Taipei in 2022 to follow our dreams of living abroad.
So when I told him, days after returning from a solo jaunt to Seoul in my fifth month of pregnancy, that I was mulling a trip in my sixth to Bhutan—a country with limited hospitals, limited highways, located in the high altitude of the Himalayas—he couldn’t help betraying some exasperation, not to mention fear for my health. When will it be enough for you? was really what I heard. Bhutan would be my 57th country. It felt greedy, obscene, embarrassing. What if something happened to me, or to the baby? How could I face my mother if I harmed her first grandchild just because I wanted one more cool view outside a plane window?
I met with my doctor, who said my fetus and I were both healthy and on track with every single marker; he suggested I come in before and after the trip to check in. I also spoke to multiple reps from Intrepid Travel, the Australian tour company I’d decided to book with. The Intrepid folks walked me through the nine-day itinerary, in which our small group would drive around the western part of the country, beginning in the capital, Thimphu (a city so small there are no traffic lights), and ending in the historic town of Paro, with two stops in the scenic valleys of Punakha and Phobjikha along the way. The company reassured me the hikes were beginner-level, more like strolls that I could opt out of on any given day. And, they emailed me a list of the medical centers along the journey, each located within four kilometers of the hotels. If I miscarried or were seriously injured, though, I’d likely need to be airlifted over the border to Delhi.
