A young government official, named Dondup, who is smitten with America (he even has a denim gho) dreams of escaping there while stuck in a beautiful but isolated village. He hopes to connect in the U.S. with a visa out of the country. He misses the one bus out of town to Thimphu, however, and is forced to hitchhike and walk along the Lateral Road to the west, accompanied by an apple seller, a Buddhist monk with his ornate, dragon-headed dramyin, a drunk, a widowed rice paper maker, and his beautiful daughter, Sonam.

In Bhutan, a country of 700,000 people, everyone knows everyone else. Nima, a schoolteacher, faces trouble when an explicit intimate video surfaces online, featuring a woman who looks exactly like her. Determined to calm her students’ outraged parents, Nima embarks on a quest to find her naughty lookalike. But her doppelganger, Meto, has disappeared without a trace. The locals, struck by Nima’s uncanny resemblance to Meto, begin to believe she is Meto’s long-lost ghost. The village elders suggest singing Aum Tshomo’s sacred song to unravel the mystery. Now, Nima must open her heart and sing to rebuild her shattered life.