A dirt path between the stone houses of a mountain village, in the mistMerak, more than 3,000 metres up, a village cut off from the world that seems to emerge from the mists of the past.

In the heart of the Himalayas, the small kingdom of Bhutan feeds fantasies even before you set off. People there are said to live happily thanks to Gross National Happiness; phalluses painted on the walls are said to recall Drukpa Kunley, the mad yogi who converted the country to Buddhism; and the yeti is said to haunt the forests of the East. Three stories for Faut pas rêver, three myths confronted with the reality of the journey, from Thimphu, the capital, to the forgotten valleys of Merak and Sakteng.

A pack yak, loaded with sacks, on a forest pathAfter Merak, the horses give way to yaks, “heavier, slower and surer”, we had been told; the leeches, meanwhile, suck out all the blood.
01/03Gross national happinessThimphu

In Bhutan, people do not talk about crisis or debt, but about well-being: gross national product gives way to Gross National Happiness. To measure its index, the starting point is the country’s largest chorten, built in memory of the third king. An old man finds peace only by withdrawing to pray in the mountains; gross national happiness, he says, is a political invention that nobody even talked about before. Another thanks the king and the government, who provide water and healthcare. The Wangchuck royal family laid down its four pillars: a thoughtful economy, culture, the environment, good governance; in 2008, the kingdom became a parliamentary democracy. As the king did not respond to the interview request, it is Mr Bhutan, the brawniest man in the country, who talks about happiness and bodybuilding: in the city, he says, someone who earns a thousand dollars will want two thousand tomorrow. At night, in a club, a young woman thanks television and the internet for showing her what makes people happy. And the country’s only graffiti artist paints a patient on a drip of Gross National Happiness, then a tag: “be yourself”.

02/03In the land of phallusesFrom Sopsokha to Chime Lhakhang

At the entrance to houses rise phalluses, veined, encircled by a dragon, often standing to attention. Rinchen Namgyel, a professional painter, paints one surrounded by children: as long as they have phalluses on their minds, he says, they do not think about making war, and the drawing wards off the evil eye and ensures the family’s prosperity and fertility. This protective role is owed to Drukpa Kunley, a mad yogi who came from Tibet in the fifteenth century, followed an arrow to Bhutan and subdued a demon by exposing his penis to it. His descendants, a brother and a sister, still pray to their ancestor; she does not know whether she would agree to sleep with him if he came back. Along the way, two climbers risk their lives, barefoot on the cliffs, for shilajit, “the honey that oozes from the rocks”, an aphrodisiac that smells of cat’s piss. In the village of Sopsokha, the commissioned phallus is finished, bright red, and the neighbour finds it nice and straight. At the monastery of Chime Lhakhang, finally, a monk places a wooden penis, then an ivory one, on the heads of pilgrims who have come to ask for a child. A young father had one after nine years of marriage; he is back for a daughter.

A large red phallus painted on the white wall of a house, a dog lying at its footRed is the colour of desire transformed into wisdom, the colour of Drukpa Kunley, the painter explains.
A painter in front of a half-painted phallus on a wall, children sitting around himYou may be a professional painter, but phalluses are not taught at art school: you take your model by looking inside your trousers.
03/03In pursuit of the yetiMerak and Sakteng

The Bhutanese call it the migoe. Descendant of Gigantopithecus, Neanderthal survivor, bear or legend? The investigation begins at the national library, in an old text, the Mirror of Science, then at the ministry of parks and forests, in front of casts of footprints. For Dasho Djampay, a leading specialist, the yeti is twice the size of a man, can be detected from afar by its smell and carries a pouch on its back to take away those it catches. Next stop the East, on the borders of India and China, where foreigners were not allowed in until a few years ago: ten days’ walk, some fifteen horses, and as many caravaneers, cooks and guides. In the lead, Kandu Gyalpo, tasked by the king for twenty years with bringing back proof; he has found only one footprint, three years ago. In Merak, the young keep quiet, the old have seen nothing, and the schoolteacher thinks the yeti mainly serves to frighten children. After the Nakchung La pass, at four thousand metres, footprints at last appear: four toes, a good thirty centimetres. Changpe Youdoup, a nomadic herder, laughs about it: the yeti never really kills people, it just drives them mad.

A finger pointing at an old Tibetan text illustrated with a hairy figureAn eighteenth-century text: long before the expeditions, the yeti already had a face there.
A drawn plate: a man runs off laughing from a female yeti and her youngHeld for years by a female yeti, the bamboo cutter finally tied her feet so that he could escape, and died two weeks after returning to the village.
A man in a red cap smiles in the tent, in the evening, near the cooksHe has come across red pandas, tigers, bears; one of them once ripped open his arm with a swipe of its paw.
A schoolboy shows his drawing of a yetiIn class, all the children raise their hands when asked who believes in the yeti; yet they are less afraid of it than the elders.