Explorers Club's Michael Barth on how Hong Kong can lead new golden age of exploration

My parents always encouraged my brothers and I to go where we needed to go to learn what we wanted to learn. This turned out to be the prime motivator for my life of exploration; following my curiosity wherever it led me.

I was born in New York. When I was 10, my grandmother yanked me out of school for a few weeks and brought me out to the Middle East. We stopped in Jerusalem, where a friend of hers was leading a dig in the old city. They were uncovering an even older part of the Roman road, and that blew my mind. I was already excited to be missing school, but climbing down below the street level of the old city down to a different time 10 feet below? The hair on my neck still stands up when I think about it.

As a freshman in high school, I wanted to learn Cantonese, so I got a job in a Chinese restaurant as a busboy, a dishwasher, then finally a cook. I didn't learn Cantonese because I'd picked the one restaurant where everyone spoke Mandarin (Putonghua), but learnt a lot about Chinese culture, and, of course, how to cook. I'm a philosophy major. In grad school I started my first business as an education consultant with some friends. This gave me access to some amazing countries, and to high-level leadership. In 2008, I had the opportunity to go to Bhutan to meet the king, and lead the development of their country's first law school. Since then, I've been back over 50 times.

In 2013, I was at a mountaintop festival, and the queen mother said to me, "Michael, I know you have a baby coming in January. If you promise to give him a Bhutanese name we'll get one for you right now." In Bhutan, names are given by monks and, without consulting with my wife, I said yes on the spot. She brings me up to His Eminence, Gyalse Rinpoche, who is generally believed to become the next Je Khenpo, or spiritual leader of Bhutan. He's one of the only undisputed reincarnates in all of Buddhism. I bow to get my blessing from him and, when he touches my head, I have a waking dream; a vision that I'd had every night of my life, preverbal, up until five or six years old. I mention it to a friend, who takes me to a well-known monk, a " tulku". He's a reincarnate whose speciality is recognising other reincarnates. He doesn't know anything about me, or why I'm there, but he tells me I'm a reincarnate, a monk from about 300 years ago, from Bhutan. It gets weirder! He knows scars on my body, and tells me I broke the law, and died when I was 40. A lot more crazy stuff happens but, long story short, when I next see the queen mother, I tell her everything that's happened and she just looks at me and says, "I already knew all of this."

For what it's worth, it puts into context why I have been going back to Bhutan over and over again, trying to improve the place. I'd be lying if I said it didn't impact me.