Sky Dragon Expeditions

What to expect

How we work

Six commitments, written so you can check them against what we actually send you. Not claims about ourselves — things that are testable.

The commitments

Testable, not decorative

A person replies

Every enquiry is read and answered by someone in the Thimphu office. No automated quotations, no call centre, no chatbot.

One quotation, all in

The Sustainable Development Fee and the US$40 visa fee are inside the figure we send you. Nothing compulsory is added afterwards.

Honest driving times

The times on our itineraries are what the road actually takes, with the stops we will actually make. A four-hour drive is never described as two.

Your itinerary, not ours

Every route on this site is a starting point. Most are rewritten two or three times before anyone books, and that is the process working.

We will say no

If what you have asked for does not fit the days you have, or the season is wrong for it, we will tell you before you book rather than after.

No promises we cannot keep

We do not guarantee a mountain view, a wildlife sighting, a specific hotel room or a seat at a festival, because nobody can. Where something is subject to availability, we say so.

The process

What actually happens after you write to us

01

You write, we read

A paragraph is enough. Dates, days available, who is coming, what you would rather avoid. Someone in the Thimphu office reads it.

02

A plan and one number

A written itinerary with real driving times and honest walking distances, and one quotation with the SDF and visa fee already inside it.

03

We rewrite it

Most itineraries change two or three times. Add a night, drop a drive, swap a valley. Nothing is charged and nothing is committed at this stage.

04

We do the paperwork

Visa, permits where a route needs them, hotels, domestic flights. You arrive at Paro and your guide is in the arrivals hall.

Responsible travel

The part that is not marketing

Bhutan’s tourism policy does most of the work here — the Sustainable Development Fee funds conservation, healthcare and education directly, and the constitutional requirement to keep sixty per cent of the country under forest is not something a tour operator can take credit for.

What we can do is smaller and more specific. We pay guides and drivers properly and we use the same people repeatedly rather than whoever is cheapest that week. We book locally-owned hotels and farmstays where they are good. We keep group sizes to whoever you bring. On the crane itinerary we keep to the marked paths and viewing points even when a better photograph is available from somewhere else, and we will ask you to as well.

We do not run a carbon offset scheme, because we would rather not sell you something we cannot verify.

Young monks beside prayer flags

Hold us to it

Write to us and see whether the reply matches what is on this page. That is the only test that means anything.