Kathleen Kiefer, of Baker City, founded the Bhutan Cultural Exchange, and one project was to introduce pickleball to students and monks in Bhutan.

Kathleen Kiefer doesn’t play much pickleball herself, but she’s seen the game make monks smile at a monastery in Bhutan.

“I’ve never seen anything bring so much joy,” she said.

And all above 10,000 feet elevation.

“Pickleball at the highest place on Earth,” she said with a smile.

Kiefer lives in Baker City and founded the nonprofit Bhutan Cultural Exchange in February 2017.

The start of BCE, however, came several years before in 2015 Keifer met the Venerable Karma Namgyel Rinpoche, a Buddhist Lama from Bhutan who visited Baker City for community-wide events hosted by Crossroads Carnegie Art Center.

She invited Rinpoche on a hike to Dutch Flat Lake in the Elkhorn Mountains near Anthony Lakes, and not long afterward she decided to visit Bhutan.

Her first trip was in November 2016.

“I fell in love with the country and the people,” she said.

She founded the Bhutan Cultural Exchange soon afterward.

Bhutan is in the Eastern Himalayas, bordered on the north by China and on the south by India. Bhutan’s population is about 730,000. The country covers almost 15,000 square miles — about five times the size of Baker County.

Kiefer is an anthropologist, writer and filmmaker. Prior to this venture, she was a cultural resource manager for a public utility in Washington.

After that first trip to Bhutan, she returned every year until the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to travel.

But her thoughts of Bhutan never ceased, and in 2021 she helped raise funds to create baseball and softball programs in the country with Matt DeSantis.

In 2022, she spent a year in Bhutan on a work permit issued by Tashichhoedzong Monastic School, where she teaches monks technology skills to digitize the country’s sacred treasures, she said.

Serving up pickleball

Early in 2022 she heard about pickleball.

“A friend who is rabid about pickleball started telling me about it,” she said.

After learning more about pickleball, which combines elements of ping pong and tennis on a court about the same size used for badminton, Kiefer thought it would be an ideal activity for Bhutan’s monks.

“They live sedentary lives,” she said. “This sport is a perfect opportunity for them to start a lifetime of fitness.”

She launched a fundraiser to build three pickleball courts at Woochu Sports Arena in Paro and three in Thimphu — a project supported by U.S. donors and 11 volunteers who traveled to Bhutan to teach the game to students and monks.

Those volunteers include Seymour Rifkind, founder and CEO of International Pickleball Teaching Professionals Association and World Pickleball Federation, and Helle Sparre, creator of Dynamite Doubles and a former tennis pro who switched to pickleball in 2016.

Pickleball supplies — nets, paddles, balls, bags and court shoes — were donated by Selkirk Sports, Gearbox Sports, Onix Sports and Babolat.

The monks, Kiefer said, still tend to play in flip flops or low sandals.

Pickleball in Bhutan officially started Sept. 3, 2023. Within a week the volunteers had introduced the sport to more than 1,200 students from Dechencholing Higher Secondary School in Thimphu.

Bhutan now has 14 pickleball courts.

From Bhutan to Baker City

Kiefer flew to Bhutan in early January 2025 and will stay there until June, when she returns to Baker City.

And she’ll be accompanied by Sonam Nidup, who is coming to experience pickleball in America.

“We’ll have the first Bhutanese coming to the U.S. to play pickleball — in Baker City,” she said. “Bhutanese want to visit the U.S. — they get starry eyed about America.”

Nidup and Kiefer will stay in Baker City for a while, then visit Eugene and Arizona — playing pickleball whenever Nidup can along the way.

And for the future, Kiefer is hoping Americans will want to visit Bhutan to share their love of the game.

“I’m looking for people from the U.S. to coach pickleball in Bhutan,” she said. “We are building an exchange program through pickleball.”

Bhutan Cultural Exchange has launched a GoFundMe campaign to renovate an indoor sports center in Chhukha to fix windows, install lighting, smooth concrete and paint lines for indoor pickleball courts.

To learn more about pickleball in Bhutan and the fundraiser, visit bhutanculturalexchange.org or visit Pickleball in Bhutan on Facebook.