Bhutan arrived quietly, without noise or expectation, represented by six archers who carried themselves with a calm sense of purpose. Luis remembered them not as participants in a schedule, but as individuals, each with a presence that stayed with him long after the Games ended.

Some of the moments he shared were not the ones you would expect from an Olympic story. They were smaller, almost accidental. Like the time he invited the Bhutanese officials, including Lyonpo Dawa Tsering, to stay at his home, only to later realise that their hotel bookings had not been cancelled. What followed was a quiet scramble, a series of explanations, and an attempt to fix something that had already happened. He laughed as he told it, not because it was amusing at the time, but because it was real.

It was in those moments, somewhere between responsibility and mistake, that something shifted. The distance between host and guest disappeared. What remained was something simpler.

A connection. Later that same year, in October, he finally arrived in Bhutan. When he spoke about it, his voice changed slightly, as if the memory asked for a different kind of attention. He did not try to describe it in detail. He simply said that something felt right.

There are places that impress you, and then there are places that stay with you. For him, Bhutan was the latter.

Years passed. Life moved forward. But Bhutan remained, not as a memory that fades, but as something that quietly returns.

Before he got married, he told Sandara that their honeymoon would be in Bhutan. It was not presented as an idea, but as something already decided. Sitting beside him today, she smiled at the memory, her expression carrying both amusement and understanding. She said yes, and when they made that journey together, it became hers as well. 

She spoke gently, but with certainty, about what Bhutan meant to her. Not just the landscape or the atmosphere, but the feeling of being somewhere that had not rushed to become something else.