The Kingdom of Bhutan has been called one of the most isolated and least developed nations in the world.

A couple of decades ago a journalist from the West visited there and kept pestering the king for the size of Bhutan's GDP, or gross domestic product.

Finally the king told the reporter, "What we care about here is the GDH." The H stands for happiness.

In 2006, a survey declared that Bhutan, which has a population not much greater than Hamilton's, is the eighth happiest place on the planet.

Sanga Dorji, who knows the king and his four queens, isn't sure how anyone can measure such a thing. But the blind physiotherapist from Bhutan does know he found happiness right here.

We are at his home in West Hamilton. It's a basement apartment and one can be happy down below. "It's cool in summer, warm in winter," he says. And that lone tiny window is no problem.

We catch Sanga as he packs to return home. He has been here two years, earning a graduate degree at McMaster University.

Sanga tells us he is 42. He doesn't look that old. Maybe he's not.

He was born in a house of mud and stone in a central Bhutan village, a day's walk from the nearest road. His mother couldn't read or write and wasn't sure when he was born.

That date of birth on his passport -- Jan. 25, 1966 -- is just a guess.

When Sanga was a boy, maybe about eight, his eyesight began to dim. He soon lost all sight. About a year later, his mother made the long trek with him to hospital. It turned out to be a vitamin A deficiency, and too late to treat.

Sanga is not bitter. Without blindness, he says, "they would want me to look after the cows." Instead, he got to go away to a school for the blind, a pet project of the king's uncle.

Near the end of his studies, a teacher from Sweden told him that in Europe some people without sight become physiotherapists.

Sanga decided he would earn a bachelor of science in physiotherapy. No one in Bhutan had ever done that, sighted or otherwise.

Money was found through the United Nations to send Sanga off to Britain. In 1994 he returned home with that degree and started to work at the country's main hospital. He also developed a rehab assistant program.

He treats people who have sore shoulders, aching necks, twisted ankles from falling out of trees.

And he treats royalty. Including the Queen Mother, who has a bad back. "They seem to like me. Maybe because I can't see them."

He says that when you're blind, you must work harder. He decided a master's degree would be wise and he was accepted by McMaster.

"In spite of his disability, he took a risk to come to study in Canada and learn Canadian ways," says his supervisor, Mac professor Patty Solomon.

"It was not a risk, it was an opportunity," Sanga says. "I could achieve what I wanted to do, or be scared and stay home."

But he's not scared at home and often hikes the Himalayas. From boyhood, he can still picture nature. He found it here. "I like the water and the Mountain. And the wonderful people. The only thing, sometimes it feels dusty here."

And sometimes it snows too much. On occasion, when it was piled too high, Sanga got lost en route to Mac. He likes all Canadian bus drivers. On a trip to North Bay, thanks to the driver and other passengers, he saw everything.

He hopes some of his friends at McMaster will come to see his land, a place still covered mostly in forest, where monkeys, wild boar and elephants roam.

Back home, Sanga will see the king. "Every time I meet him he says I must get married. He has his four wives and thinks I must have at least one.

"I always told him I was waiting until I got my master's degree."

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